How shall God not freely give us all things?

Romans 8:32 “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”

God asked in v. 31 “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Looking at the context of this chapter God is telling us that through His electing us, and His “predestinating us to be conformed to the image of his Son” v. 29 God has made us into the image of His Son, Jesus. God did not just redeem us, but also “conformed” us to be like unto His own Son. That is a total changing us from a wretched lost and dying sinner to be like unto His Beloved Son. The process of this change was costly to God because it was essential that God choose the perfect source of our change. Therefore, the only way for God to be molded in the image of His Son was to sacrifice His own Son. Therefore, God elected us, predestined us, called us, and in Christ He justified us, and in the end, He will glorify us. This means God, in His finished work will make all believers in heaven to be fashioned like His own Son Jesus. God through all this, brought to view His glorious love for us, because He sacrificed His own Son to accomplish this work of change in us. If God was to form us like unto the image of Jesus, then Jesus had to pay the price for our redemption. This is what God did for every Christian throughout time and until this change is complete. We, in this flesh will never understand what God has done for us in our redemption until we are in heaven. The love it took for God to allow His own Son in Jesus to crucified by Satan and those wicked and sinful hands that sacrifice Him. We will never in this life ever understand nor appreciate the love and sacrifice of what God has done for us. If we did, just our smallest and most insignificant sin would cause us to fall on our face and ask God for forgiveness. Our human mind cannot understand the reality of heaven and hell and the glorious love that God has given to us. In heaven we will surlily understand the true meaning to these words “Amazing grace, how sweet the sound That saved a wretch like me.” God, “spared not his own Son,” God put on Jesus the entire burden of sin for every soul that He is going to redeem.

Then God said, “…how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” The words “all things” does not include our every wish in this life, God did not say this for our selfishness, but for His grace given. Let us remember the gift of grace God had just given, “He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all….” The question is, isn’t this all things? Isn’t this more than we would or could ever ask for? What else could we ever ask for that overshadows our gift of salvation? “All things” are our spiritual gifts that the Holy Spirit has given to us along with our salvation. God said, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” James1:17 God is not a giver to selfishness; God is the giver of grace and mercy. God knows our needs before we ever ask, “for your Father knoweth what things ye have need of, before ye ask him.” Matt. 6:8b. Therefore, Jesus warned us in the same verse “Be not ye therefore like unto them…” that is “thou shalt not be as the hypocrites.” The greatest gift that God has ever given to a sinner is salvation through redemption by His sacrificed Son, how dare we ever be selfish. Therefore, God has given us everything He has chosen for us, let us rejoice and be glad, let us enjoy everything God has given to us. We that are saved have the greatest gift because there is none greater, every other gift just adds to that joy. Thank you, Lord!

If God Be for Us.

Romans 8:31 “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?”

What a true blessing of a scripture, what a blessing from our Sovereign God, the very Being that controls everything that is created. As created beings, even as Christians, we will never be able to totally understand nor grasp what God is saying here in this verse. This verse should bring glorious peace of mind to every believer, and when we add in verse 28 “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” it should cause every believer to rejoice and shout from the mountain top, so that everyone can hear us for miles around. Listen closely to Psalms 46:7 “The LORD of hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.” The word “refuge” means God is our cliff or inaccessible place, meaning there is no safer place in existence than being in the Lord and the Lord being in us. Look at how the Psalmist describes the Lord in Psalms 18:2 “The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.” We must ask ourselves, “do we need anyone else” the answer must be no, because in the Lord our God we have everything we need. Beloved, we need never worry, wonder, nor fear any creature or anything else because God is for us! Listen once more to the Psalmist in Psalms 118:6 “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?” As Christians we are God’s children, we are His possession, and because of that we have His greatest promise, “…for he hath said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee.” Heb. 13:5c This very thought should give every child of God the greatest of comfort. We live in a dangerous world, Satan and his people in this world hate us, they want to destroy us every second of every day. And if it were not for the power and grace of God, they would. But God is our refuge or our hiding place, we are in the palm of His hand, and no one has the ability nor the power to bring any harm to us that God does not allow. Think about the word is “perseverance”, it is found only once in the entire scriptures, “Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the Spirit, and watching thereunto with all perseverance and supplication for all saints;” Ephesians 6:18 The word “perseverance” means persistence which means we are to be "to be attentive or vigilant." in our faith in God. We pray because we trust God in all things, in our everyday life and every event or action or happening in our everyday life. We need to constantly remind ourselves that “God is for us” and since He is, we can believe that whatever He brings us to, that He will also bring us through it. If God (as He did with Job” bring suffering and challenging times to us, then we are going to be fine. The Lord said in Rom. 8:17 “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” God will lead us into trials, persecutions, and tribulations, just as He did Jesus His own Beloved Son. It is our walk in this life, suffering with the Son because this is God’s will for us and it is for our own good.

