No One to Indict the Christian, No. 1
RO121-02

No One to Indict the Christian

The basis of all consistent Christian service is the assurance to the individual that no matter what happens, that person is certain of spending eternity in heaven. A Christian soldier must have the peace of mind about His own eternal destiny before He can really be concerned about whether others are going. A Christian cannot concentrate on proclaiming the Gospel of salvation to others when he is in fear of losing his own salvation at any moment, because he may stumble into some sin that neutralizes all that he has secured up to that time.

Now, the Apostle Paul, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, was very much aware of this problem for Christian witnesses. And for this reason, He has tried to put the fears about losing one's salvation to rest in the section that we have studied in Romans 8:28-30.

And if you have been with us on a consistent basis, you have an enormous background of information based upon these verses which gives the background for a true confidence in your destiny once you are in the family of God. I mean, you have a super background. It has been an amazing accumulation of information that we have in these verses 28-30. And once you get that information, you will never be anybody's patsy again relative to what God has in store for you in the future, for your loved ones, for you family, for anybody who was once in the family of God. What these verses have done is reveal to us that God the Father has a grand purpose of providing a great good for every Christian in His family. This good goes from the good of salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ to the good of living a life under the filling of the Holy Spirit, to the ultimate good of rewards in heaven at the judgment seat of Christ.

God the Father Himself makes certain that the believer will receive the good that He has purposed to give Him by the fact that He has tied that Christian to that destiny by a marvelous chain composed of five links that tie the believer on earth to a certain destiny in heaven. And we've looked at these links in detail: foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification.

Romans 8, as a whole, I remind you, is dealing with the fact that God has a way by which a born-again person can live a godly life on this earth. He's explained to us how to do this. To do this, God the Holy Spirit has been sent to indwell every Christian permanently. It is the work of the Holy Spirit to illuminate and to apply to our lives the Word of God, which enables us to maintain our temporal fellowship, staying in contact with God moment-by-moment. The Holy Spirit does not guide anyone who is not in the family of God through regeneration. The Holy Spirit only guides those who are born again. So, salvation, you see, is the basis for any kind of satisfactory, prosperous, godly living.

Blessings for the Believers

So, it's not possible to be blessed by God if you are an unbeliever, because until God has a target of absolute righteousness that He places in you, His justice cannot shoot blessing in any direction. You must first have absolute righteousness; then, He can send the charge down the wire of His grace, insulated from the world's system by His holiness, and from the justice of God down the wire and shoot the charge to the receptor of absolute righteousness, which He has placed within you.

It's a foolproof system. It works every time, and it is what makes the difference between one Christian and another, between one emotional yo-yo in the Christian life and another stable, consistent, plodding, purposefully productive Christian. All blessings transmitted in this way. So, nothing is more important to a human being than to possess the absolute righteousness of God. God in His own holiness will only bless His own righteousness, is what we're saying. God will not bless man's sincere sin nature activities or intentions, who are expressed in a variety of ways.

The Christian possesses absolute righteousness of God permanently, and those who then reach spiritual maturity open the channel to enormous divine blessing, the final blessing of which is the glorification in heaven. Once you possess that absolute righteousness, then you are in a position to start growing in spiritual maturity. You finally hit the super grace level where now you are on a mountain peak of spiritual capacity, and then God said, "Now, I can trust you with blessings. Now, I can prosper you. Now, I can straighten out your life. I can resolve all the problems emotionally, mentally, and every other way. I can't do it until you have been born again and until you have moved to spiritual maturity."

And you're not going to move to spiritual maturity with a lot of emotional guff that Christians interchange and share with one another. You're going to move toward it when you learn what God thinks through the Word, and you apply it. God the Holy Spirit knew that fallen human reason would always challenge the validity of a salvation plan which was based on a grace gift from God to the believer with no human performance required before or after that salvation. The fallen human reason recoils from the idea that God is going to save you, and it doesn't depend on what you do before or after you are saved.

