Secure: God Will Save AND Protect Us
Romans 8:30-39

The last couple of weeks we’ve been looking at a very important passage dealing with God’s provision for the believer in time of suffering. I have found, in my reading at least, that very few commentators or scholars really hone in on the contextual unity we have here in the last part of Romans, chapter 8. It flows out of Romans 8:17. Just to remind you, it’s at that verse that Paul introduces the topic of suffering and adversity in the believer’s life and that this suffering is not random but that there is a purpose to it. That purpose is to train us. It’s to discipline us, not in a negative sense. It’s to teach us discipline. It’s to remove distractions, to prune things from our life that distract us from pursuing spiritual growth and spiritual maturity. The purpose for the suffering ultimately is to help us in our spiritual growth to conform our character to the image of Christ which is brought into the picture in Romans 8:29. That’s the focal point, the destiny that we have to be mature believers, to be Christ-like in our character.

Suffering is emphasized in verse 18 and that’s where we start this discussion where Paul begins to talk about suffering and that goes all the way down to Romans 8:28 where, as I pointed out, we read, “And we know that all things work together for good.” The “all things” there relates to the suffering, the adversity, the difficulty, the challenges that we all face in life. In focusing attention on that, he emphasizes that all creation is under the judgment of sin and he uses the anthropomorphism of groaning. The creation, which is just a material universe without feelings and emotion and doesn’t have the ability to articulate, is personified and it’s said to be groaning because it is under the bondage of corruption, expressed in verses 21 and 22.

In the context adult sons is different from the term children of God as it is used in verse 16. Children of God refers to every believer as a child of God but only some believers achieve son-ship in the sense of being adult, mature believers and this is expressed in the term sons of God at the end of verse 19. So that’s our focal point as believers. We’re called to focus on the goal that we are to grow up to be mature believers. In verses 28 and 29, Paul is first reminding us that everybody suffers, whether Christian or not because we live in a fallen world, but specifically as Christians we’re living in the devil’s world. It’s not only a world of corruption. It’s under the authority of Satan as the prince and the power of the air and, as such, we go through additional suffering.

Now, not everybody wants to think of it as suffering. Some people think what they’re going through isn’t really suffering. They think of suffering only in terms of things uncomfortable or things on a scale of 1 to 1. They want to limit suffering to the most extreme forms of 9 and 10. Suffering covers the whole realm of opposition that we face, difficulty that we face in life, whether it’s at a level 1 or a level 10. Every time something doesn’t go quite the way we want it to and usually those are the minor things and we get irritated and we get grumpy and we get frustrated, we just fail the test. Most of us fail the test. Most of us fail tests because we’re dealing with adversity at the level 0.001 level, not the level 10 stuff. It’s that really minor stuff that irritates and aggravates us and tends to get us out of fellowship very quickly so we have to learn to just relax as we go through life and to trust God and not let either the minor things or the major things knock us off course.

It’s in that context that the Apostle Paul, comforting suffering believers, expressing the fact that God has this unbroken chain of events in terms of His oversight of our salvation and our spiritual life that gives us comfort and security in the midst of an ever-changing chaotic world. So we have security. Not just security in the sense of the doctrine of eternal security, we have that, but we have security in the fact that God will save us eternally and eventually in terms of phase three but He will protect us even when we are going completely wrong, living in the devil’s world, living in a corrupt environment. So Romans 8:28 and 29 tell us that God in His Sovereignty overseeing all the events that take place in history, works all of these things together for good so that when we get to the end game which for us is the Judgment Seat of Christ and then the return of Christ at the end of the Tribulation to establish His kingdom and we rule and reign with Him; when we get there, we’re going to see that everything we went through in life worked together, was orchestrated by God, to produce spiritual maturity in our life.