Then God added in verse 31 “who can be against us?” this is our perseverance or our persistence that our faith can be strong because we do not walk alone in this life, God walks with us protecting us from all evil. God sets the limits of what happens in our life, there are no coincidences, or we do not live by “luck” everything in a Christians life is by God’s will and grace. Just as He told Satan “And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand…” Job1:12 God is not against us, God does not allow things in our life to hurt us, but everything has a purpose and that purpose is, “…all things work together for good to them that love God…”. Therefore, no one can be against us, because God is not only for us but in us. God is the Omnipotent God over all creation and there is no greater power than Him. Praise God for His always being with us!  

Is Satan real, and what is his purpose.

 1 Peter 5:8 “Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour:”

If you believe in God and if you believe God’s word, then you must believe Satan is as a real and powerful being. Satan is anti-God; He was created to be Satan even though he was originally created a powerful angel. God never created any one or anything without a purpose to bring Him glory. “The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil.” Proverbs 16:4 We must understand the reason God created anything, it was all created for God’s personal glory, God gets glory from everything, even from Satan. This world, man, Satan, and everything else was created because of the glory God wanted for Jesus His Son. Without the creation of everything there would not have been the fall of Adam, and sin would not have entered the world. Therefore, God created evil in the person of Satan and created Eve to sin, therefore creating Adam to sin and through Adams sin bringing sin upon all mankind. Satan was created also as an adversary of God; he fell from heaven by challenging to be like God. “I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.” Isa. 14:14 This challenge from the angel Lucifer was a sin, and angels that sin with him were cast into hell which God made just for Satan and his angels, and for all those who die lost. God said to Satan after the fall in the garden, “And the LORD God said unto the serpent…And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed” Gen. 3:14a, 15a. The word “enmity” means -hostility and even hatred- meaning God has put hate between “the woman’s seed, and Satan’s seed, the seed of the woman is Jesus and the seed of Satan is the non-elect. Therefore, the real hate that exist between God and Satan is also between the elect and non-elect or those that are saved and those that are eternally condemned. Satan through the fall took dominion over the world in the fall of Adam. God gave this dominion to Adam and Satan took it in the fall and Satan became ruler over the earthly system. In 2 Corinthians 4:4 Paul called Satan the “god of this world”, “In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.” In the fall Satan through Adams fall brough spiritual blindness to the entire population of the world. And this blindness is so powerful that only the power of God can remove it and cause man to see, “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” 2 Corinthians 4:6.

