Suffering with Christ, Glorified with Christ: An Exegetical and Expositional Essay on Romans 8:18–39

Task 4 for BIBL 987, Research and Communication for Bible Exposition, John W. Rawlings School of Divinity, Liberty University.

The Governing Idea

If Christians belong to Christ, why do they still suffer and die? That is, why are these people, who have the Holy Spirit, are considered by God to be his children, and are free from condemnation, left in such a wretched state by all outward appearances (Rom. 8:1, 14–17)? This is much the same problem Jesus brought to the surface from the cross when he cried the opening words of Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Ps. 22:1; Matt. 27:46; Mark 15:34). The psalm begins with apparent abandonment but ends with God’s vindication (Ps. 22:21–31). In the same way, in Romans 8, Paul does not try to explain suffering away.¹ Instead, he challenges the assumption that suffering means God’s promises have somehow failed. Romans 8:18–39 argues that present suffering and future glory belong to the same story. What believers experience now is real, but it is not final (Rom. 8:18). Creation still groans, believers still groan, and even the Spirit intercedes with groanings (Rom. 8:22–26). The strange thing, then, is not that Christians suffer despite belonging to Christ. Paul has already told them that suffering with Christ comes before being glorified with Christ (Rom. 8:17). The mistake is to assume that victory means the battle must already be over. Paul sees it differently. Christ has already conquered sin and death, yet death itself still awaits its final destruction (1 Cor. 15:25– 26). Christians live inside that struggle. They belong to the victorious Christ, but they have not yet reached the finish line. They still fight, run, suffer, and endure (Rom. 8:17–18; 2 Tim. 4:7). The victory has already been won in Christ. What remains is for that victory to be completed in creation and finally revealed in those who belong to him (Rom. 8:19–23).

Paul starts his argument by establishing that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:1). Why does he do this? Perhaps it is because when suffering begins, one of the first questions that comes to mind is, is this personal? Have I offended God? Am I now being punished by God? Paul’s answer to condemnation is no. Christ has already borne what condemned them, and God has condemned sin in the flesh of his Son (Rom. 8:3). Paul then reminds them of something they have already encountered and continue to encounter: the Spirit who dwells in them (Rom. 8:9–11). For Paul, this is not a distant or merely theoretical Spirit. The Spirit dwells in believers, leads them, bears witness with their own spirit, helps them in their weakness, and even intercedes for them when they do not know how to pray (Rom. 8:9, 14, 16, 26–27). Because they have the Spirit, they can know that suffering does not mean God has abandoned them. God has in fact set them free from the law of sin and death (Rom. 8:2). Paul even presents the presence and leading of the Spirit as evidence that they belong to Christ and are children of God (Rom. 8:9, 14–16). And if they are children, then they are heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ. Yet Paul immediately adds the difficult part: they suffer with Christ now so that they may also be glorified with him (Rom. 8:17). Their suffering, then, is not evidence against their sonship. Within Paul’s argument, it belongs to the road from sonship to glory.

Yet Paul ends with a condition: εἰ δὲ τέκνα, καὶ κληρονόμοι· κληρονόμοι μὲν θεοῦ, συγκληρονόμοι δὲ Χριστοῦ, εἴπερ συμπάσχομεν ἵνα καὶ συνδοξασθῶμεν (Rom. 8:17).² If all this is true, why does suffering remain? Paul’s answer is that redemption has begun, but it has not yet reached its completion. Creation groans. Believers groan. The Spirit groans.³ These groanings do not mean that redemption has somehow failed. No, instead they describe what redemption sounds like while it is still waiting for its more final state. That is, creation certainly has been subjected to futility, but “in hope” (Rom. 8:20).⁴ The bottom line is that believers possess the firstfruits of the Spirit, but they are still waiting for the redemption of their bodies (Rom. 8:23). So, toward this end, even the Spirit joins their weakness and intercedes with groanings that cannot be expressed in words alone (Rom. 8:26). Paul therefore does not present groaning as the opposite of hope. On the contrary, in Romans 8, groaning is what hope sounds like when the promise of eternity is just on the horizon (Rom. 8:24–25).