The issue for us is are we going to stay the course? Are we going to respond to the challenge? Or are we going to give up? So, “All things work together for good to those who love God…” I pointed out that refers to every believer but especially those who are pursuing spiritual growth because “those who love God” demonstrate it by obedience to Him. Those who love God are called according to His purpose and that purpose is also expressed as being conformed to the image of His Son. Then we get to the chain, “Those whom He foreknew, He also predestined [set a destiny for them out there]…”

We’ll go to verses 31 through 39 for a conclusion to this section. It’s also a conclusion to everything Paul has said up to this point in Romans so the next verses we’re getting into are going to be a good opportunity to review some of the key ideas we’ve seen in Romans so far. First, He has a destiny for us. It’s like a coach; we’ve got a team. The goal of the team is to be Super Bowl champions and He’s going to always treat every player on the team as if they are going to be the greatest player in their position to ever play the game. Are there going to be some who are going to fail? Yes. Are there going to be some who will be injured and they’re not going to be able to make it very far? Definitely. That’s what’s going to happen in every body of believers but you don’t focus on building a great team by focusing on the ones who haven’t decided if they’re going to play to their very best ability. You develop a wonderful team by focusing on the ones who really want to exploit all of their abilities and all of their capabilities and develop them. Hopefully, that will develop them and that will encourage and inspire and motivate the ones who haven’t quite decided how much they’re going to devote to the end game.

The end game, using an analogy of football, is to be a championship team. That championship team is analogous to believers who reach spiritual maturity and are manifesting the character of Christ in their lives. That’s the destiny God has set before us. It’s not a destiny related to salvation, which would be comparable to getting on the team. He’s talking about those who are already on the team and how they are to focus on suffering and dealing with suffering in terms of getting to that championship Super Bowl game. That’s the focus here. It’s on sanctification. We’re not dealing with justification. The predestination here has to do with God’s destiny for believers, not God’s destiny for unbelievers. We’re not talking about salvation. In verse 30 he develops a chain. We’ve talked about each one of these as we’ve gone through here.

“And those whom He predestined, He also called, and those whom He called, He also justified, and those whom He justified, He also glorified.” So there’s a chain that is set up here. This is one of the really great verses on eternal security. In fact, John Wesley, who was a reformer within the Anglican Church in the mid-1700s, even inserted something into a translation. Later his followers were called Methodists but initially they were called Wesleyans. He wasn’t the founder of the movement; it was George Whitfield who was the founder. They disagreed over the doctrines of Calvinism. Whitfield was much more of a Calvinist, a predestinarian, than was John Wesley and his brother, Charles. Whitfield left to go to America on his first evangelistic speaking tour and truly he and Jonathan Edwards, a pastor in Northfield, Massachusetts, really lit a fire under people. That became what is known as the First Great Awakening. While Whitfield was out of England, Wesley used his influence to turn his followers against Calvinism, even though he had made a pact with Whitfield that they weren’t going to make an issue out of the doctrines of Calvinism. Wesley promised he would not use it to split their reform movement in the Anglican Church. So when Whitfield came back, he discovered this movement they had begun was anti-Calvinist. To his credit and grace orientation, he did not make an issue of it and relinquished any influential leadership within the group to John Wesley. Wesley, when he was translating this verse, when he got to the end of verse 30 where it says, “those whom He justified, these He also glorified,” he inserted, “if they persevere to the end.” He didn’t believe in eternal security. That was the real issue.

Today in a lot of the debates between Calvinists and those who are not Calvinists in America, the issue is usually around the extent of the atonement, whether Christ died only for the elect or if He died for all mankind. That seems to be the big issue that usually is raised in America, among the evangelicals. I remember in the fall of my second year at Dallas Seminary, Francis Schaeffer had written a book, “How Shall We Then Live?” and they had produced this huge multi-media film and lecture series and there were some cities like Houston and a few other cities who just got the film series and there were others, like Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York, where Francis Schaeffer came and gave additional lectures. I remember going to Moody Auditorium at SMU with a lot of other seminary students, including Tommy Ice, and we sat down on about the fourth row from the front. The entire Schaeffer clan was sitting down in front of us. Charlie Clough and a contingent from Lubbock Bible Church were sitting behind us.

