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King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

Romans, Chapter 8, verses 29-30

²⁹ was before hand-decreed from God

²⁹For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.

³⁰Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.

Read more:Romans, Chapter 8

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8:29 Whom he foreknew, he also predestinated conformable to the image of his Son - Here the apostle declares who those are whom he foreknew and predestinated to glory; namely, those who are conformable to the image of his Son. This is the mark of those who are foreknown and will be glorified, Ti2 2:19. Php 3:10, Php 3:21.

8:30 Them he - In due time. Called - By his gospel and his Spirit. And whom he called - When obedient to the heavenly calling, Act 26:19.He also justified - Forgave and accepted. And whom he justified - Provided they "continued in his goodness," Rom 11:22,he in the end glorified - St. Paul does not affirm, either here or in any other part of his writings. that precisely the same number of men are called, justified, and glorified. He does not deny that a believer may fall away and be cut off between his special calling and his glorification, Rom 11:22.Neither does he deny that many are called who never are justified.He only affirms that this is the method whereby God leads us step by step toward heaven. He glorified - He speaks as one looking back from the goal, upon the race of faith. Indeed grace, as it is glory begun, is both an earnest and a foretaste of eternal glory.

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NOTES

God loves us always, all the time, without stopping for a second. And nothing "can separate us" from His love. From outside, nothing. No other...

Paul speaks of Christians as the new people of God, as the Church in its spiritual dimension. In the rabbinic tradition of the Second Temple period, there was an idea that the people of God...

Paul speaks of Christians as the new people of God, as the Church in its spiritual dimension. In the rabbinic tradition of the Second Temple period, there was an idea that the people of God had been conceived by God even before the creation of the world. This, of course, does not mean that the fate of every person born a Jew is completely predetermined from beginning to end. After all, there were Jews who betrayed their calling to be God's people. And with the new people of God the situation is even less predictable, because people are not born Christians. But as a spiritual reality, in Paul's thought, the Church was conceived by God from the very beginning, and everyone who enters it finds himself among those whose life was predestined, perhaps even before the creation of the world. He becomes part of God's plan and God's people.

But one still has to enter the Church. Until that has happened, a person is in the world of chance, where nothing is predetermined and nothing is definite, where anything at all can happen to anyone, and where chance appears to a superficial gaze as freedom. But God does not deprive a person of freedom; each person is free to choose whether to live in the world of chance or in the world of God's definiteness.

Meanwhile, the discussion of the new people of God, of the Church, allows the apostle to raise the question of the scale of the process we know by the name of salvation. And that scale turns out to be truly universal. It is no accident that Paul says we are saved "in hope": indeed, the process of our sharing in the life of the Kingdom, of our becoming a living Torah and, accordingly, of the transformation of our nature has only just begun. It will plainly require time, and no small amount of it. Our earthly life can be only the beginning of this path.

And the path itself is inseparable from the process of transforming all creation as a whole. All of it, in one way or another, suffered because of the fall, whose cause was humanity. Therefore this situation can only be corrected as a whole, with both humanity and all the rest of creation in view. But then the path of a person's spiritual formation, his deliverance from the consequences of the fall, must inevitably be synchronized with the corresponding work that touches the rest of creation. And this path will be completed only with Christ's return in glory. For now, all that remains for us is to hope that everyone who has begun it will safely reach the end.

Continuing the theme of the Kingdom and the spiritual wholeness of the human being, Paul draws attention...

Continuing the theme of the Kingdom and the spiritual wholeness of the human being, Paul draws attention to the fact that the Kingdom, although it has already entered the world, has still not been revealed in it completely. Therefore the faithful still do not know the Kingdom in all its fullness, for which for now they can only hope (vv. 24-25). It would seem that they can be at peace regarding the promises given to them by the Savior. According to ideas commonly accepted in those days among learned rabbis, the people of God, like the Messiah Himself, had been conceived by God even before He created the world. Paul transfers this idea to the Church, seeing in it the new people of God, and he regards all who belong to it as those who, by God's mercy, have become part of the plan that guarantees them the attainment of the fullness of the Kingdom (vv. 28-30).

If so, then all whom God has brought into the Church through Jesus Christ can truly be at peace: they have entered the number of those whose path was determined by God already at the beginning of time. But on the other hand, as long as the Kingdom has not been revealed in all its fullness, evil still partly rules in the world. There is not yet wholeness, not only in human nature but in creation as a whole, so that until the complete transfiguration of the world not only the human being but all the rest of creation is doomed to suffer (vv. 18-21). It is no accident that the apostle, when speaking of the body, again turns to the idea of "redemption," or more precisely, ransom: just as a slave can obtain freedom only if he is ransomed into freedom, so the body too must be "ransomed," liberated from the slave-like dependence in which sin holds it (vv. 22-23).

Seen this way, sin becomes not only a person's guilt, but also his misfortune: with all his heart he would like to attain the Kingdom in all its fullness, but he cannot do this until the Savior frees him, just as a slave, however much he desires it, cannot free himself from slavery unless he is ransomed. Those who have entered the Church and become sharers in the Kingdom receive a kind of advance, but they do not receive it for no reason: this gift becomes the consequence of the choice they have made, after which suffering is inevitable insofar as the world lies in evil (vv. 17-18). The advance they have received allows them to share in the Kingdom already when it would appear that they are not yet ready for anything of the kind, since sin still nests in their nature. But now their whole life is already determined by the Savior's will and unfolds according to the laws of the Kingdom, so that resistance to the sin in which the world lies also becomes, for them, resistance to their own sin. That is why the Risen One no longer condemns His faithful for their sins (vv. 31-34). As we can see, a person's relationship with God and with the Messiah sent by Him is determined only by that person's own choice, and if the choice has been made rightly, nothing can tear him away from Christ and from the Kingdom (vv. 35-39). Not even his own sin, which has not yet been fully overcome.

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