Today, we return to our study of Romans 8 which is about the believer's relationship with the Holy Spirit. Throughout this chapter, the Apostle Paul chronicles the workings of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer in Christ. The Spirit reminds us that the believer in Christ is not condemned in v.1-4. In v.5-8, He teaches the believer how to think God's thoughts. In v.9-11, He teaches us how to walk in God's ways. In v.12-17, the Holy Spirit teaches us how to live the life that the Lord Jesus died to give us. Then in v.18-28, the Holy Spirit teaches us the value of our trials and their role in the deepening of our faith in the Lord Jesus. All of this is designed to enable the believer in Christ to increase in his intimacy with the Lord Jesus Himself.
Today, we come to v.29-30 where the Holy Spirit pulls back the curtain allowing us to see the greatness of the One who is behind our salvation. Think of it, had not the Lord Jesus agreed to come and bail us out of our damnation to hell, we would be hopeless. We would spend eternity in a place that was made for the devil and his followers. Having said that, the beauty of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ is that it is real. God doesn't rescue us out of the pains of life, He rescues us through the pains of life.
Most believe that if we love God, we will not have bad things to happen to us. This postulate is obviously not true! Horrible things can happen to us, and believing in and loving God will not keep them from happening. As we considered in our last study, God uses all things to work together for the good of the believer in Christ. The "good" is the will of God for our lives because He absolutely knows what is best for each of us. God allows or causes bad things into our lives, in order to rescue us from things that can destroy us. Things like arrogance, selfishness, hardness of heart, and the belief that we don’t need God, in the long term will destroy us. God's will rescues us from these things that we have long been too acquainted with.
In v.29 of today's passage we read, "For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters."
In this section the Apostle Paul is simply describing the process involved in bringing each believer in Christ to faith in Him. The word the Apostle used translated "foreknew" in this verse informs us that from among the tremendous number of human beings that have ever walked this earth, God foreknew that you and I would believe in His Son as our Savior. In fact, the chances that you and I would emerge to be in God's family was somewhere around 1-200 million.
We are told that before the foundation of the earth, God foreknew that we would believe. Then, Paul tells us that God "predestined us to be conformed to the image of His Son." Predestination has absolutely nothing to do with anyone going to hell. According to the Bible, predestination is never related to that in any way whatsoever. Predestination is a term only applicable to believers in Jesus Christ. This simply means that God has chosen that those who believe in His Son would be conformed to the likeness of His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Greek word translated "conformed" means "metamorphosis." A God-caused change is promised to those who are willing to trust Him. This means God's primary objective in our lives is that we be "holy" or "whole" or "complete." God's goal in the life of the believer is that we function as He intended us to function, like the Lord Jesus. And, in this case, we are not the one's producing the outcome.
In v.30 of today's passage we read, "And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified."
Only those who are in a personal relationship with God can have the application of the words "predestined," "called," "justified" and "glorified." God's vantage point is much different than ours. He sees from the realm of the instantaneous now (eternity), as opposed to our limited view of time. Of course, no one would be able to come into a personal relationship with Him unless He call, yet we bare the responsibility to exercise trust in God or not. And, if we exercise that truth or faith, we will know the application of the words predestined, called, justified and glorified.
The Apostle wrote, "Those he predestined, he also called." This means that at one point in time the Holy Spirit began working in our lives so that we would enter into a personal relationship with God. For the Apostle Paul, he was converted in the brilliant light on the Damascus road when he saw the glory of the Lord shining around him greater than the sun. He was intercepted by the Lord Jesus as he was traveling to Damascus to persecute Christians. He thought that he was right with God, but he wasn't. The Lord Jesus had to blind him for three days so that he would come to faith in Him. The Apostle fought the Lord but in the end the Lord won out. Our salvation is really part us and part God. Our part was running away from God, and God's part was to run after us until we were found by Him.
As a result of being predestined, we were called and justified. All along in this letter we have been looking at what justification means. It is God's gift of worth. We who are justified are valuable in God's sight. We are forgiven through the work of Christ on the cross. When the Lord Jesus took our punishment on the cross, God was freed to give all humble enough to believe the gift of righteousness. Had He given it apart from the cross, He could be properly accused of condoning sin, but the cross freed Him to lavish on us sonship.
Paul wrote, "Those whom God justified, he also glorified." At the end of time, there will be none lost in this process. The same number of people He has called, He also justified, and, the very ones He justified, He also glorified. No one is lost in the process, because God is responsible for it. It is going to involve pain and toil, death and tears, disappointment, sorrow, sin, and failure. But it is going to happen, because what God sets out to do, He accomplishes, no matter what it takes.
Charles Spurgeon once said, "When we get to heaven, we’ll see those great big pearly gates, with a huge sign overhead that reads, "Whosoever will, come". And as we pass through the gates into heaven, if we would care to look over our shoulder, we’d see that there’s another message on the other side of the sign. It reads, "Predestined before the foundation of the world". From the earthly side of heaven, all we can really understand is that we have a choice. God offers us salvation, but we have to choose to accept it and receive it. Yet when we get to heaven, we’ll look back and see that we were chosen by God from the very beginning.
To be sure, the point of these three verses is that we are viewed by God as perfect through His Son, and we are learning to see that God can take a bad and bring good out of it.
