Thus peace is made; our sins are put away, we have a new life, possess the earnest of the Spirit, the glory is before us in hope, and we shall be like the Lord. But as long as we have not reached the glory, we groan with the creation. Linked by our bodies to the fallen creation, we feel, whilst realizing our glorious hope, the sad condition of the whole creation. Free before God, free from the law of sin and death, filled with the hope of glory, we are brought, through the knowledge of the glory, and of the perfect deliverance of the creature, to utter groans which are the expression of their groans to God. But our groaning is not a complaint, the fruit of discontent, but the operation of the Holy Spirit in the heart. The Spirit directs our eye to the glory, where we shall have no more cause to groan; and makes us feel according to the love of God, the suffering of an enslaved creation; we feel with it, because as to our bodies we still belong to it. The Spirit of God which dwells in us forms these feelings according to God. God searches the heart of man, and He finds this operation of the Spirit in the heart of a Christian who is delivered. The Spirit itself is the source of divine sympathy with a groaning creation. (v. 27) The Christian’s gaze will be directed, through the indwelling Holy Spirit, to the glory on high and the rest of God, where all is blessing. He joyfully realizes what is before him. Yet, as he is still in the body, he feels all the more the condition of a fallen creation—shares its groans—and thereby becomes the voice of a groaning creation before God. But his groans go up in the Spirit of love, according to God, because he himself is in perfect freedom of relationship to God. With regard to his condition, he is saved in hope; but before God his heart is free in the sense of His love. He can rejoice in hope—the hope of glory; his conscience is perfect; the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost. And thus according to this love he can sympathize with the universal misery around him. True he does not know what remedy to ask for; perhaps there is none. But love can express the needs, and that according to the operation of the Spirit; and although the Christian does not know what he should ask for, He who searcheth the hearts finds the mind of the Spirit in their groans; for it is the Spirit which in the bottom of the heart gives expression to the feeling of need. Being ourselves still in the body, and as to our own condition forming part of the groaning creation and awaiting the redemption of our bodies, our sympathy is the more heartfelt.
But although we often do not know what we should ask for, yet there is one thing that we know perfectly; namely, that God makes all things work together for good to them that love Him, to them who are the called according to His purpose.
What a privilege is ours through grace—a privilege that we enjoy through the Holy Ghost; we are children of God, we know our relationship to God, and can realize it through the Holy Ghost; we cry, “Abba Father!” are children, and then heirs—heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ. The Spirit reveals to us our inheritance, and gives us to enter into what it is. We shall be like Christ in the rest of God, and in His own rest; we shall be perfectly to the glory of Christ, and shall reign with Him over all things. As men on the earth our gaze is turned towards the glory of God, which is our hope, and which we shall share with Christ there, where all is pure according to the purity of God. When we look at this poor world, our hearts are full of the love of God in which we share the sufferings of an undelivered creation, and that according to God; so that He who searches the hearts finds therein the mind of the Spirit, which produces in us this sympathy with the sufferings of fallen creation in order that we in our groaning may be the mouthpiece of creation before God. And whilst from our lack of intelligence we do not always know what we should ask for, the word of God comforts us with the assurance that God, according to His own will and His own love, makes all things work together for our good.
This leads the apostle to say a few words as to the counsels of God, although this is not the subject of the epistle. He does so only to show the foundation of all blessing. Otherwise the epistle treats, as already remarked, of man’s responsibility, as well as of the grace and the work of God to save us from the consequences of this responsibility.
God is ever acting in behalf of those who are called, for they are foreknown, and whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son. “Whom He did predestinate, them He also called: and whom He called, them He also justified: and whom He justified, them He also glorified.” All is grace, and therefore all is secure. Thus God does not close the series of His gracious instructions until the end is reached; the activity of God’s grace does not cease until the called are glorified. The whole teaching of the gospel leads us back to God and His thoughts, which never fail, and cannot be hindered. And here we find, His name be praised for it, that God is for us. The apostle develops his doctrine in verses 31-39. The proof of God’s being for us may be gathered, first, from what He gives, then that He justifies us, and finally, that nothing can separate us from His love. This is the blessed conclusion of the whole teaching of the epistle, “God is for us;” it is the source of blessing; it is the conclusion the heart draws from all that is here revealed to us of Him. Not only has the righteousness of God been glorified and satisfied in the work of Christ, but we also see that God’s, love is the source of all; and this changes all our thoughts with regard to God. It was just on this point that the teaching of the reformers of the sixteenth century was defective. Far be it from me to wish to depreciate the worth of these men. No one could be more thankful for the deliverance from superstition which has accrued to us through the Reformation; no one could more highly appreciate than I do the faith of those who have willingly sacrificed even their lives for the truth. Indeed it would be impossible for me now quietly to write of the defect in their teaching had they not joyfully given up their lives for the maintenance of the truth. Nevertheless the truth in the word of God remains ever the same. The reformers taught, it is true, that Christ had done all that was requisite to satisfy the righteousness of God, but not that the love of God had given the Lamb, His own Son, to accomplish the work. According to them, God was ever the Judge, reconciled indeed to us by the work of Christ, but not known as the One who loved us whilst we were yet sinners. In John 3:1414And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (John 3:14) the Lord says, “The Son of man must be lifted up,” for God is a holy and righteous God. Then in verse 16 follows the motive of all: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son.” The practical consequence of the teaching of the reformers was perhaps entirely unknown and undesired by them; namely, that love is in Christ, and that God is on the judgment-seat as an austere Judge. But “grace reigns through righteousness.” (Romans 5:2121That as sin hath reigned unto death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life by Jesus Christ our Lord. (Romans 5:21)) In the day of judgment righteousness will reign. Love has firmly established the righteousness of God in Christ in our favor. Righteousness was needed; love has provided it.
Thus we know that God is for us according to His infinite love, and according to His eternal and immutable righteousness. The first proof of this is that He has not spared His own Son, but has given Him up for us; “how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Yes, we can count on Him to give us all that is good; ‘but how, can He, the Holy One, be for us in view of our sins? It is just there that we have seen how fully He is for us, for He has given His Son even for our sins. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” God Himself has justified us, who will condemn us? We may observe that all is here attributed to God. It does not say, we are justified before God, but “God that justifieth;” so that the apostle may well exclaim, “Who is he that condemneth,” whoever it may be?
Then he changes somewhat the form of the proposition. He must think of Christ, and through Him he sees also that all the difficulties of the way disappear. Not as if they did not exist, they are there; but they disappear because Christ Himself has passed through every difficulty. In love become a man, He has experienced all the trials of the way, all human sorrow, all that in Which the enemy has sought to obstruct the faithful servant of God in the path of holiness, even unto death. Thus we overcome, not merely through His well-proved strength, but we experience His love in a special manner. The sufferings are the pledge of a better glory; and whilst as Mau He has suffered all, as God He has thereby proved His infinite love, and we know that nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus.
In every respect God is for us. Precious truth! He has given His own Son, He will give us all things. He Himself has justified us, who will condemn us? And nothing can separate us from the love thus proved. All that is against us on the road to the glory cannot, as being of the creature, be greater than He who is Lord of all. God is for us in Christ, who has overcome all. The proof of His love is found not only in the path which He trod as Man to be able to suffer, and as God in order to reveal perfect love in the suffering; but, following Him in this path, we also experience His love. Nothing can separate us from it. J. N. D.