Dallas Seminary at the time was just seething with debate over Calvinism. Every time you sat down you got into a hot debate with somebody over election, predestination, the extent of the atonement or something. A very well known Greek professor by the name of S. Lewis Johnson had at one time been quite the student of Lewis Chafer but when he went off to England to get his doctorate he came back a five-point Calvinist. Because he was a true southern gentleman from South Carolina, he realized that, though he didn’t technically violate the doctrinal statement, he had the integrity to see that it violated the spirit of the doctrinal statement so he resigned his position. Now we have faculty members at Dallas who violate the doctrinal statement verbatim and in spirit and try to figure out some way to use post-modern logic to justify their disagreement so they don’t have to resign because they lack integrity. But Lewis Johnson was old school.

Dallas was just a hotbed of activity. It was great for me as a first and second year seminary student. I had not been well educated in a lot of these issues about the history and intricacies of the argument, so I just loved it. All this hot discussion! Anyway, at the Schaeffer conference there were a lot of questions and someone stood up and asked, “Dr. Schaeffer, do you believe in limited or unlimited atonement?” I just loved his answer. He said, “I was warned that if I came to Dallas, I would be asked that question. Let me answer it this way. God is sovereign enough to accomplish exactly what He wants to accomplish the way He wants to accomplish it.” That was it. That was a great way to just dodge the whole question and just leave it up to God.

One of the key issues in the U.S. is that it’s always debated over the issue of election and unlimited atonement. But if you go outside the U.S., the issue is eternal security. You go to Russia, you go to Ukraine, and you go to Belarus. All of us who go over there find that the key issue is eternal security. It doesn’t matter what else you believe. It doesn’t matter how much you emphasize free will and how much you de-emphasize any kind of election or irresistible grace, if you believe in eternal security, the Russian Baptists brand you as a hyper-Calvinist because for them that’s the issue. It’s eternal security.

Even in this country there’s a lot of concern over whether or not a person can be eternally saved if they commit certain sins. In fact, I heard a debate on Hugh Hewitt’s talk show the other day. They were talking about something related to this and morality and whether God could really save someone who committed extreme sins like adultery. I’m in the car and I try to call in but I always get a busy signal. He’s talking about murder is just one of those sins someone can’t be forgiven of. He’s Jewish. I want to call in and say, “What about David?” They always ignore David and his conspiracy to kill the husband of Bathsheba, Uriah the Hittite, and that David is just as guilty of murder as anyone. But God forgave him of murder and adultery and all these other sins but they tend to conveniently forget that.

But we see here is a great verse on eternal security. ((CHART)) There’s this great chain of terms here that apply to the same, exact group of people and there’s no way you can exegetically break this connection. It’s like one time when I asked Al Ross a question. He was head of the Hebrew department when I was at Dallas Seminary. He had written a doctoral dissertation at Dallas on the Table of Nations and had gone on and gotten a second doctorate at Cambridge with an emphasis on Rabbinic theology. By the time he was forty he’d forgotten more about Hebrew than most students ever learned. I asked him about gaps in the genealogies in Genesis 5 and Genesis 10. He said, “With the numbers there you can’t break them. It’s impossible exegetically to break them. There can’t be any gaps in those genealogies.” You see, the problem we have is with archeology. It seems to put the age of civilizations much older than those numbers would allow. But you can’t break the numbers.

Well you can’t break this chain either. It may be uncomfortable for those people who don’t want to believe in eternal security but you can’t break it. You have a set group of people who start and at the end there’s a set group of people who are glorified. The last sentence in verse 30 is “and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” No one slips through the cracks. No one is dropped out of His hand. Jesus holds us in His hand. The Father holds us in His hand. He doesn’t lose one. No one slips in either. Those who are glorified are the same ones, no more and no less, than those who are justified.

If you just back it up, those who are justified are those who are called. Those whom He called, these He also justified. This doesn’t have to do with irresistible grace of God, the Holy Spirit as defined by Calvinism, but by the fact that God in His foreknowledge, that is, knowing who would respond to the gospel ahead of time, gives them a clear understanding of the gospel. But He gives others a clear understanding but this is an internal calling that is related to the Word of God, which is the external call as we pointed out in John 6, so this is related to those who are foreknown.