Much of this hinges on verse 18, where Paul begins with a calculation: Λογίζομαι γὰρ ὅτι οὐκ ἄξια τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ πρὸς τὴν μέλλουσαν δόξαν ἀποκαλυφθῆναι εἰς ἡμᾶς (Rom. 8:18).⁵ He ends with a solution to that calculation: οὔτε ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος οὔτε τις κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ θεοῦ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ κυρίῳ ἡμῶν (Rom. 8:39).⁶ And in the midst of both this “reckoning” and the “verdict,” it is clear that Paul does not put our eternal hope in the believer’s present condition. No, he grounds it in Christ’s present position. That is, the most basic version of the Gospel: that Christ died. He was raised. He is at the right hand of God. And he intercedes for us (Rom. 8:34).⁷ So yes, the believer still suffers and dies, but none of that is in vain. In fact, the reason that death and separation from God cannot win is anchored in Christ himself, and in him there is certainly no separation (Rom. 8:39).

Two other scholars supply the essay’s outline in their headings. First, we have Longenecker, who treats the whole of 8:18–30 under the theme of the hope of glory. He notes that Henning Paulsen drew attention to that theme’s centrality, and then he carries on in his reading of 8:23–25, showing it to be a major implication of what it means for a person to be in Christ.⁸ Secondly, Schreiner titles the four units hope of a new creation (8:18–25), hope in prayer (8:26–27), hope of glorification (8:28–30), and finally certainty of hope in suffering (8:31–39).⁹ This essay, or commentary, follows this same movement. At the end it looks at the bigger picture that these commentaries only glance at, primarily showing that the present position of Christ in v. 34 is the point at which Romans and Hebrews, which my dissertation hopes to deal with, essentially say the same thing in the same words.

Literary Context

Romans 8:18–39 does not contextually introduce something new into the book of Romans. For that matter, Paul is not really doing anything new with this section. He is developing ideas that he has already set in motion and looking at those same ideas from different angles. This is something Paul does throughout Romans. For example, earlier in the letter he announces righteousness by faith in Romans 1:16–17. Then he explains it in Romans 3:21–26. After that he rehashes it in the story of Abraham in Romans 4:1–25. Another example is with Adam and Christ. What begins as two humanities in Romans 5:12–21 becomes two masters, sin and righteousness. The main point here is that Paul has already spoken of suffering and hope, the gift of the Spirit, the love of God, and the death of Christ as the ground of assurance (Rom. 5:3– 5, 8–10). Those same ideas return in Romans 8:18–39, but like previous patterns he is simply bringing this argument to a close.¹⁰ The summation of this argument is that the temporary suffering of the present age cannot be measured against coming eternal non-suffering (Rom. 8:18). Also the main proof of that future lack of suffering is the indwelling Spirit that is in them now (Rom. 8:9, 26–27).¹¹ This brings Paul back to the problem that began the section. Christians suffer, but their suffering does not mean that Christ has lost. They groan, but their groaning does not mean that redemption has failed. They die, but even death cannot separate them from the love of God in Christ (Rom. 8:35–39). The Spirit within them testifies that redemption has already begun, while their groaning reminds them that it has not yet reached its end (Rom. 8:23– 27). Romans 8:18–39 therefore gathers Paul’s earlier themes into one final paradox: the Christian can possess the victory of Christ while still experiencing the suffering of the present age. The glory is ironclad because its certainty rests not upon what believers presently seem to experience in their lives, but upon what God has already done in Christ and what Christ is presently doing for them (Rom. 8:31–34).

Paul is developing what has already been set in motion. Schreiner shows that vv. 15–16 confirm that believers are considered children of God, and by the time he reaches v. 17 he shows that the children are heirs, with the condition that they also suffer. Moo, for his part, reads the γάρ in v. 18 as introducing not only that verse but the entire paragraph that follows. That is, he takes the whole of vv. 18–30 as an elaboration of the suffering-then-glory sequence Paul attributed to believers in v. 17b.¹² So 8:18–30 is the exposition of one clause, “if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him,” and 8:31–39 is the celebration that follows once the exposition is complete. Moo heads the closing unit as the believer’s security celebrated and notes that Paul’s rhetorical question in v. 31 is a device he uses frequently in Romans to advance the argument.¹³ The two halves therefore belong to one another as argument and doxology, and an essay that reads as a commentary should mark the seam at v. 31 and not treat vv. 31–39 as further exposition of the same kind.

