God for Us ~ Romans 8:31-39

[Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Romans: The Righteous Shall Live by Faith, (chapter 32) by R.C. Sproul, published by Crossway Books © R. C. Sproul delivered nearly sixty sermons on Romans from October 2005 to April 2007 at St. Andrew's Chapel, where he has pastored for more than a decade.]

Deus pro nobis, "God for us." If God is for us, who can be against us? (v. 31). Paul sets forth that phrase in a conditional sense; in other words, the language suggests a kind of uncertainty. The apostle says "If God is for us," as if it were a matter open to some doubt or further speculation, but Paul is not indicating uncertainty about God's being for us.

He has labored thus far through the epistle to demonstrate how deeply God is for His elect. Paul is speaking in the language of logic, even of a syllogism, which gives a first premise and then a second premise and then rushes toward a conclusion. The conclusion of a syllogism is one that follows inexorably from the premises, if the premises are sound. If A and B are true, then C must of necessity follow. So when Paul asks, "If God is for us," he is writing syllogistically, not with respect to uncertainty. We could just as easily translate it with the word since: "Since God is for us, who can be against us?" 

Obviously, if God is for us, the whole world can be against us, because man in his revolt against God not only protests against his Creator but against all the redeemed. Implicit in the apostle's statement is not just who can be against us, but who could possibly stand against us. This is, of course, a rhetorical question; the answer is obvious. No one can stand against us if God is standing with us. An aphorism that has since become something of a cliché goes like this: one person with God on his side is in a majority against all the rest of the human race. 

Spared
He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? (v. 32). We notice first the idea of sparing. When people are rescued from an almost certain doom at the last second, we say that they have been spared a disaster that was about to befall them. When we read such language in Romans 8, how can we not think back to Genesis 22, where God commanded Abraham to offer his son Isaac, the son whom he loved, on the altar at Mount Moriah? In obedience Abraham took his son on an arduous journey and placed him on the altar, bound in ropes, and he lifted up the knife to slay him, but at the last second God stopped him: "Do not lay your hand on the lad, or do anything to him" (Gen. 22:12). God commanded Abraham to spare his son. It was on Mount Moriah, later named Mount Calvary, just outside the city of Jerusalem, where, one thousand years after Abraham's experience, our Savior on the night before His death went into the garden of Gethsemane and sweat drops of blood pleading with the Father to allow the cup to pass from him. "Nevertheless," Jesus said, "not what I will, but what You will" (Mark 14:36). In that moment of the grand passion of Christ, the Father said no. The Father would not spare His Son. 

How can we not understand the posture of God toward His people after He has gone to such lengths to effect our redemption? God spared nothing, not even His Son, so that we might be saved. Therefore, Paul says, "He delivered Him up for us all." I don't believe for a moment that God did this for all mankind. God gave His Son to redeem His elect, those who are a part of the Golden Chain.  

Because of Christ's perfect obedience for us, the Father bestows every conceivable blessing upon him. His inheritance is the world and everything in it. Paul says that because the Son died for us and the Father did not spare him, He will also give us everything that He gives His Son. Here Paul adds to the idea of our adoption, which he developed earlier in Romans 8. We are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ; the Father is pleased to give all things to His Son, whom He did not spare, and not only to His Son but to all those whom He had given to His Son for His Son's glory.