35  The Ultimate Security-part 2 The Purpose and Progress of Salvation (8:29-30)

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (8:29–30)

From the time of the early church, Christians have debated the possibility of a believer’s losing his salvation. Many bitter controversies have centered on that single issue.

As already expressed numerous times in this volume, it is my strong contention that, despite the claims of many sincere believers to the contrary, Scripture is unambiguous in teaching that every person who is genuinely saved is eternally saved. We can never be in danger of losing the spiritual life given to us by God through Jesus Christ. Romans 8:2930 is perhaps the clearest and most explicit presentation of that truth in all of God’s Word. In these two verses Paul reveals the unbroken pattern of God’s sovereign redemption, from His eternal foreknowledge of a believer’s salvation to its ultimate completion in glorification.

For the sake of easier understanding, the first heading in this chapter will be taken out of textual order. Because the second half of verse 29 states the purpose of the five aspects of salvation that Paul mentions in these two verses, that phrase will be considered first.

THE PURPOSE OF SALVATION

to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren; (8:29c-d)

Paul introduced the truths of the believer’s security and of God’s purpose of salvation in the previous verse, stating “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose” (v. 28). God’s calling precedes and makes possible a person’s hearing and responding in faith to that divine call. The resulting salvation is made secure by the Lord’s causing everything in a believer’s life to work for his ultimate good. Conversely, it is impossible for any evil to cause a believer any ultimate harm.

In the middle of verse 29, Paul states the twofold purpose of God’s bringing sinners to eternal salvation. The secondary purpose is stated first: to make believers into the likeness of His Son.

TO CONFORM BELIEVERS TO CHRIST

to become conformed to the image of His Son, (8:29c)

From before time began, God chose to save believers from their sins in order that they might become conformed to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ. Consequently, every true believer moves inexorably toward perfection in righteousness, as God makes for Himself a people recreated into the likeness of His own divine Son who will dwell and reign with Him in heaven throughout all eternity. God is redeeming for Himself an eternally holy and Christlike race, to be citizens in His divine kingdom and children in His divine family. For a believer to lose his salvation would be for God to fail in His divine purpose and to condemn to hell those whom He had sovereignly elected to redemption. It would be for God (who cannot lie) to break His covenant with Himself, made before the foundation of the earth. It would mean that the divine seal of the Holy Spirit, imprinted by the King of kings and Lord of lords upon each of His elect children, would be subject to violation and abrogation (see 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph. 1:13; 4:30).

Leading up to the climactic truth that, without exception, God will complete the salvation of every sinner who is converted to Christ, Paul has already established that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1), that God’s Holy Spirit indwells every believer (v. 9), that every believer is already, in this life, an adopted child of God (vv. 14–16), that those children are therefore “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (v. 17), and that “the Spirit also helps our weakness” and “intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (Rom. 8:26–27).

Building on the categorical declaration that no believer will again face God’s condemnation, the apostle progressively establishes that “no condemnation” inevitably eventuates in glorification. There is no failure or partial fulfillment in the sovereign operation of God’s salvation plan. Every believer who is saved will one day be glorified. There is absolutely no allowance for the possibility of a believer’s sinning himself out of God’s grace. He can no more work himself out of salvation than he could have worked himself into it. Nor is there any allowance for an intermediate state of limbo or purgatory, in which some Christians fall short of being fully conformed to the image of God’s Son and must, after death, somehow complete their salvation by their own works or have it completed by others on their behalf.

Although the full truth of it is far too vast and magnificent even for a redeemed human mind to grasp, the New Testament gives us glimpses of what being conformed to the image of Christ will be like.

First of all, we will be like Christ bodily. One day the Lord will “transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:21). As the term itself denotes, glorification (our ultimate conformity to Christ) will be God’s gracious adornment of His children with the very glory of His divine Son.