Security of Salvation

You must understand, that's what happens. Once you're born again, you are in Christ. Now, God sees you with the perfect, absolute righteousness of Jesus Christ, and your destiny is for heaven. Now, what could take you out of that and put you back to what you came out of, which was in God's eyes the place of spiritual death? Can anyone, or anything separate a believer from eternal life in heaven toward which he is destined by God's work of salvation?

If one understands the background that has been laid out over many weeks now among us in Romans 8:28-30, the rest of this chapter is almost self-explanatory. You could read through this, and everything will click into place. There's hardly anything more that needs to be said. We can amplify it. But if you've got the background, everything moves together. If you understand verses 28-30, you've reached the high ground, and everything from now on is downhill. Those who understand what the Holy Spirit has said in Romans 28-39, through the rest of this chapter, are indeed amazed that anyone could ever doubt the security of his salvation. As you read these closing verses, you just marvel that anybody could read this and then come up with such nonsense as the thought that you could possibly lose your salvation again once you have been born again in the family of God.

The Failure of the Modern Church to Teach Believers Doctrine

Now, if you don't have that experience, you won't know what a commoner you are. Commoners who are very low in their understanding of anything that has to do with quality think of themselves as being really classy people. And they're not. We are not born with any kind of class until God puts it in us. And there's a great abysmal ignorance out there.

Why is this? Well, it's because churches concentrate on one thing: getting more members. And therefore, they dignify that low objective by saying that what they should do at every service is preach the Gospel. And so, every church service you go to, the Gospel is preached, and the Christians who have already believed the Gospel are left devoid of all understanding of what their position is in Christ during the church age. That's the reason for it.

Have nothing to do with a church that preaches the Gospel in every service. Not that they just add it to the end of every service, not if they say in the large auditorium, "There may be somebody here this morning, this evening who is not a Christian. You have come in, and we want to speak to you now. We've been talking to Christians; now, none of that applies to you. Now, we want to say something that applies to you and present the Gospel." That's ok.

But, to devote the service, as most churches do, to the Gospel, in some variant, and that's all the Bible is used for, means that Christians never grow spiritually. And the result it, it is very easy stuff then, in their spiritual ignorance, to be uncertain in the security of their salvation. To come up with all of these human viewpoint excuses why they believe a person can be lost again. Christians in churches that hear nothing but the Gospel in every service go through life as spiritual casualties in the angelic warfare.

And worst of all, worst of all, they enter heaven as paupers relative to their rewards. That's when it's going to be tough. Were it not for the grace of God for millions of church members to curse their preachers who deluded them and to cost them an eternity that they cannot change in heaven now of being paupers relative to rewards, while others went on with the Word of God are going to enjoy an enriched eternity.

One major denomination is now conducting simultaneous revivals in churches to expand its membership. Of course, it's not saying that it's doing it to expand the membership; they're saying they're doing for evangelism. But, I can tell you the convert who may believe the Gospel within that denomination structure will seldom ever hear any other doctrine in the church services he attends after he's saved. That's what's so sad. He is born again, and perhaps he walks in as a baby in Christ.

Do you know how helpless a baby is? You forget it after a while, but when you have occasion to be thrown into one of these little beauties that Chester calls these newly and puking infants again, and you see all their helplessness and all their problems and all their distress and all their crying, and you have to pick them up and put his little cheek against your cheek, and shake it around, and then all the world comes together for him. He's a helpless little creature. He wouldn't last very long at all on his own.

But this madness that exists within churches and on the part of preachers in the pulpit who bear the authority to care for babies who indeed are born again into the family of God and then throw them out on their own is absolutely astounding. It's pathetic. And Christians by the thousands keep going to those churches and keep putting the money in there and keep standing by financing thinking that God is in it and is honored by what is being done. What a surprise they're going to get someday when they get to heaven.

Well, it's no wonder that people who come under that kind of a system sooner or later get hit with sin, as they will, as babes in Christ, and then they don't know where they are up and down. They're just sure they're lost all over again, and they become very quickly spiritual casualties, and they drop out. Such denominational structures are more interested in training these poor believers to be denominational loyalists. They feed them on the meaningless, emotional service so that these people remain grotesque spiritual dwarves all the days that they have on this earth. And your heart goes out to them.

