(33) Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!  How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out!

(36) For of Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to whom be glory forever. Amen

All we have studied in Romans since I began this blog can best be summed up by citing William Macdonald who explains the concluding doxology (praise to God) as looking back over the entire Epistle and the divine wonders that have been unfolded.  Paul has expounded the marvelous plan of salvation by which a just God can save ungodly sinners and still be just in doing so.  He has shown how Christ’s work brought more glory to God and more blessing to men than Adam lost through his sin.  He has explained how grace produces holy living in a way that law could never do.  He has traced the unbreakable chain of God’s purpose from foreknowledge to eventual glorification.  He has set forth the doctrine of sovereign election and the companion doctrine of human responsibility.  And he has traced the justice and harmony of God’s dispensational dealing with Israel and the nations.  Now nothing could be more appropriate than to burst forth in a hymn of praise and worship.

The Apostle Paul knew the mysteries of God as well as any man but Paul confesses to be at a loss  – the more we know, the more we understand that we do not know.  So Paul is overwhelmed and worships God as he contemplates the divine plan.  I love C.S. Lewis’s (surprised by joy) thoughts on this subject.   Amiable agnostics will talk cheerfully about ‘man’s search for God’.  To me as I then  was, they might as well have talked about the man’s search for a cat.  Our views of God are all skewed by our backgrounds, our biases.  God exists independently of our views of Him and it is impossible to know God’s mind except as God reveals it to us.

God is the creator of all things.  He means to be known and loved and has revealed himself through his creation and has spoken to us through the Bible.  All of redemption history, all of matter comes from God.  God is our source.  Jesus Christ, true God and true man, is our mediator and no one comes to God except through Him.  All creation is under the sovereignity of God and works back to Him.  AMEN

(13) For I speak to you Gentiles; inasmuch as i am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry, (14) if by any means I may provoke to jealousy those who are my flesh and save some of them.   (15) For if their being cast away is the reconciling of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead?  (29) For the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable. (30) For as you were once disobedient to God, yet have now obtained mercy through their disobedience, (31) even so these also have now been disobedient, that through the mercy shown you they also may obtain mercy.  (32) For God has committed them all to disobedience, that He might have mercy on all.

Luke records in several places in the Acts of the Apostles that Paul has been chosen to minister to the Gentiles.  After Paul has been struck blind on the road to Damascus, Jesus appeared in a vision to Ananias, a disciple at Damascus, and told him to go and lay his hands on Paul

(Acts 9:15) But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is a chosen vessel of Mine to bear my name before Gentiles, kings and the children of Israel.”

In today’s reading, The Apostle Paul is addressing the Gentiles in Rome.  Paul magnifies his appointed position as apostle to the Gentiles stating that this was his role in God’s plan.  Paul further writes that the acceptance of the gospel by the Gentiles would not only bring them salvation but Paul’s ministry to them might provoke such envy among the Jews that they would imitate or even better, appropriate, the gospel and be saved.  This regeneration of Israel is “life from the dead”.  Paul further states that even though Israel has rejected Jesus Christ as the fulfillment of the Scriptures, God has not rejected Israel.  (verse 29)

Paul’s use of you in verse 30 is referring to Gentiles who might doubt that God has included Israel in a glorious future.  The Gentiles are warned that they have also been disobedient and they are not to be over inflated with pride in their present position of reconciliation to God through free grace, justified by faith.  God has not given up on His chosen people and has a plan for their salvation.  All have been disobedient and this serves to magnify God’s mercy.

I tell the truth in Christ, i am not lying, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, (2) that I have great sorrow and continual grief in my heart. (3)  For I could wish that I myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my countrymen according to the flesh, (4) who are Israelites, to whom pertain the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the service of God, and the promises; (5) of whom are the fathers and from whom, according to the flesh, Christ came, who is over all, the eternally blessed God.   Amen.

The Apostle Paul expresses his deep affection for his people, Israel.  He appeals to Christ and to his own conscience, enlightened by the Holy Spirit, as witness to his sincerity.  He would submit to be treated as “accursed” if he could rescue his nation from the destruction about to come on them for their unbelief.  Paul lists the advantage Israel has been given as being the chosen, the covenantel people of God.  Despite centuries of divine preparation for the coming of the Messiah, Israel has rejected the gospel.

Paul has been faithful in going first to the Jew but has been rebuffed  by disbelief and has declared himself as apostle to the Gentile.  In Romans, chapter 9, the Apostle Paul makes liberal use of Old Testament quotations both to emphasize the faithfulness of God  and the failure of Jewish unbelief.

(35)WHO SHALL SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF CHRIST? SHALLTRIBULATION, OR DISTRESS, OR PERSECUTION, OR FAMINE, OR NAKEDNESS, OR PERIL, OR SWORD?  (37)YET IN ALL THESE THINGS WE ARE MORE THAN CONQUERORS THROUGH HIM WHO LOVED US.  (38) FOR I AM PERSUADED THAT NEITHER DEATH NOR LIFE, NOR ANGELS NOR PRINCIPALITIES NOR POWERS, NOR THINGS PRESENT NOR THINGS TO COME, (39) NOR HEIGHT NOR DEPTH, NOR ANY OTHER CREATED THING, SHALL BE ABLE TO SEPARATE US FROM THE LOVE OF GOD WHICH IS IN CHRIST JESUS OUR LORD.

We have been studying Romans, Chapter 8, where the Apostle Paul has dealt with sinful man and physical death, spiritual death and eternal death.  In Romans, Chapter 8, Paul addresses the issue of sin and says that sin has been atoned for through the death and resurrection of Christ.  The called die to their old sinful nature and the law and live in the new, which is in Christ and the Spirit, by the free grace of God.

Sunday’s reading is Paul’s ecstatic declaration of the final triumph through Christ and the Spirit.  The Apostle Paul speaks with amazement at the depth and breadth of the love of Christ for man.  Paul says ALL THINGS  are not so great a display of God’s love as the gift of His Son to be the atonement for the sin of man.  With that manifestation of God’s love, how can we think that anything can turn aside or do away with that love?

ROMANS 8:31-32

(31) WHAT THEN SHALL WE SAY TO THESE THINGS?  IF GOD IS FOR US, WHO CAN BE AGAINST US? (32) 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?