Theological Context

Two theological themes control this section: inaugurated eschatology and eschatological assurance. The first concerns the already and not yet of salvation. That is, the idea that redemption has actually begun, but it has not yet reached its full consummation. The second concerns the fact that redemption will ultimatly be completed. Theologically, Paul not only explains why believers who possess the Spirit will still suffer: he explains why their present suffering cannot prevent their future glory. I must admit that Romans 8:18–39 gives remarkably strong support to what is often called the perseverance or eternal security of the believer or “once saved always saved”. Why? Because the Greek wording here places the weight of salvation not upon the believer’s ability to preserve himself, but upon what God has already done and what Christ is presently doing. Having said that, it does not mean this passage should be isolated from the rest of Scripture and turned into a simple calvanistic slogan. To do that would be to make one text carry the entire doctrine without allowing the broader witness of Scripture to define its limits. Nevertheless, the force of this passage should not be weakened just because the doctrine it supports is disputed. Regardless, of emotions about theological camps, Paul’s argument is deliberately God centered. And there is no question that believers possess the Spirit as the firstfruits of what is still to come (Rom. 8:23). They have already received the Spirit of adoption, yet they still await adoption in the redemption of their bodies (Rom. 8:15, 23).¹⁴ So, yes they are saved, but saved in hope, waiting for what they cannot yet see (Rom. 8:24–25).¹⁵ Moo therefore identifies the already and not yet problem as central to Paul’s thought in these verses.¹⁶ Yet inaugurated eschatology leads us to another question: if redemption has begun but remains unfinished, what is the guarante that He will finish it? Again, Paul’s answer doesn’t put the burden on the behavior of the believer but the action of God in Christ. That is v.32 reasons from what God has already done to what God will certainly do: irrespective of the heirs actions. Cranfield notes that this argument resembles Romans 5:9–10 in both form and content: having accomplished something far greater, God will certainly accomplish the lesser salvation of lowly humans.¹⁷ Paul goes further in verse 34. The guarantee of future glory is not just that Christ once died for believers. The Christ who died was also raised. The Christ who was raised is now at God’s right hand. And the Christ who sits at God’s right hand presently intercedes for them (Rom. 8:34). That is the fortress of solitude: Jesus. This is where inaugurated eschatology and eschatological assurance finally meet. Why? Because believers still live in the not yet, but the one who guarantees their future already occupies the place of victory. Therefore, their salvation remains unfinished in them, but it is not uncertain in Christ.

Historical Context

Suffering in Rome as a Christian was front and center to both Greek and Jewish readers of Romans, but that was not the entire focus of what Paul was pointing to. Moo argues that Paul is not primarily speaking only about persecution suffered because of faith in Christ. To defend this position he includes the whole range of human suffering: illness, bereavement, hunger, financial loss, and death itself.¹⁸ He also argues that the phrase “present time” is important, because it retroactively points backwards to previous sufferings in salvation history. That is, even in an Exodus there first came slavery. Thus, by pointing to the present sufferings Paul is really just exposing the fact that in the past they too suffered for salvation, even if temporary. In the end, again the truth must be affirmed: Christ has conquered that age, but Christians must still live within it while awaiting the age to come.¹⁹ In v. 35 Paul gives more concrete examples of suffering like famine, nakedness, danger, and in the middle of this he quotes Psalm 44:22. In short, it is safe to say that Paul was pointing to suffering in general rather than just persecution suffered by Christians, although that certainly would have been in view.

Genre

The book of Romans, including this section, comes in the form of epistolary argument that turns into celebration. Schreiner remarks that “the magnificent and exalted style in these verses is immediately apparent.” Regardless, this section uses the typical Greek and Roman rhetorical questioning that Paul frequently employs. Longenecker reads v. 31 as Paul’s own rhetorical question and Paul’s own answer to it, while Moo notes that the question is a device Paul uses often in Romans to advance his argument.²⁰ While I am not certain if vv. 31–34 draw on a pre-Pauline hymn, I must admit it is an interesting theory worth more study, but all the same unlikely. Jewett follows Paulsen in seeing early kerygma in the four-part confession of v. 34, arguing that it is a confessional hymn. Dunn, on the other hand, thinks Paulsen “pushes too hard” in arguing that vv. 31–34 are drawn from some kind of pre-Pauline hymn.²¹ Having said that, this essay simply notes that there is a significant turn at v. 31 and concedes that vv. 31–39 are a courtroom summation: questions with implied answers regardless of where it came from. Furthermore, it carries Cranfield’s caution. That is, just because vv. 31, 32 and 35 are rhetorical questions does not settle whether vv. 33 and 34 are, and it takes the sentence beginning Christ Jesus in v. 34 as a factual statement to the court.²² In summary, how we understand the genre of this section is important because it decides whether v. 34 is read as Paul’s own statement, with Cranfield, or as an early confession recited, with Jewett.

