Romans 8:30

30. Called The apostle does not imply that others were not called; for he knew that “many are called but few chosen.” The disobedient to the call are here left out of the account. They exclude or withdraw themselves, voluntarily and freely, from the favourably foreknown and the predestinated.

Mr. Barnes says, “The predestination secures the calling, and the calling secures the justification.” If the apostle himself had so said, it would have been decisive; but that is precisely what he does not say. All Paul says is, that the calling is the requisite condition before the justification, and the justification before the glorification. He asserts that the latter cannot be without the former. It is the called (or some part of them, for “many are called and few chosen”) alone that are justified; it is the justified alone that are glorified.

Whom he called They being foreknown as complying.

Whom he justified Upon their faith.

Them he also glorified Provided they were justified at the moment when the stage of glorification came. If, though once justified, their justification has ceased, they are then not justified, and so cannot be glorified.

It is not the purpose of the apostle, be it specially noted, to show or declare the surety of any particular individual’s infallibly passing through the stages of this scheme, but to show the indestructible and absolute surety of the scheme itself. (See notes on Romans 8:17; Romans 8:28.) It is the fixedness and unfailing surety of the plan of salvation, in order that each one may avail himself of it, that is affirmed; not the surety for the special individual that God’s power is pledged to fasten him into the plan, and to carry him infallibly through. The ark is unconditionally predestined to outride the deluge; but it depends upon our entering and remaining within the ark whether we individually outride the deluge too. All the aids above described are furnished from the Divine side; but man has a selfhood from which he must act, and upon that action it depends whether he finally is included in the saving result.

Mr. Barnes asks, “How would it be a source of consolation to say to them that those whom he predestinated, etc., might fall away and be lost forever?” But, 1. What consolation to tell them that the justified are to be glorified, so long as they are taught never to be sure of their being justified? Preachers of secured perseverance are obliged, in order to prevent in their followers the great presumption of being too sure of final salvation, to cultivate the perpetual doubt of their being Christians at all, and so destroy the full assurance of faith, and upset all the boasted “consolation” of their own doctrine. What consolation to know that Christians will persevere, if I must never know that I am a Christian? 2. To tell the Christian that he may fall away is not of itself consolation, but warning; and warning the Christian needs in the proper place as truly as consolation. And the true place of consolation and of warning is this: fully to know my present acceptance, and equally to fear my future rejection by unfaithfulness. 3. The true consolation from the present passage is its glorious assurance that the plan of salvation is absolutely sure to those who, by persistent faith, intrust themselves to it. We have a sure stronghold to which we can turn. And such is the doctrine of the entire Epistle; sure salvation by faith. But nowhere is it taught that that faith itself is fixed or fastened upon us, or in us. The exercise and continuance of our faith under God’s gracious aids, is our own duty, and our part, as free-agents, in the work of our salvation.

While a large share of the verbs of these two verses express a future as well as a past fact they are uniformly in the past tense, the Greek aorist. (Note on Romans 5:12.) Alford, in his usual ultra-fatalistic style of interpretation, tells us that this is because the whole is completed in the predetermination of God. But why does not Alford explicitly apply the same exegesis to sinned in Romans 5:12, (where see note,) and thus attribute the authorship of sin to God? a blasphemy which rash thinkers like him are perpetually committing, yet denying. The true view, we think, is, that the apostle’s standpoint in all these uses of the Greek aorist is at the grand consummation of the whole scheme, contemplating it as a series past. (Note on Romans 5:13.)