The writer of Hebrews tells us that “in these last days [God] has spoken to us in His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the world. And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature, and upholds all things by the word of His power. When He had made purification of sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high” (Heb. 1:2–3). John assures us: “Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we shall be. We know that, when He appears, we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him just as He is” (1 John 3:2). In the meanwhile, as long as we remain on earth, “we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). “For if we have become united with Him in the likeness of His death,” Paul has explained earlier in Romans, “certainly we shall be also in the likeness of His resurrection” (6:5). “Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly” (1 Cor. 15:49).

All human beings share a common kind of physical body, but each person has his own distinctive looks and personality. In the same way, the redeemed in heaven will share a common kind of spiritual body but will be individually distinguished from one another. The Bible nowhere teaches the idea that individuality is destroyed at death and that the soul of the deceased becomes absorbed unidentifiably into some cosmic wholeness, or, worse yet, cosmic nothingness. Scripture is clear that, in eternity, both the saved and the damned will retain their individuality. The final resurrection will be of all human beings of all times, a resurrection of life for the righteous and a resurrection of death for the wicked (John 5:29; Acts 24:15).

Second, and more importantly, although not becoming deity, we will be like Christ spiritually. Our incorruptible bodies will be infused with the very holiness of Christ, and we will be both outwardly and inwardly perfect, just as our Lord. The writer of Hebrews gives insight into God’s gracious plan of redeeming those who believe in His Son and of conforming them to His image when he writes:

TO MAKE CHRIST PREEMINENT

that He might be the first-born among many brethren; (8:29d)

God’s supreme purpose for bringing sinners to salvation is to glorify His Son, Jesus Christ, by making Him preeminent in the divine plan of redemption. In the words of this text, it is God’s intent for Christ to be the first-born among many brethren.

In Jewish culture the term first-born always referred to a son, unless a daughter was specifically stated. Because the first-born male child in a Jewish family had a privileged status, the term was often used figuratively to represent preeminence. In the present context that is clearly the meaning.

As it is in almost every instance in the New Testament, the term brethren is a synonym for believers. God’s primary purpose in His plan of redemption was to make His beloved Son the first-born among many brethren in the sense of Christ’s being uniquely preeminent among the children of God. Those who trust in Him become God’s adopted children, and Jesus, the true Son of God, graciously deigns to call them His brothers and sisters in God’s divine family (Matt. 12:50; cf. John 15:15). God’s purpose is to make us like Christ in order to create a great redeemed and glorified humanity over which He will reign and be forever preeminent.

In his letter to Philippi, Paul beautifully portrays God’s purpose of glorifying Christ: “God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those who are in heaven, and on earth, and under the earth” (Phil. 2:9–10). Our ultimate purpose as the redeemed children of God will be to spend eternity worshiping and giving praise to God’s beloved first-born, our preeminent Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. To the Colossians, Paul further explains that Christ not only is presently the “head of the body, the church,” but is also “the beginning, the first-born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything” (Col. 1:18).

God’s original purpose in creation was to make a people in His divine image who would give Him honor and glory by serving and obeying Him in all things. But when Adam and Eve rebelled, alienating themselves from God and bringing damnation upon themselves and all subsequent humanity, God had to provide a way of bringing fallen mankind back to Himself.

Through Christ, He provided that way by placing the sins of all mankind upon His sinless Son, causing “the iniquity of us all to fall on Him” (Isa. 53:6). Those who trust in that gracious sacrifice on their behalf are saved from their sins and given God’s own glory.

As the redeemed of God, conformed to the image of His Son, we will forever glorify Him with the glory He has given us. Like the twenty-four elders who fell down before Christ on His throne, we will cast our crowns of righteousness (2 Tim. 4:8), of life (James 1:12; Rev. 2:10), and of glory (1 Pet. 5:4) at our Savior’s feet, exclaiming, “Worthy art Thou, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for Thou didst create all things, and because of Thy will they existed, and were created” (Rev. 4:10–11).

We thank the Lord for giving us salvation and the eternal life, peace, and joy that salvation brings. But our greatest thanks should be for the unspeakable privilege we have been given of glorifying Christ throughout all eternity.

THE PROGRESS OF SALVATION

For whom He foreknew, He also predestined … and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (8:29a-b, 30)

In delineating the progress of God’s plan of salvation, Paul here briefly states what may be called its five major elements: foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification.