That’s the key thing. It starts with the foreknowledge of God as we see in the chain. “Those who He called, these He also justified” tell you it’s the same group of people. It’s the same thing in predestination. Those He predestined, He also called.” It’s the same at the very beginning. Those He foreknew, He also called.” Now going back by way of review, what did we say foreknowledge was? Foreknowledge is not election. It’s not a pre-determination or not a synonym for foreordination. It is a term meaning to know something ahead of time. That’s how it’s used in extra-Biblical literature, literature outside the Bible. That’s how it’s used in a number of places in the Bible and there are four places, as I pointed out, that there’s a debate because they’re related to salvation and you can’t just generate out of thin air a unique meaning for those few instances because God is the subject. That violates all the rules of lexicography.

Foreknowledge is the foundation and the cause for election as Peter says in 1 Peter 1:2, so that’s very clear that foreknowledge means that God in His omniscience takes into account those who would believe. He doesn’t elect, predestine, or choose, whatever you want to call it on the basis because someone believed. But God, out of His own will and His own desire, predestined, or chooses a destiny for that group that will respond by faith because He has known who they will be from eternity past. He doesn’t cause their salvation or cause their faith, as Calvinists say, but His foreknowledge takes that into account.

One of the things which we’ll discover when we get more into the doctrine of election, which will come in chapter 9, that election for church age believers is corporate, not individual. God is not electing for individual salvation. It has to do with the fact God has elected those that are in Christ and He has predestined those who are in Christ to a destiny. So this gives us a chain grounded upon God’s foreknowledge. It’s the same group, which means that no matter what you’re going through, no matter how chaotic life may be, no matter what suffering in our context you may face, you’re not going to lose your salvation. You’re not going to miss out on being glorified. God is going to take those who are justified and that same group will be glorified. God will not lose any. That’s the point here.

Remember that this passage here is really a passage of comfort to believers who are facing suffering and adversity and hostility. Then He is going to focus our attention on all that God has provided for us in the immediate context. It is a reminder that God is in control even in the midst of suffering. In the broader context of chapters one through eight, He is reminding us that God is the one who has not only condemned us under spiritual death but He justifies us and that justification is based upon His love and that love is not going to lose us. So the next nine verses are not only a conclusion to the spiritual life discussion of Romans 6, 7, and 8, but they’re a conclusion to the whole first eight chapters of the book.

Paul does this in a rhetorical manner where he raises seven rhetorical questions, and each one sort of advances the understanding. A rhetorical question is a question that is raised by a speaker or a writer and he doesn’t expect an answer to it. In fact, when he raises the question he assumes that the answer will be obvious and then he goes on to base the next point upon that answer to the first question. So Paul sort of stacks these on top of one another but in between a couple of them he does give the answer because it’s not quite as obvious as some others. As he does this, the idea is to bring us to the point of the conclusion in verses 38 and 39 that nothing can separate us from the love of God.

What’s significant about that is that he has in his audience, as we’ve seen in the church in Rome, a number of Jewish background believers who have become believers in Christ. As a result of that, they might ask the question, “Well if we can’t be separated from the love of God, what happened to Israel? It seems like God has pretty much separated them from His love right now. Is there a future for God’s people, Israel?” And that’s going to be the focus of the next three chapters, Romans 9, 10, and 11. So Romans one through eight have focused on justification and sanctification. Then there’s a shift that occurs in Romans 9-11 to show how God’s righteousness is also consistent with His plan for Israel and consistent with everything that is taking place with Israel at that time in terms of their Divine discipline.

Then he asks the first question, “What then shall we say to these things?” He doesn’t give an answer to that. He just states the question, “What then shall we say to these things?” And then he answers it with his second question, “If God is for us, who is against us?” Then the answer is self-evident. If God is for us, nobody can really be against us. So if God is on our side, God plus one is a majority, so it really doesn’t matter who is against us because they can’t defeat God. So that’s the second question he asks in verse 31.