The saddest thing is that once they have attached themselves to such a structure, and they have a natural affinity with the people who led them to salvation, it is very difficult to alert them to open their eyes to cause them to say that this is not where God is working. This is a low-level substitute for the real thing and to detach themselves from it. What sadness in heaven for those who were so neglected when they realize what they have lost.

And you know, sometimes, your heart goes out to people. I was in a grocery store the other day, and I was watching people, and it was right after work, and there were coming in, and I thought to myself, "Here are all these people that have spent a hard day working. They're coming home, and they're tired, they're dragging, they're trying to get some groceries. And your heart goes out to them for the burdens of the day that they carry.

And I thought to myself, "But what great burdens will they carry for all eternity because someone has not given them the information they need on how to make the life that they're carrying now, the energies they're putting out, the burdens of all day long in coming to the end of a tired day ultimately have some meaning." Only once, you have an absolute, certain base of salvation on which you can build a significant life. And my heart goes out to those people as I realize that many of them are religiously active.

And as I stood there watching them at the checkout counter, imagining what the situation is in the life of this person, this person, this person there, to realize the great tragedy that is potential in those who do not know, and worst of all, those who walk into a church service and rightfully should expect to have God's Word delivered to them. And so, the purpose - the whole purpose - of having God imputing absolute righteousness to the believer is so that at the point of spiritual maturity, God can flood his life with blessings. And He cannot flood your life with blessing until there is a basis of spiritual maturity where absolute righteousness is freed within you to receive the blessings of God.

You'll never stake out your life, no matter what you problem is in any realm of the soul, until there is spiritual maturity through the Word of God. Blessings which God directs through His absolute righteousness in the Christian from salvation on are blessings which, you see, are eternally secured. If God is only blessing His absolute righteousness, you're going to keep it. If God blesses anything in your life that is the result of your absolute righteousness functioning in your life, you will keep it.

Satan's Inability to Indict the Christian

What can we then conclude? The word "then" is this Greek word "oun." It indicates that a conclusion has been reached. The idea would be consequently. What is the inference to be drawn consequently? "To." This is the word "pros," a preposition. It indicates what Paul is going to ask a conclusion about. The idea in the light of, or in what is facing us, what are we going to conclude about these things? This is the Greek word "houtos." This is a demonstrative pronoun which Paul is asking us to make a conclusion about.

"These things," of course, is reference specifically to what Paul has been discussing of God's great purpose for the Christian, which has been expressed in the previous three verses. Paul says that we have told you that God has a purpose for every Christian. We have told you that God begins that purpose out in eternity past with foreknowledge, which means He selects you to have the place in the intimacy of His family. He also out in eternity past then predestinates those that He has foreknown to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. Then, He cross the timeline, and He calls us here on this earth. And when He calls us through God the Holy Spirit, we always will respond. When men call us, we might respond and become part of an organization. When God the Holy Spirit calls, we become part of His true body, the church. And so, He calls, we respond.

And the next link ties us to the fact that God says those that He calls, He justifies. That is, He gives you absolute righteousness. So that, there is no criminal judgment to be brought against you. And finally, He ties you to glorification ultimately in heaven to be transformed into the full image of His Son, surrounded by the external glory that that carries with it.

So, you say, when are you going to talk about these five links that we've been talking about that constitute God's purpose? What do we say about it? The question is: what should we infer from what has been revealed here? What are the true facts, not human opinion, about religious questions? What can we indeed conclude from all of this?

So, the argue is: what then can we conclude from these matters? Then he presents, then, a rhetorical question. A rhetorical question, in a way, is being used to answer what he's asked. It's rhetorical.

It begins with the word "if." I hope that by now, you have become well enough trained in the Word of God that when in your English Bible you read the word "if," your mind immediately says, "Which condition: one, two, three, or four?" Well, this "if" looks like this: the particle "ei." This is a first class condition. It is very important that you know that, because then you know that you should translate that as "since." Because there is not an uncertainty. In the English language, the word "if" gives you the idea that something is not certain. But in the Greek Bible, the "if" is used in a way that tells you whether it is a sure thing or not. This is first class. First class is a sure thing. Therefore, what it is actually saying, is "since God before us," because God is actually for us, is the idea.

