26 And in the same way the Spirit also helps our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; 27 and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. 29 Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers; 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. Romans 8: 26-30 LSB
Romans 8: 26-30 For Those Who Love God
V. 26 The Spirit helps our weakness - This takes us back to the groans of creation discussed in the last section. No one is born again into an adult, but a babe, and we know there is something wrong, we came as paupers, as sinners, as those in need. I dare say that people who don't realize that, who are satisfied with their own works, are most likely not born again, or very immature and not yet tested. We are made alive, infants though, and we yearn for more. Our sin bothered us as we came, but now we find more of it, and we wrestle, and it's no longer about God helping us find a good career, a spouse, a kayak; it's about a desire to be innocent, and just like the Creation, we groan and the Spirit helps us because we don't even know how to pray. Like the first Disciples, we ask, "Lord, teach us to pray."
A. T. Robertson says "The Holy Spirit lays hold of our weaknesses along with (sun) us and carries His part of the burden facing us (anti) as if two men were carrying a log, one at each end.
Weakness (769) (astheneia [word study]) means literally without strength and speaks of the state of incapacity to do or experience something. The infirmities here are not physical but spiritual. This refers to our human limitation due to sinfulness which produces a weakness that consists, at least in part, in that “we do not know what we ought to pray.” - Precept Austin
…3He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. Like one from whom men hide their faces, He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. 4Surely He took on our infirmities and carried our sorrows; yet we considered Him stricken by God, struck down and afflicted. 5But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.… Isaiah 53: 3-5
…18You have been set free from sin and have become slaves to righteousness. 19I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh. Just as you used to offer the parts of your body in slavery to impurity and to escalating wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness leading to holiness. 20For when you were slaves to sin, you were free of obligation to righteousness.… Romans 6: 18-20
…2You crave what you do not have; you kill and covet, but are unable to obtain it. You quarrel and fight. You do not have, because you do not ask. 3And when you do ask, you do not receive, because you ask with wrong motives, that you may squander it on your pleasures. 4You adulteresses! Do you not know that friendship with the world is hostility toward God? Therefore, whoever chooses to be a friend of the world renders himself an enemy of God.… James 4: 2-4
V. 27 According to the will of God - Sometimes it's better to say, not my will, but yours Lord, than to think that by a prayer of vain repetition you can somehow impose your will upon God. He already knows, and prayer isn't to motivate Him, but to help you come into His will, to acknowledge that some things are above your pay grade, and it is baby steps at first, very relational, paternal.
…38Then He said to them, “My soul is consumed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with Me.” 39 Going a little farther, He fell facedown and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will.” 40Then Jesus returned to the disciples and found them sleeping. “Were you not able to keep watch with Me for one hour?” He asked Peter.… Matthew 26: 38-40
V. 28 For those who love God all things work together for good - This offers hope beyond circumstances. It is a declaration of God's sovereignty in human history. Early on in Genesis we come to hear the plan of redemption. We see that Satan is not triumphant because he can do no more than God allows, and even at the fall, when man sinned against his maker, God yet promised the Seed of the woman. We see many pictures of this, including the story of Joseph, where his brothers hated him and sold him into slavery. He went from slavery to prison, and then finally to being a great ruler in Egypt, where he forgave his brothers and saved them along with many others from a famine in the land. As a born again believer this is great verse to memorize. It is there when you sit across the table from your enemy, when you have a tree fall on your truck, when the whole world seems to have gone mad, yet there is this peace here knowing that God is in control, that I deserved to die the first time I sinned, but God has provided a way for me to be free of it. This is the verse that sees victory in tragedy, that finds a voice to say, "so this is what we are doing today." God is not learning about anything, so He is not reacting to emergencies. Everything is in His hand. The pain we go through is often bringing us to the end of our selves. It causes us to cry out, and those that love Him have come to believe in Him, and those that believe have come to trust, to know, that this world, this pain, is fleeting. He is working all these things together for our good.
…19But Joseph replied, “Do not be afraid. Am I in the place of God? 20As for you, what you intended against me for evil, God intended for good, in order to accomplish a day like this— to preserve the lives of many people. 21Therefore do not be afraid. I will provide for you and your little ones.” So Joseph reassured his brothers and spoke kindly to them.… Genesis 50: 19-21
V. 29A Because those whom He foreknew - This isn't that He knew something about you, that as Arminians believe, that He looked into the future and saw that you would choose Him so therefore He chooses you. No, this is knowledge in the sense of intimacy, it is the same wording used for Adam knowing his wife, Eve, and the result of that was the birth of a child. It is relational, deeply intimate like marriage. No one comes that the Father hasn't called, we are all born spiritual still-borns, not knowing the true God, like Rebecca not knowing of Isaac. Abraham made a covenant with his servant, and his servant went to where Abraham directed him, and he found Rebecca, explained to her and her family the plan of Isaac's father, and the desire for her to leave the place she now lived and be married to Isaac. God calls us from eternity, a place I cannot even begin to imagine, and we come becomes He draws us, not because we are smarter, more able to figure things out, but because we are chosen and He is sovereign. We do not will to what we are not caused to want. The Scriptures are clear that we are at enmity with God, that no one seeks the truth, that we are all dead in our trespasses and sins. Lazarus did not will to live, no, Christ called Lazarus to come forth and the Spirit of God breathed life into those dead bones.
