Saturday, July 29, 2017

Romans 8:26-39


Romans 8:26-39 (NRSV)

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. 27 And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn within a large family. 30 And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified.

31 What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? 32 He who did not withhold his own Son, but gave him up for all of us, will he not with him also give us everything else? 33 Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. 34 Who is to condemn? It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us. 35 Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? 36 As it is written,

“For your sake we are being killed all day long;
we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” [Psalm 44:22]

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 39 nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

 

Romans 8:26-39 deserves our close attention to its themes. Those in Christ, those walking in the Spirit, are also those who can experience the assurance of divine presence and love, regardless of the weakness and suffering they experience in this world.

One needs to read Romans 8:26-28 in a way that closely identifies it with what Paul has just said in the first part of this chapter. We see this with the word “likewise” at the beginning. Paul has focused upon the presence of the Spirit through human weakness as well as the groaning and suffering of creation. He ended by stressing the hope the Spirit gives us. The Spirit groans for us, yes, and the Spirit gives us hope by helping us in our weakness. Thus, as he continues that theme, Paul expresses a profound “religious” or “spiritual” experience. He stresses that although we experience all the weakness of the flesh, the Spirit helps us. Even in our weakness, we pray. Regardless of the difficulty in which we find ourselves as human beings and as followers of Jesus, prayer remains a possibility and reality. The Spirit helps us in our prayers even when we are so weak we do not know what to say. We can be grateful for this, for in our weakness, we might ask God for anything out of our egoism, anxiety, desire, passion, shortsightedness, unreasonableness, and stupidity.[1] The Spirit is emotionally involved and eternally invested in our yearning for the divine. In this sense, every successful prayer has an ecstatic element in that the Spirit prays through us, even it should be unspeakable sighs.[2] Since the Spirit is the Spirit of God, the Father knows what the Spirit is saying on our behalf. The Spirit interprets our stuttering, stammering, groaning, and yearning in a way that becomes praise and love. The Spirit makes the pain of this life easier to bear by placing it in the context of hope. God is not distant from us. God is immanent, with us, and for us, through the Spirit. Even if we are inarticulate, the Father is aware of our needs through the immanent experience we have of the power of the Spirit. The Spirit intercedes “for the saints,” but only in accord with the will of God. When our words are incapable of articulating our greatest needs to God in prayer, the Spirit calls out to God for us.[3] Paul will write of the Spirit in a similar way in I Corinthians 2:6-16, where the Spirit is the way God communicates revelation, wisdom, and gifts. In 4:1-5, judgment from God is what matters, in contrast to judgment from others. In II Corinthians 3:4-6, Paul stresses that any competence he has is due to the new covenant written in the Spirit that gives life. The closeness of the Spirit to our weakness puts us in the position of those who hope when we do not see. We can wait patiently during the night longing for morning to come. The Spirit who helps us is the Spirit by whom God has poured into us the love of God in Chapter 5.[4] The Spirit is the personal center of Christian action. As such, those in Christ re-center their lives away from self outside themselves to the power the Spirit gives them. The Spirit becomes a personal center of power as those in Christ walk in and live by the Spirit. Those in Christ have found the ground of their lives beyond themselves.[5] This leadership of the Spirit is of a personal sort. Those in Christ, those who participate in Christ and are in union with Christ, live in the sphere of this spiritual power. Paul is careful to provide moral and institutional guidance in a way that provides some structure, but we must always be aware that he also expected the power of the Spirit to provide leadership in new ways.[6] As we continue to verse 28, God sees to it that the aspirations and sufferings of those in Christ contribute to their good. How can this happen? Suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope, all of which finds confirmation in the love of God shown us in the personal presence and power of the Spirit (Romans 5:1-5). Those who love God are also those whom God has called to live in accord with the purpose of God. The purpose of God is that which God has planned, resolved, and willed to do. One of the ways the providence and sovereignty of God works itself in our lives is that God takes the suffering and weakness of our lives and brings good out of it. In this sense, nothing can harm those who love God in an ultimate way. The sovereignty of God over our lives means that everything will contribute to our destiny as determined by Christ. Evil is that which attempts to thwart the plan or purpose of God. Our weakness, combined with our propensity toward serving self, is a large part of the harm we inflict upon self, others, and creation. Of course, even if human beings did not exist, plenty of suffering and pain would exist in creation. Yet, God has not left creation without assistance. The Spirit is with creation and with human beings in their suffering and weakness. Human beings make a hundred small decisions every day that contributes to the evil and suffering in the world. Yet, in response, we have seen human beings offer acts of kindness and goodness. Some will misuse their freedom to perpetrate evil. Millions will respond with using their freedom to re-dress wrong and contribute to what is good in this world.

Thus, the theme of Romans 8:29-39 is salvation and the love of God. Paul has taken the path of the Spirit as the immanence of God in the midst of our weakness and suffering. He now returns to the destiny of those in Christ. To put in terms of later theology, he will move in Chapter 8 from his emphasis on pneumatology as life in and walking with the power of the Spirit to Christology as defining the destiny of humanity. The following verses will make more sense if we view them in the context of the light of the promised full deliverance of creation by God.