And the word "God" has the definite article "the" with it, indicating that it's God the Father, the one who is the Judge of mankind, no higher authority in the universe that we must face. And here again, because Paul wants to really hammer this point home that once you're in the family of God, you're always in the family of God. Yes, you may be disciplined for your conduct, but you're going to stay in the family of God.

Therefore, he uses a technique in the Greek language which doesn't use any verbs. He pulls the verbs out. And if you look carefully, if you have a King James translation, you will see that it says, "If God be," but the "be" is in italics. That's the way that the translators said, "That word doesn't exist in the original, but we have to put it in to smooth out the English statement." And it would say, "properly do." So, therefore, we're having something here that is presented in a way to make an emphatic point of what Paul is saying.

He says, "Since God is for us." And the word "for" is the Greek preposition "huper." This means "in behalf of," that is, favorable to the Christian. "Us," referring to all Christians. Literally, the Greek says, "Since God, in behalf of us." No verb. "Since God, in behalf of us."

And when a Greek read that, it just stood out with great emphasis on the pages of scripture. God the Holy Spirit is guiding Paul to use this approach, this expression, to stress the idea that something very important is being said here. "If God," in behalf of us, then he says, "Who can be against us?" And again, you see, "can be" is in italics. No verb.

The word "who" is that same word "tis" again that we have had before. Interrogative pronoun. No verb. "Against" is "kath'," indicating the opposition that prevails against us, we Christians. So that, the last part of the verb says, "Who against us?" The Greek says, "Since God for us, who against us?" The idea is: since God is for us, who indeed can be against us?

And that concept that God is definitely for us, you see, is not just some cute idea that we say something we like to think about somebody's opinion. This is what we have seen in the previous three verses. What God has gone out of His way to do, in forming this chain to tie us to His heaven. Paul's point is, then: if God is for the believer, who can be against our entrance into heaven? That's what he's asking. If God's on your side, who can possibly stand up and bring and indictment against you?

Paul is not saying that no one is against the Christian's claim to eternal life in heaven. But what Paul is saying is that it doesn't matter. It's like the hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." The third verse of this hymn expresses this idea that was in the back of the mind of Martin Luther when he wrote this. There are people who are against us. There are people who are against our going to heaven. There are people who are opposing the idea that we have a certainty in our destiny, but it doesn't make any difference. Who cares? They're not going to frustrate what God has determined to do for us.

The third verse, therefore, says, "And though this world with devils [that is, with demons] filled, should threaten to undo us, we will not fear, for God hath willed His truth to triumph through us. The prince of darkness grim, we tremble not for him; his rage we can endure, for lo! his doom is sure; one little word shall fell him." That's great. Martin Luther says, "One little word." One little human word will bring Satan down? No. One word from God brings him down." And that's exactly what we have been studying in the previous three verses: the Word of God that brings Satan down.

So, who cares what Satan thinks? And who indeed is engaged in accusing every one of you Christians day and night before God the Father in heaven right now. He's doing it all the time. Every time you step out of line with the Word of God, he jumps up there, and he says, "Ok, take a look at your sweet Christian."

Revelation 12:10 tells us that he's doing that. "And I heard a loud voice saying in heaven, 'Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of His Christ: for the accuser of our brethren is cast down, who accused them before our God day and night.'"

Don't forget for one moment that if Satan could bring you down to his hell, he would do it. Don't forget for one moment that he is opposed against you, and he is trying, and he's not going to give up. But, the Apostle Paul says, "God for us, who against us?" It doesn't make any difference.

Who cares about those arrogant human beings that you talk to who challenge your confident assurance of eternal life and who describe you as being arrogant when you tell them that you are absolutely certain that you'll be in heaven some day? And they make some snide remark, "Who cares?" Will they bring you down? No. Christians have been permanently reconciled to God so that He has securely tied them to Himself. He is on our side against all of our detractors. No one, you see, can be superior to God's omnipotence which is exercised on the basis of His holiness.