Then he asks the third question in verse 32 and in that question, he gives an answer. “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” We understand that God gave us everything in Christ. Then he asks a fourth question in verse 33, “Who will bring a charge against God’s elect?” This is when he gives the first answer, “God is the one who justifies…” So how can anyone bring a charge against the elect, bring condemnation against a believer if God has already justified him? So that directly relates to the eternal security issue. If you are a believer, then you are in Christ, and by virtue of that, you are elect. And if you are in Christ, then no charge can be brought against you. You’re not going to lose your salvation. You have received the righteousness of Christ and been declared just because of that. So there is no sin you can commit that is too great for the grace of God. There’s no sin that you and I can commit that wasn’t foreknown by the omniscience of God in eternity past and that wasn’t paid for on the cross.

People who think, “Oh I can do something that will cause God to take away my salvation,” fail to understand that the Scripture teaches that Christ paid for all sin and in God’s omniscience He didn’t forget one. He didn’t forget that you were special. Of all the billions of people on the planet, you were the one that committed a sin that God didn’t take into account on the cross so you’re going to lose your salvation? I’m being a little facetious but thinking you can lose your salvation is really just an act of arrogance, thinking that you’re the one who can do something God forgot about and is too great for the grace of God. If you understand what sin is, then it’s amazing that any of us get saved because sin is anything that violates the character of God. Anything that violates the character of God, whether it’s a little white lie or whether it’s genocide, it doesn’t matter. One act of violation of God’s character is enough to cause divine condemnation. It doesn’t matter if it’s large or small.

In fact the original sin was nothing more than eating a piece of fruit. It’s not very dangerous; it’s not something that causes a lot of problems for people; it’s not horrible. But its consequences were egregious because it violated the character of God. So the fourth question is “Who can bring a charge against God’s elect?” The fifth question in verse 34 is “Who is he that condemns?” The condemnation is then contrasted with Christ’s death on the cross and what he did in payment for it in his elevation to heaven. Verse 35 brings us the sixth question, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” And then this is further enhanced by the seventh question, “Will tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?”

I think it’s interesting that Paul doesn’t list sins there. He lists horrible things that happen because when we go through tribulation and distress, we say, “What happened to God’s love? Why is God letting this happen to me?” One of the things I struggle with in having discussions with some of my Jewish friends is this sticking point of the holocaust. This last week was Yom HaShoah, which is Holocaust Remembrance Day and I was in Half Price Books over the weekend. I took some books in to get the pittance that they give you when you turn your books in but it’s better than nothing. Usually you spend it on something else. I found a small copy of Elie Wiesel’s book, “Night,” which was his first book. Elie Wiesel was a young survivor of Auschwitz. He wrote his reflections. He was raised as an Orthodox observant Jew on the path to being a rabbi and he came out of Auschwitz an atheist, doubting the existence of God. As did many Jews coming out of the Holocaust, wondering how could God let this happen? Questioning the goodness of God. This is the major issue in the minds of many Jews. How could God choose them and then let them go through something like that?

It’s interesting that this last week in relation to that, the Jerusalem Post or another Jewish news item suggested a reason I thought was interesting because if a Christian had said it, they would get blasted by the press. This Jewish writer suggested that maybe it was because Jews just wouldn’t get up and leave Europe and go to Israel, that they were so comfortable being ensconced in the Gentile communities of the western world that they were in danger of losing their identity and God had to do something extreme to wake them up to get them to go back to Israel. Like I said there have been one or two Christian pastors who have made that statement and they have been castigated by our liberal press as being so lacking in compassion and forgiveness but this was an interesting article.

I think this is an accurate question that many Jews ask how a loving God can let horrible things happen. So this is a question that happens with people when they go through extended suffering. We get so self-absorbed and so focused on the pain that we ask why isn’t God helping us. So we’ll start with this first question. “What then shall we say to these things?” What Paul is doing assuming that this is true; everything he’s just said in Romans 8:28, 29, and 30, so what’s the point?  Why is this important? What should our response be since these things are true?