It is essential to realize that these five links in the chain of God’s saving work are unbreakable. With the repetition of the connecting phrase He also, Paul accentuates that unity by linking each element to the previous one. No one whom God foreknows will fail to be predestined, called, justified, and glorified by Him. It is also significant to note the tense in which the apostle states each element of God’s saving work. Paul is speaking here of the Lord’s redemptive work from eternity past to eternity future. What he says is true of all believers of all times. Security in Christ is so absolute and unalterable that even the salvation of believers not yet born can be expressed in the past tense, as if it had already occurred. Because God is not bound by time as we are, there is a sense in which the elements not only are sequential but simultaneous. Thus, from His view they are distinct and in another sense are indistinguishable. God has made each of them an indispensable part of the unity of our salvation.

FOREKNOWLEDGE

For whom He foreknew, (8:29a)

Redemption began with God’s foreknowledge. A believer is first of all someone whom He [God] foreknew. Salvation is not initiated by a person’s decision to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. Scripture is clear that repentant faith is essential to salvation and is the first step that we take in response to God, but repentant faith does not initiate salvation. Because Paul is here depicting the plan of salvation from God’s perspective, faith is not even mentioned in these two verses.

In His omniscience God is certainly able to look to the end of history and beyond and to know in advance the minutest detail of the most insignificant occurrences. But it is both unbiblical and illogical to argue from that truth that the Lord simply looked ahead to see who would believe and then chose those particular individuals for salvation. If that were true, salvation not only would begin with man’s faith but would make God obligated to grant it. In such a scheme, God’s initiative would be eliminated and His grace would be vitiated.

That idea also prompts such questions as, “Why then does God create unbelievers if He knows in advance they are going to reject Him?” and “Why doesn’t He create only believers?” Another unanswerable question would be, “If God based salvation on His advance knowledge of those who would believe, where did their saving faith come from?” It could not arise from their fallen natures, because the natural, sinful person is at enmity with God (Rom. 5:10; 8:7; Eph. 2:3; Col. 1:21). There is absolutely nothing in man’s carnal nature to prompt him to trust in the God against whom he is rebelling. The unsaved person is blind and dead to the things of God. He has absolutely no source of saving faith within himself. “A natural man does not accept the things of the Spirit of God,” Paul declares; “for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually appraised” (1 Cor. 2:14). “The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God” (2 Cor. 4:4).

The full truth about God’s omniscience cannot be comprehended even by believers. No matter how much we may love God and study His Word, we cannot fathom such mysteries. We can only believe what the Bible clearly says—that God does indeed foresee the faith of every person who is saved. We also believe God’s revelation that, although men cannot be saved apart from the faithful action of their wills, saving faith, just as every other part of salvation, originates with and is empowered by God alone.

While He was preaching in Galilee early in His ministry, Jesus said, “All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out” (John 6:37). But lest that statement be interpreted as leaving open the possibility of coming to Him apart from the Father’s sending, Jesus later declared categorically that “No one can come to Me, unless the Father who sent Me draws him” (v. 44). New life through the blood of Christ does not come from “the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13).

Paul also explains that even faith does not originate with the believer but with God. “For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast” (Eph. 2:8–9).

God’s foreknowledge is not a reference to His omniscient foresight but to His foreordination. He not only sees faith in advance but ordains it in advance. Peter had the same reality in mind when he wrote of Christians as those “who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Pet. 1:1–2). Peter used the same word “foreknowledge” when he wrote that Christ “was foreknown before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20). The term means the same thing in both places. Believers were foreknown in the same way Christ was foreknown. That cannot mean foreseen, but must refer to a predetermined choice by God. It is the knowing of predetermined intimate relationship, as when God said to Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you” (Jer. 1:5). Jesus spoke of the same kind of knowing when He said, “I am the good shepherd; and I know My own” (John 10:14).