God Did Not Spare His Son

Then, verse 32 goes on to describe the ultimate, divine provision. Paul mounts one question upon another. He lets go a barrage of one rhetorical question after another to drive home, with staggering blows, the fact that once you Christians are saved, you're going to go to heaven, no matter what. Again, I say, it is amazing that anybody could read this scripture even in the English and come up with the idea that it's possible to lose your salvation.

Verse 32 says, "He that spared not His own Son." "He that" refers by the context to God the Father. It is God the Father that is dealing with us here. Now, the Greek Bible has a particle which has been left out in the English, because sometimes, many times, you don't actually translate this particular word. But it goes with the preceding word in a sentence to give that word special prominence. If the Greek writer wants to have you be very much away of an idea or a person or something, he uses a word that deals with that person. He names a person, and then he throws this little particle in after so that you look back and say, "What did he say? What did he refer to?" So that the "he that," which is like this in Greek, "hos." It's the personal pronoun referring to God. Then he throws in another word right after it, so that you'll look back, and he wants you to say, "I want you to be sure you understood that I'm talking about Almighty God. He's the one I'm talking about. He's the One who spared not."

And it's the Greek word "pheidomai." This word means to forego the infliction of a proposed retribution for evil. Spared not. It has the strongest Greek negative, this word "ou," so that there is on the part of God clearly that He did not hold from sacrificing His Son Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus bore the full penalty of God's divine justice against our sins.

This is in the aorist tense, [which] means that at the point that Jesus Christ was placed on the cross, it's middle in voice but it's active in meaning. It means that the Father Himself imposes this punishment on the Son. It's indicative mood, a statement of fact. The fact that God the Father in no way spared the Son from the punishment that our sins required. He didn't just say, "I'll give you fifty percent of the punishment, and we'll settle for that. I'll give you seventy-five percent of the punishment that my justice demands for the sins of the world, and we'll settle for that." What this is telling us is that He absolutely didn't spare the Son from anything.

And the fact that He did not spare the Son is demonstrated to us in Psalm 22:1 that He bore on Him the last ounce of judgment. Psalm 22:1, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" That is a prophetic utterance. There, we have prophetically declared that God would not spare imposing any punishment on His Son.

This was later fulfilled historically in Matthew 27:46 when the Lord was on the cross, "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is to say, 'My God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?'" Now, that is the cry of a man in great agony, a man suffering enormous pain, a man whose blood is draining out of His body and who is rapidly sensing that His whole human structure is approaching the point of shock.

He, as God, is controlling the pacing of His own death. He is pacing the losing of His blood, which ultimately is at the point where He finally, just before He says, "It is finished," shock hits Him. It sets in hard. He evidences by the fact that He is thirsty and other medical evidences. And finally, He releases His Spirit as the full effects of the shock take over and the body is killed. Now, what He bore was the shock of all of our sins with nothing held back for one moment.

Jesus as God's Very Own Son

In Acts 2:6, this word is used. We can illustrate its use. "Now when this was noised abroad, the multitude came together, and were confounded [this is on the Day of Pentecost], because every man heard them speak in his ["idios"] language." In his own, personal, private language. Now, the point is that "idios" meant that here were languages, languages, languages, but these people heard only in their own language. Theirs separated from all the rest. A very distinct relationship.

Romans 11:24 illustrates the word for us. Romans 11:24, "For if thou wert cut out of the olive tree which is wild by nature, and wert grafted contrary to the nature into a good olive tree." Here, Gentiles who do not belong in the olive tree of God's blessing. These wild branches are brought into this tree that does not take these wild branches, yet they have been grafted in. God has done that for us. He has put us in a place of blessing, a place that we have no right to. ".how much more shall these, which be the natural branches, be grafted into their own olive tree?" And there, "idios tree," again, is their very personal one, the one that is uniquely related to them.