Romans 8:29-30 have the theme of the Christian called and destined for glory. Properly read, Paul characterizes the plan of God for history in one sentence. Paul is stretching human language here in order to express the providential care of God for us. Thus, the Father knows beforehand (see 11:2) and decides beforehand (I Corinthians 2:7, Ephesians 1:5, 11) those whom the Father will conform to the image of the Son. Thus, Paul gives further definition of what it means for God to work everything for the good of those in Christ. Everything that happens has the possibility of conforming us to the image of the Son. The movement toward “good” is a process of forming Christlikeness in the lives of those who love God. The risen Christ is the beginning of a large family of people who will be with God in eternity. Paul refers to those whom God decided beforehand. Such a decision occurs within the context of the ongoing work of God since the beginning of creation and ends in the redemption of creation. In that sense, this decision beforehand we understand best in the context of Romans 8 and the thought of 9-11. Thus, we can also understand this decision beforehand as having a close connection to the formation of those who love God into the image of the Son. In the midst of human suffering and weakness, God has decided beforehand what the outcome will be. Those who love God will gradually conform to the image of the Son. In II Thessalonians 2:13-15, God chose them from the beginning for sanctification through the Spirit. For these reasons, I must disagree with John Calvin, who thought of this decision beforehand to relate to individuals who would experience eternal life or eternal judgment.[7] Such a view, rooted in Augustine, is an abstract view of election because it separates the electing activity of God from the historicity of the divine acts of election to which the Bible gives witness. We can see the abstraction of this view as it focuses on individuals and separates them from the corporate nature of the people of God. Christ is the first among many whom the Father will bring into filial relationship with the Father through the Son.[8]  God decided beforehand a plan that those who love God have the destiny, through their weakness and suffering, to reproduce themselves in the image of Christ by a progressive share in the risen life of Christ. Paul is bringing the resurrection of Jesus and the resurrection of believers into close parallel.[9]  Therefore, God also called them. If God calls them, God also pardons them their offences. God will also glorify such persons in the fashion of the risen Lord. Those who love God and those whom God has called bear the form of the Son. God incorporates people in the rule of the Son by binding people to Jesus through the proclamation that awakens faith and sets them on the course of formation into the image of the Son. Although Paul will not directly connect this idea to the mission of the church, the responsibility of the church is to develop this likeness in its fellowship and teaching.[10] Paul has just said that creation awaits the revelation of the children of God. Yet, that revelation has already appeared in the Son.[11] The goal of election and the government of the world by God is that the elect should find themselves formed into the image of the Son. This decision beforehand by God has the design of offering assurance to those who love God that through the weakness and suffering of human life and creation the purpose of God will reach its desired end. The mission of the people of God is to include all humanity in this relation of the risen Christ to the Father. The aim of election is the fellowship of a renewed humanity in the rule of God.[12]
Romans 8:31-39 focuses on the decision of God to be “for us.” Yes, God loves us and is ready to help us in our weakness. However, the focus here shifts to Jesus. We know God is for us because the Father did not spare the Son, but gave him for us so that we might find life.[13] This passage points to a reality we all face. This world has an alien character, for it is chaotic, destructive, and dangerous.[14] Yet, above the weakness and suffering of this life is a divine Yes. This Yes does not arise within us. It comes from beyond us and confronts us. This Yes summons us to seek and find ourselves. We hear this Yes in Jesus Christ.[15] We hear the pardon for our sins coming from God through the cross. No one can accuse those who love God and respond to the call of God.  No one has the right or power to condemn such persons. The reason is Jesus Christ who died for us and who the Father raised to new and resurrected life within the Trinity. The Son prays for us and with us. In this way, the Son unites with the ministry of the Spirit within us. His point is that nothing in the world can feel so alien to us because of its dangerous character that it will separate us from the love Christ. He will list some ways in which this world is dangerous. Scholars refer to these portions of the letters of Paul as his “hardship” lists. I Corinthians 4:8-13 refer to his team as weak, hungry, thirsty, ill-clad, buffeted, homeless, reviled, and slandered. In II Corinthians 4:7-12, the team is afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, and carrying in their bodies the death of Jesus. In II Corinthians 6:1-10, they experience affliction, hardship, calamity, beatings, imprisonments, tumults, labors, and hunger. In II Corinthians 11:1b-29, he received 39 lashes, beaten with rods, stoned, shipwrecked, in danger from rivers, robbers, and the Jews and Gentiles. In II Corinthians 1:9, he says he had received the sentence of death. In II Corinthians 12:1-10 he refers to the thorn in the flesh as a messenger from Satan that harasses him. In this passage, he refers to hardship, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, and sword. He notes that Psalm 44:22 sums up his experience in this world, and the experience of many early followers of Jesus. For the sake of the Lord, people are killing them all day long like sheep led to the slaughter. His point is that regardless of the ways in which we experience our weakness and suffering in this world, it will not separate us from the love God has shown us in Jesus Christ. He even identifies the forces that may try to separate us from that love, such as death or life, angels or rulers, things present or things to come, powers, height or depth, and anything else in creation. Paul is getting poetic as he builds to this conclusion. Nothing will separate those who love God and have responded to the call of God from the love of God shown in Christ. In the process, he stresses the love of Christ for us cooperates with the love of the Father for us.[16]  He said in 5:5-11, in union with what he says here, that the essential content of the history of Jesus in the fact of the love God has for the world.[17]


[1] Barth, Church Dogmatics, III. 4 [53.3], 100.
[2] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 116-17.
[3] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 176.
[4] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2 [64.4], 330.
[5] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 177.
[6] Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 116-17.
[7] John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book 3, Chapter 21.5
[8] Pannenberg, Human Nature, Election and History, 47-61
[9] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 77.
[10] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 372, Systematic Theology Volume II, 208, 304.
[11] Pannenberg, Jesus God and Man, 380.
[12] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume III, 522-26.
[13] Barth, Church Dogmatics, III.2 [45.1], 213.
[14] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2 [64.4] 278-30.
[15] Barth, Church Dogmatics, IV.2 [64.4] 285.
[16] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology Volume 1, 423.
[17] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume I, 422.

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