Because saving faith is foreordained by God, it would have to be that the way of salvation was foreordained, as indeed it was. During his sermon at Pentecost, Peter declared of Christ: “This Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death” (Acts 2:23). “Predetermined” is from horizō, from which we get the English horizon, which designates the outer limits of the earth that we can see from a given vantage point. The basic idea of the Greek term refers to the setting of any boundaries or limits. “Plan” is from boulē, a term used in classical Greek to designate an officially convened, decision-making counsel. Both words include the idea of willful intention. “Foreknowledge” is from the noun form of the verb translated foreknew in our text. According to what Greek scholars refer to as Granville Sharp’s rule, if two nouns of the same case (in this instance, “plan” and “foreknowledge”) are connected by kai (“and”) and have the definite article (the) before the first noun but not before the second, the nouns refer to the same thing (H. E. Dana and Julius R. Mantey, A Manual Grammar of the Greek New Testament [New York: Macmillan, 1927], p. 147). In other words, Peter equates God’s predetermined plan, or foreordination, and His foreknowledge.

In addition to the idea of foreordination, the term foreknowledge also connotes forelove. God has a predetermined divine love for those He plans to save.

Foreknew is from proginōskō, a compound word with meaning beyond that of simply knowing beforehand. In Scripture, “to know” often carries the idea of special intimacy and is frequently used of a love relationship. In the statement “Cain had relations with his wife and she conceived” (Gen. 4:17), the word behind “had relations with” is the normal Hebrew verb for knowing. It is the same word translated “chosen” in Amos 3:2, where the Lord says to Israel, “You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth.” God “knew” Israel in the unique sense of having predetermined that she would be His chosen people. In Matthew’s account of Jesus’ birth, “kept her a virgin” (NASB) translates a Greek phrase meaning literally, “did not know her” (Matt. 1:25). Jesus used the same word when He warned, “Then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness’” (Matt. 7:23). He was not saying that He had never heard of those unbelievers but that He had no intimate relationship with them as their Savior and Lord. But of believers, Paul says, “The Lord knows those who are His” (2 Tim. 2:19).

PREDESTINATION

He also predestined (8:29b)

From foreknowledge, which looks at the beginning of God’s purpose in His act of choosing, God’s plan of redemption moves to His predestination, which looks at the end of God’s purpose in His act of choosing. Proorizō (predestined) means literally to mark out, appoint, or determine beforehand. The Lord has predetermined the destiny of every person who will believe in Him. Just as Jesus was crucified “by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), so God also has predestined every believer to salvation through the means of that atoning sacrifice.

In their prayer of gratitude for the deliverance of Peter and John, a group of believers in Jerusalem praised God for His sovereign power, declaring, “For truly in this city there were gathered together against Thy holy servant Jesus, whom Thou didst anoint, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, along with the Gentiles and the peoples of Israel, to do whatever Thy hand and Thy purpose predestined to occur” (Acts 4:27–28). In other words, the evil and powerful men who nailed Jesus to the cross could not have so much as laid a finger on Him were that not according to God’s predetermined plan.

In the opening of his letter to the Ephesian believers, Paul encouraged them with the glorious truth that God “chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will” (Eph. 1:4–5).

Much contemporary evangelism gives the impression that salvation is predicated on a person’s decision for Christ. But we are not Christians first of all because of what we decided about Christ but because of what God decided about us before the foundation of the world. We were able to choose Him only because He had first chosen us, “according to the kind intention of His will.” Paul expresses the same truth a few verses later when he says, “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us. In all wisdom and insight He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His kind intention which He purposed in Him” (Eph. 1:7–9, emphasis added). He then says that “we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to His purpose who works all things after the counsel of His will” (v. 11).

CALLING

and whom He predestined, these He also called; (8:30a)

In God’s divine plan of redemption, predestination leads to calling. Although God’s calling is also completely by His initiative, it is here that His eternal plan directly intersects our lives in time. Those who are called are those in whose hearts the Holy Spirit works to lead them to saving faith in Christ.

As noted under the discussion of verse 28, Paul is speaking in this passage about God’s inward call, not the outward call that comes from the proclamation of the gospel. The outward call is essential, because “How shall they believe in Him whom they have not heard?” (Rom. 10:14), but that outward call cannot be responded to in faith apart from God’s already having inwardly called the person through His Spirit.