Romans 14:4, "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master [his "idios" master] he standeth or falleth." There are many masters, but one is personally tied to him in a distinct way.

One more: Titus 1:12. Notice in all of these things, there are many options, but only one is personally related to the individual by the use of this word. Titus 1:12 says, "One of themselves, even a prophet of their own." One of their very own prophets is referred to here.

So, here again is referred to the distinction between Jesus Christ as the Son of God and all the rest of us as God's Son. The Lord Jesus Christ was the "idios" Son of the Father. He was distinctly the Father's Son in a different way than the rest of us are. We are adopted into the family of God, but Jesus Christ was His very own.

It is the same distinction between a child that is born to parents so that he is their "idios" child, their very own, which means that the kid is like them. He looks like them. He has their temperament. He has their characteristics. He has their attitude. He is a reflection of what they are. In contrast to a child that you may adopt who does not look like the parents, who does not have the parent's characteristics, who is a different person altogether. That's the idea of this word "idios."

So, when we are told what God the Father did for us when He did not spare His own Son, He was not sparing judgment upon one who was the only begotten Son of God, who is equal in essence to the Father, the One who Himself was God. It wasn't just some human being, as the cults like to say, that God raised up, somebody who would be a martyr, somebody who was just another person but a good man. This was an "idios" son of God, one who was uniquely begotten of God.

Now, the Lord Jesus made this very clear in His ministry that He was related to God the Father in a very special way. And when people heard that, His opponents wanted to kill Him, because they considered Him guilty of blasphemy. For example, John 10:30, Jesus said to the crowd, "I and my Father are One." We're the same kind. Boy, the hairs bristle on the back of their neck, and they say, "What are you saying? You and God are the same?" "Yes. We're One. We're the same essence."

"Then the Jews took up stones again to stone him [which was the Mosaic penalty for blasphemy]. Jesus answered them, 'Many good works have I shown you from my Father; for which of those works do ye stone me?' [Verse 33 shows they understood exactly what He was saying. For,] The Jews answered him, saying, 'For a good work we stone thee not; but for blasphemy; and because thou, being a man, makest thyself God.'"

Now, what the Holy Spirit is telling us in Romans 8:32 is that the One God did not spare in delivering in payment on the cross for our sins was His very own, identical in essence, "whios" Son, referring to Jesus Christ, the special Son of God. Now, the tender, close relationship between the Father and Son which was demonstrating the enormity of the love that was involved between God in what the Father was handing over to die on that cross was illustrated by the account of Abraham sacrificing His Son Isaac in Genesis 22:2.

"He said [that is God] 'Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of.'" Abraham gathers up what he needs, gathers up the animals, the servants, proceeds to Mount Moriah. Verse 9, "And they came to the place which God had told him of; and Abraham built an altar there, and laid the wood in order, and bound Isaac his son, and laid him on the altar upon the wood." This is the same kind of relationship that Paul is talking about in Romans 8, his very own, special kind of son like Himself.

Verse 10, "And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the Lord [The pre-incarnate Jesus Christ. This is Jesus Christ who came on the scene here to stop Abraham's hand in mid-air. This is Christ before He took on a human body. The Lord Jesus Christ] called unto him out of heaven, and said, 'Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I.' And he said, 'Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from Me.'" Your very kid of son from Me.

And then verse 16, God said, "'By myself have I sworn,' saith the Lord, 'for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son.'" Your very own kind of son. When the Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek, we call that the Septuagint version, when it came to this passage that referred to Isaac as Abraham's only son, they used this same word "idios" to convey the same idea: your personal, just-like-you boy is what you're giving up. The enormous expression of love that did not spare His very own Son to obey God. And God who did not spare His very own like-himself Son, Jesus Christ, in order that He might provide the basis for us to have a salvation that we could never lose.

That's what's behind all this. It was to provide us with a salvation that was so structured, that was so produced by God alone apart from any human being involved that is was going to be a sure thing. The idea here is in view of the fact that He did not even spare His own Son, but He delivered Him up for us all. No one to indict the Christian.

Dr. John E. Danish, 1977

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