God said Satan was, “your adversary the devil” Satan is the Christians greatest adversary because of his power. We have already looked at how he blinded the entire population of the world with such blinders that only God in His glorious power can undo the damage that Satan has done. “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts…”. People have no power to undo the damage that Satan has done, people are helpless without God. God said Satan is “as a roaring lion, walketh about”, he is a wild beast and he is so dangerous God compared him to a “roaring lion”, Vincent’s Word Study said of the word “roaring” “it denotes especially the howl of a beast in fierce hunger.” Therefore, he never rests to do as much harm to Christians and churches relationship to God as he can because his time is short. Revelation 12:12 “Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters of the earth and of the sea! for the devil is come down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time.” Satan knows God and he knows what his future is, but he is still wanting to cause as much havoc as he can to God’s people. This is why God warned us all “Be sober, be vigilant….” It is our responsibility to be watchful and not allow ourselves to be overcome through his trickery. Satan wants the weak and those that are easily tricked into falling. It is unfortunately that so many Christians and even churches have failed the Lord because they are not watchful enough. God went on to warn us that he is “Seeking whom he may devour…” and the word “devour” means “to drink down, that is, gulp entire.” Satan’s desire is to cause all of us to be worthless, so the Lord cannot get glory from us. He cannot steal our salvation, but he can rob us of our service in righteousness, if we are not watchful for him.      

Christians are not under the law, but grace.

Romans 6:14 “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.”

What does it mean to be “under the law of God,” it means that lost souls are bounded to live the law to obey it in fulfillment. Lost souls cannot live the law of God because we were all (that is all souls) born in sin and with sin. People are not condemned because we sin but because we were born condemned in the sin of Adam. God made this crystal clear in Rom. 5:12 “Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned:” Therefore, we must conclude that every soul born was born under sin and therefore bound to sinfulness. So many people mistake moral goodness and spiritual goodness as one in the same, but a soul can be morally good and a condemned sinner at the same time. God’s law was ever written for us to be made righteous; the law was written to show us our sinfulness. God said in, Gal. 3:24 “Wherefore the law was our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified by faith.” The law was never meant for salvation, meaning living good will never save a human soul. This is why God said in Eph. 2:8,9 that salvation is through grace and not by works. In Rom. 6:14 God said, “For sin shall not have dominion over you…” the word “dominion” means to lord over someone or to be a divine authority over someone. When people are lost, they do not control their thinking nor actions, sin does. The word “dominion” makes it clear that a lost or unredeemed soul is living in a depraved state of mind and will never turn to God for redemption. The reason for this is because every human soul is born not only depraved but at enmity with God, or a hater of God. God said in Rom. 8:7 “Because the carnal mind is enmity against God…” which means mankind, without redemption is hostile to God and everything He is. Therefore, every lost soul’s thinking is opposed to God’s Law, and not just a law but everything God is or says. God said that mankind hates Him so much that, “There is none that understandeth, there is none that seeketh after God.” Rom 3:11 The reason they do not seek God is because they do not understand God, to the unredeemed mind, God is their enemy not their Saviour. Therefore, people make-up a god that suits their condemned mind and that god is weak, subject to the will of man, and is controlled by man’s thoughts and opinions. This is why people hate the Sovereignty of God, because a Sovereign God controls the creature which is reverse to what man wants. This is why so many mistakenly believes that “God cannot change the human will” because man’s human will is so free that God must beg man to come to Him. The truth is that salvation cannot be of works because true salvation is a gift from God and is accomplished by and through Jesus Christ. We who are saved were saved by God’s grace through the work of Jesus Christ. God even went as far to say in Eph. 2:8 “…and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:” and He even went farther to clarify this in verse 9 “Not of works…” because salvation is by grace. This makes us that are saved, “under grace” and not under the law. We as Christians are not subject to the condemnation of the law or “the curse of the law” because “Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us:” Gal. 3:13 Therefore, we are under grace and no longer bound to the condemnation of the law. God said that salvation is not of both grace and works because they do not accomplish the same thing but are opposite of each other. “And if by grace, then is it no more of works: otherwise grace is no more grace. But if it be of works, then is it no more grace: otherwise work is no more work.” Romans 11:6 The law condemns the soul to eternal hell, but grace saves our soul from hell. This does not mean that the law is meaningless to a Christian, because Paul went on to write in Rom 6:15 “What then? shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid.” But the law no longer condemns us, but it becomes our standard of life. God’s grace through the blood of Jesus forgives and pardons our sin therefore if we sin, we are no longer condemned by that sin. This is what God meant in 1 John1:7 “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” His blood cleanses us so much that we can walk in fellowship with God, beloved that is grace!