The Lord’s sovereign calling of believers gives still further confirmation that we are eternally secure in Christ. We were saved because God “called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was granted us in Christ Jesus from all eternity” (2 Tim. 1:9). Emphasizing the same truths of the Lord’s sovereign purpose in His calling of believers, Paul assured the Thessalonians that “God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation through sanctification by the Spirit and faith in the truth. And it was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13–14). From beginning to end, our salvation is God’s work, not our own. Consequently, we cannot humanly undo what He has divinely done. That is the basis of our security.

It should be strongly emphasized, however, that Scripture nowhere teaches that God chooses unbelievers for condemnation. To our finite minds, that what would seem to be the corollary of God’s calling believers to salvation. But in the divine scheme of things, which far surpasses our understanding, God predestines believers to eternal life, but Scripture does not say that He predestines unbelievers to eternal damnation. Although those two truths seem paradoxical to us, we can be sure that they are in perfect divine harmony.

Scripture teaches many truths that seem paradoxical and contradictory. It teaches plainly that God is one, but just as plainly that there are three persons—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—in the single Godhead. With equal unambiguity the Bible teaches that Jesus Christ is both fully God and fully man. Our finite minds cannot reconcile such seemingly irreconcilable truths, yet they are foundational truths of God’s Word.

If a person goes to hell, it is because He rejects God and His way of salvation. “He who believes in Him [Christ] is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God” (John 3:18). As John has declared earlier in his gospel, believers are saved and made children of God “not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). But he makes no corresponding statement in regard to unbelievers, nor does any other part of Scripture. Unbelievers are condemned by their own unbelief, not by God’s predestination.

Peter makes plain that God does not desire “for any to perish but for all to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Paul declares with equal clarity: “God our Savior … desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3–4). Every believer is indebted solely to God’s grace for his eternal salvation, but every unbeliever is himself solely responsible for his eternal damnation.

God does not choose believers for salvation on the basis of who they are or of what they have done but on the basis of His sovereign grace. For His own reasons alone, God chose Jacob above Esau (Rom. 9:13). For His own reasons alone, He chose Israel to be His covenant people (Deut. 7:7–8).

We cannot understand God’s choosing us for salvation but can only thank and glorify Him for “His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:6). We can only believe and be forever grateful that we were called “by the grace of Christ” (Gal. 1:6) and that “the gifts and the calling of God are irrevocable” (Rom. 11:29).

JUSTIFICATION

and whom He called, these He also justified; (8:30b)

The next element of God’s saving work is justification of those who believe. After they are called by God, they are also justified by Him. And just as foreknowledge, predestination, and calling are the exclusive work of God, so is justification.

Because justification is discussed in considerable detail in chapters 17–18 of this volume, it is necessary here simply to point out that justified refers to a believer’s being made right with God by God. Because “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,” men can only be “justified as a gift by [God’s] grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 3:24).

GLORIFICATION

and whom He justified, these He also glorified. (8:30c)

As with foreknowledge, predestination, calling, and justification, glorification is inseparable from the other elements and is exclusively a work of God.

In saying that those whom He justified, these He also glorified,

Paul again emphasizes the believer’s eternal security. As noted above, no one whom God foreknows will fail to be predestined, called, justified, and ultimately glorified. As believers, we know with absolute certainty that awaiting us is “an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

Ultimate glory has been a recurring theme throughout Paul’s epistle to the Romans. In 5:2 he wrote, “We exult in hope of the glory of God.” In 8:18 he said, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” He anticipated that marvelous day when “creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (8:21).

To the Thessalonians Paul wrote that our ultimate glorification is the very purpose for which we are redeemed: “It was for this He called you through our gospel, that you may gain the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:14).

This promise of final glory was no uncertain hope as far as Paul was concerned. By putting the phrase these He also glorified in the past tense, the apostle demonstrated his own conviction that everyone whom He justifed is eternally secure. Those who “obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus [receive] with it eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10). That is God’s own guarantee.