…15For He says to Moses: “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.” 16So then, it does not depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. 17For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: “I raised you up for this very purpose, that I might display My power in you, and that My name might be proclaimed in all the earth.”… Romans 8: 15-17
I question whether we have preached the whole counsel of God, unless predestination with all its solemnity and sureness be continually declared.—6.26
I do not doubt that the Lord has settled, concerning every one of his elect, the exact time when they shall pass from death unto life, the precise instrumentality by which they shall be converted, the exact word that shall strike with power on their mind, the period of conviction which they shall undergo, and the instant when they shall burst into the joyful liberty of a simple faith in Christ. It is all settled, all arranged and predetermined in the divine purpose. If the very hairs of our head are all numbered, much more the circumstances of the most important of all events which can occur to us.
We are no believers in fate, seeing that fate is a different doctrine altogether from predestination. Fate says the thing is and must be, so it is decreed. But the true doctrine is—God has appointed this and that, not because it must be, but because it is best that it should be. Fate is blind, but the destiny of Scripture is full of eyes. Fate is stern and adamantine, and has no tears for human sorrow. But the arrangements of providence are kind and good.
"If there are so many that will be saved," says one, "then why do you preach?" That is why we preach! If there are so many fish to be taken in the net, I will go and catch some of them. Because many are ordained to be caught, I spread my nets with eager expectation. I never could see why that should repress our zealous efforts. It seems to me to be the very thing that should awaken us to energy—that God has a people, and that these people shall be brought in.
If any of you do not believe in the predestination of God, you will probably, in some hour of depression, ascribe your sorrows to cruel fate. The human mind is driven at last to this decision, that some things are beyond the control of man and his will, and that these are fixed by necessity. How much better to see that God has fixed them!
The foreordination of God in no degree interferes with the responsibility of man. I have often been asked by persons to reconcile the two truths. My only reply is, "They need no reconciliation, for they never fell out." Why should I try to reconcile two friends? The two facts are parallel lines. I cannot make them unite, but you cannot make them cross each other.
I believe that nothing hap-pens apart from divine determination and decree.
I do not believe that there ever would have been a man delivered from this present evil world if it had not been according to the will, the purpose, the predestination of God. It needs a mighty tug to get a man away from the world. It is a miracle for a man to live in the world, and yet not to be of it. I am sure it would never have been wrought if it had not been according to the will of God our Father.
We shall never be able to escape from the doctrine of divine predestination—the doctrine that God has foreordained certain people unto eternal life.
It is true that everything is predestinated, and that everything that happens is ordered according to the unfailing purpose and will of God. PA quoting C. H. Spurgeon
V. 30 He also called - Jesus clarifies this to His disciples. God is the cause of those that love Him. He takes people, those made in His image, an image that is marred and now distorted by sin, beings that hate their Creator, even pretend He doesn't exist, beings that pretend at autonomy, demand it, and He brings them to see their state, causes them to love His Son.
…43“Stop grumbling among yourselves,” Jesus replied. 44“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day. 45It is written in the Prophets: ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who has heard the Father and learned from Him comes to Me—… John 6: 43-45
V. 30b He also justified - We are justified by faith, not faith in the sense of merely believing something or wishing or working ourselves up, but by the object of that faith. It is not something that comes from us, it is a gift from God that we exercise upon the life and work of Another. It is not hope in our own thoughts or actions. It rest solely in Christ. He is the substance of our faith.
…7in order that in the coming ages He might display the surpassing riches of His grace, demonstrated by His kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved through faith, and this not from yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9not by works, so that no one can boast.… Ephesians 2: 7-9
Spurgeon - "Notice that personal pronoun “he” — how it comes at the beginning, and goes on to the end. “Salvation is of the Lord.” This is so often forgotten that, trite as it may appear, we cannot repeat it too often: “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate Whom he did predestinate, them he also called, and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.” You might suppose, from the talk of some men, that, salvation is all of the man himself; — that is free agency pushed into a falsehood, a plain truth puffed into a lie. There is such a thing as free agency, and we should make a great mistake if we forgot it; but there is also such a thing as free grace, and we shall make a still greater mistake if we limit that to the agency of man; it is God who works our salvation from the beginning to the end." - PA Spurgeon
…13But the tax collector stood at a distance, unwilling even to lift up his eyes to heaven. Instead, he beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner!’ 14I tell you, this man, rather than the Pharisee, went home justified. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Luke 18: 13-14
…15We who are Jews by birth and not Gentile “sinners” 16 know that a man is not justified by works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ. So we, too, have believed in Christ Jesus, that we may be justified by faith in Christ and not by works of the law, because by works of the law no one will be justified. Galatians 2:15-16
He also glorified - One day we will not be as we now are. We will no longer live is this body of sin, but will have a glorified new form, incorruptible. This is what we and all Creation wait in eager expectation for.
…3For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. 4When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with Him in glory. 5Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.… Colossians 3: 3-5
18I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us. 19The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God. 20For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope… Romans 8: 18-20