So he brings that to the forefront and this is a question we should each ask ourselves. In light of our belief that Romans 8:17-30 is true, what difference does that make in how we handle and face challenges, adversities, and difficulties in life? Then he asked the second question, “If God is for us, who is against us?” This points us to the omnipotence of God and it is a way of stating what is called an a fortiori argument. This is a Latin term for “from the stronger” and he’s going to state it here in one way and then he uses another form of the a fortiori argument in verse 32. The a fortiori argument is an argument that says if something is true, something that is larger or greater, then something within that scope that’s lesser would also be true.

For example, I could say, “It rained all over Houston last night.” I was in San Antonio last night and it was dry there but I looked at the radar loops this morning and saw that a lot of rain came through Houston so it’s likely to say it rained all over Houston last night. It rained over all of Houston is the universal statement. You might say, “Did it rain in the Heights?” Well, if it rained all over Houston, that’s the greater; then it would rain in the Heights, which is the lesser. You might say if it rained all over Houston last night, did it rain in Spring Branch? Yes, if it rained all over Houston, which is the greater, then it would be true by force of logic that it rained in Spring Branch. If it rained all over Houston last night, did it rain in Tanglewood? Yes, it rained all over Houston last night, which is the greater, so it rained in Tanglewood, which is the lesser.

So if God is for us, and God is the most powerful force in the universe, God and God alone is omnipotent, then if God is on our side, then nothing can be against us. There’s nothing in the universe that can stand up to the omnipotence of God. This is an argument, from the stronger to the lesser. If God is for us (He’s on our side); if we are facing suffering, no matter how great it may seem; if we’re facing suffering God is for us. And whatever the source of the suffering, just the general corruption of the universe or some sort of Satanic-inspired attack, God is still greater than that because He’s greater than anything that exists inside the universe.

The a fortiori argument is then taken in a little more detail when we get into verse 32 which states, “He [God] who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?” This is an extremely significant verse and one that’s very much worthy of your attention to memorize for difficult times. Paul starts off with the clear statement that God did not spare His own Son and with His Son He gave us everything and the argument here is that if God gave us everything with His Son, then whatever else we might need to handle the details of life, God has given us those lesser things as well. It’s a movement from the greater to the lesser.

I want to look at some of the terms here because it helps us review some of the doctrines we’ve studied in Romans. In the first statement he said, “He who did not spare His own Son…” This is the verb pheidomai, which simply means to spare something or to withhold something of value from someone. It’s a statement that God did not withhold anything when he gave His Son. John 3:16, “God loved the world in this way or in such a manner that He gave His unique, one of a kind, Son that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” So God gave the most. He gave the greatest degree in giving His son. He did not hold back.

Now there’s an interesting connection here because this is a word that’s not used very much. I think it’s only used a couple of times in the New Testament but it’s used in the Septuagint in the Old Testament in Genesis 22:12. Here we have the story of Isaac. Rabbinical studies focus on Isaac and they teach that Isaac wasn’t a small boy. That’s often what we see depicted in some Christian books. I think, unfortunately, that Christians writers who are writing books for children, in order to get them to relate to Bible stories like David and Isaac, they want to portray them as little boys but in both cases, these were young men, at least late adolescent, if not young men in their twenties. I think Isaac had probably reached physical maturity, anywhere from 18 to as old as 20-25 years of age.

We have this word in Romans 8:32 pheidomai used here in Genesis. God is speaking to Abraham after this whole event takes place when an angel stayed the hand of Abraham and God said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God since you have not withheld [spared] your son, your only son, from Me.” To understand this we have to realize what a prize Isaac was to Abraham. Abraham loved Isaac more than anything because Abraham and Sarah had not been able to have children. God had promised and promised and promised that Abraham would have a son with Sarah, not Ishmael from Hagar. So Abraham loved Isaac and as the years went by and Isaac grows up, God is testing Abraham again and again as he grows to maturity, understanding that Isaac is the child of promise.

Now God gives the ultimate test for Abraham. It’s not a test to see if Abraham is willing to kill Isaac. That’s how people present it so much by asking if Abraham is willing to commit murder for God. That’s a human viewpoint distortion. We have to look at through the lens of Scripture. Now the Old Testament doesn’t give us some of this information but we do get it later on in the New Testament in Hebrews. In Hebrews 11:17 we’re told that “By faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son, [same as is used of Jesus Christ] it was he to whom it was said, “In Isaac your descendants shall be called. He considered that God is able to raise people even from the dead. Abraham is not thinking, “I’m going to murder my son.” No, Abraham finally understood over the course of His life that God made a promise and God is going to secure that promise. God does not go back on His word. God was able to re-invigorate Abraham’s and Sarah’s sexual and reproductive capabilities so that ten or twenty years beyond their ability to have children, this was regenerated. Sarah became pregnant and gave birth to Isaac. If God can do that, Abraham has finally learned that even if Isaac dies and the seed line has not progressed, God will fulfill His promise and He will bring Isaac back from the dead. So Abraham understands that the issue isn’t, was he willing to murder Isaac or not. The issue is whether he will trust God to raise Isaac from the dead or not. That’s the perspective.

So Abraham fulfills the test. If we look at Genesis 22:2, we read, “Now it came about after these things that God tested Abraham and said to him, “Abraham!” and he said, “Here I am.” He said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac…” This is a foreshadowing of God giving His only Son, Jesus Christ. Notice that God doesn’t even take into consideration Ishmael because Ishmael was sort of an accident by way of Hagar but that’s not Abraham’s son that is his heir. Verse 2 continues, “Go to the land of Moriah, and offer him there as a burnt offering.” The land of Moriah is believed by the Jews to be where Solomon built the First Temple. It was there on the foundation stone in Jewish tradition, which is the stone that the Dome of the Rock is built on; that rock that’s in there that none of us have been able to go see for about fifteen years. They won’t let Christians in but that rock that’s there is thought by Jewish tradition to be the place where Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac. That is on Moriah.

A burnt offering is a very specific term. This is described in Leviticus 1. You have to slaughter the sacrifice, then you dismember the sacrifice, put the carcass on the altar and then build up the firewood around the carcass and light the fire until everything is completely consumed by the fire and the smoke and the offering all ascends to heaven which is why it’s called the Hebrew word olah, from the verb alah meaning to go up. So Abraham isn’t just told to sacrifice him but sacrifice him as a burnt offering. This is a pretty extreme thing for a parent to do to a son. So Abraham, we’re told, “rose up early in the morning and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son; and he split wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. Then on the third day [they’re coming from the south] Abraham raised his eyes and saw the place form a distance.”

Now there’s another interesting thing here. A place along what is known as the Way of the Patriarchs has been discovered. There’s a trail that runs from the north through the south by Jerusalem and to the south in Israel: from the hill country in the north through Shem and down past Jerusalem, down past Bethlehem, down to Hebron. Hebron is where Abraham was living. This is approximately a day’s journey from the temple mount. This one location I went to last year that at this location, it’s the first time you can see the Temple Mount if you’re walking from the south. There is a mikveh there, which is a ceremonial washing place that they’ve discovered from the second temple period because as pilgrims would make their way to Jerusalem it was at this place where they first could see the Temple Mount. They would get up in the morning and have a ceremonial washing to make sure they were cleansed before they went to the Temple. They would arrive at the Temple Mount by that afternoon.

It is believed that location is close by the location where Abraham arrived and saw the hill of Moriah for the first time. “So Abraham said to his young men, ‘Stay here with the donkey, and I and the lad will go over there, and we will worship and return to you. So Abraham took the wood of the burnt offering and laid it on Isaac his son’”—Isaac had to be a strong young man to carry all the wood because it takes a lot of wood to burn up a human carcass. So he has to carry the wood and he took in his hand the fire [in a brass or bronze censor] and the knife. And the two of them went together. Isaac spoke to Abraham his father and said, “My father”. And he said, “Here I am, my son.” And he said “Behold the fire and wood but where is the lamb for the burnt offering?”

Here’s the clue to Abraham’s mental attitude. “Abraham, said, ‘God will provide for Himself the lamb for the burnt offering, my son’.” Now that clues us in doctrinally what this is depicting. This is depicting a substitutionary sacrifice and that’s the whole point of this episode that God is the one who supplies the substitutionary sacrifice. So Abraham before he ever gets there says that God is going to provide a lamb. He knows that because of who God is and His character that he’s not going to have to actually kill Isaac, and if he does God’s going to bring him back to life and God will provide the perfect sacrifice. So they go on together and in verse 9 we read, “Then they came to the place of which God had told him, and Abraham built the altar there and arranged the wood and bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar…”

If Isaac is over the age of 16, Isaac recognizes what’s going on and he’s doing this voluntarily. In Rabbinical theology they refer to this as the akedah, the binding of Isaac. They emphasize the fact that Isaac had to do this willingly. Isaac is showing just as much faith as Abraham is. He has figured this out. He’s not dumb and he could have easily fought his father and run off. But he has to submit to his father and to being tied and bound and being put on the altar. Then verse 10, “Abraham stretched out his hand and took the knife to slay his son.” At this point the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven. Most artists depict this with an angel, not realizing that the angel of the Lord is God, Himself. God stayed his hand and said, “Do not stretch out your hand against the lad, and do nothing to him, for now I know that you fear God, and you have not withheld your son, your only son from Me.” 

That’s the point. That’s the emphasis of this verb in Romans 8:32 that nothing is withheld by God. He has given everything already for our salvation and so if He has not withheld anything, to the extent of giving His Son to die on the cross for us all, He can give everything else we need. The phrase “for us all” is the Greek phrase huper, the preposition plus the genitive emphasizing substitution. That’s the emphasis in this sacrifice in Genesis 22, substitutionary death. God provides a substitute for Isaac, just as God provided a substitute for all of us. There are two prepositions in Greek that emphasize substitution. The first is the preposition anti and we see it in some other contexts here: Matthew 2:22 when Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in place of his father Herod. You see it’s one thing in place of another. That’s the idea of anti. Matthew 17:27, Jesus is talking about the tax to Caesar, “However so that we do not offend them, go to the sea and throw in a hook, and take the first fish that comes up and when you open its mouth, you will find a shekel. Take that and give it to them for you and Me.” It’s “in place of”, that’s the idea of the preposition. In Luke 11:11 Jesus says, “Now suppose one of you fathers is asked by his son for a fish; he will not give him a snake instead of a fish, will he?”—the same idea where anti is replacement or substitution. So this is the idea here. You can’t avoid it.

The atonement is an example; the atonement isn’t some sort of general satisfaction of God of justice to the universe, which is called the governmental theory. It’s a substitutionary atonement. Now for examples of huper we see in passages like Matthew 20:28, “Just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for [instead of, or in place of the] many.” It is substitutionary. Luke 22:19, Jesus said at the Last Supper, “This is my body which is given for [instead of or as a substitute for] you.” In John 13:37, Peter uses it. It’s not a salvation passage. Peter says, “Lord, why can I not follow You right now? I will lay down my life for you.” Peter understands its substitution. So this is the idea. Romans 5:6 and 7, “Christ died for [substitution] the ungodly.”

So in Romans, chapter 9 when we look at what Paul is saying there in reference to God’s gift of Jesus, “How did God who did not spare His own Son, but delivered us up for us all [substitutionary idea], how shall He not with Him give us all things?” This is a reminder we already have in Jesus everything necessary to face and handle any adversity, any suffering that may come along.

Next time we’ll come back and look at the remainder of these questions as to who could separate us from the love of Christ. Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword? We’ll come back and probably wrap up this chapter next time.

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