Structure

18 Thesis: the sufferings of this present time juxtaposed against the coming glory

19–

22 The groaning of creation, subjected in hope

23–

25 The groaning of believers, firstfruits of the Spirit, awaiting adoption

26–

27 The groaning of the Spirit, intercession in wordless groans

28–

30 The chain: foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified

31–

34 The courtroom: four rhetorical questions and the answers

35–

39 The catalogue and the verdict: what cannot separate

The organizing feature of vv. 18–27 is the threefold groaning. First, there is creation: οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις συστενάζει καὶ συνωδίνει ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν (Rom. 8:22). Second, believers: ἡμεῖς καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς στενάζομεν (Rom. 8:23). Third, the Spirit: στεναγμοῖς ἀλαλήτοις (Rom. 8:26).

Cranfield reads verse 22 as the whole creation groaning and travailing, while verse 23 marks a deliberate shift from the subhuman creation to Christians. This matters because it confirms that Paul is changing subjects without changing the actual problem. That is, creation groans first, and then believers join the same groaning from within that creation. Moo sees a similar structural movement. But he reads verse 22 as concluding the subparagraph on the hope of creation by returning to the longing for deliverance shown in v. 19. In other words, verse 22 closes the first movement before verse 23 begins the second. It is safe to say that both commentators recognize a real structural boundary between the groaning of creation and the groaning of believers. Their observations support reading the repeated language not as just some accidental repetition that Paul employed, but as a deliberate part of Paul’s argument. Regardless of where we land, creation occupies the first movement in verses 19–22. Believers occupy the second in verses 23–25. The Spirit then becomes the subject of the third in verses 26–27. The three groanings therefore provide a natural way of dividing the passage according to movements already visible within Paul’s language.²³

This essay’s headings follow the threefold groaning because that repetition gives Romans 8:18–27 its obvious internal structure. Creation groans in verse 22, believers groan in verse 23, and the Spirit intercedes with groanings in verse 26. The repeated στεν language is not accidental. It moves the reader through the same problem from three different angles. After the third groaning, however, the register changes. In verse 28 Paul no longer speaks primarily in the language of passively waiting. He turns to a confident statement almost demanding: Οἴδαμεν δὲ, “and we know” (Rom. 8:28). The change in tone is significant because it shifts us from what believers experience, which seems to be negative, to what believers can know with certainty, which is a future net positive. Verses 28–30 then describe God’s purpose in a chain of divine actions: foreknew, predestined, called, justified, glorified. The language becomes more settled because the subject has become God’s action rather than what the believer is able to accomplish. Then the register changes again in verse 31. Τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν πρὸς ταῦτα; “What then shall we say to these things?” (Rom. 8:31). From that point forward Paul moves into rhetorical questions and answers. The section no longer sounds like lament or explanation. It sounds like a courtroom summation. Who can be against us? Who can bring a charge? Who can condemn? Who can separate us from the love of Christ (Rom. 8:31, 33–35)? The passage therefore moves in three stages: groaning, knowing, and finally answering. The groaning describes the present condition of redemption, the knowing states the certainty of God’s purpose, and the questions of verses 31–39 drive that certainty toward its final verdict: nothing in all creation can separate those in Christ from the love of God (Rom. 8:39).

Exposition

Verse 18: Reckoning

Λογίζομαι γὰρ ὅτι οὐκ ἄξια τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ πρὸς τὴν μέλλουσαν δόξαν ἀποκαλυφθῆναι εἰς ἡμᾶς. (Rom. 8:18). The first thing to notice is that the verb is a computation, not a feeling.²⁴ Cranfield reads Λογίζομαι here the same way he reads it in 3:28 and 6:11, as a firm conviction reached by rational thought on the basis of the gospel.²⁵ Longenecker adds that Λογίζομαι γὰρ ὅτι functions in an epistolary fashion, that the γὰρ is just ordinary koine, and that τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ is a general reference rather than a pointer to one particular persecution.²⁶ That is, Paul is not reacting to some crisis in Rome. He is doing math on the whole present age. Moo supplies the picture that I think is the most helpful, which is the scale of all of this. To give this a word picture: we can see here that the sufferings go on one side, the glory goes on the other, and the glory is so weighty that suffering flies up in the air as if it weighed nothing at all. Regardless, the glory that is revealed “to us,” or even “into us,” proves that believers are not spectators of the glory but the ones the glory is aimed at.²⁷ Two things stand out to me here. First, Paul is not consoling anyone here. He is calculating, and that calculation is the thesis for everything running through v. 39. Second, the direction of the glory makes a huge imact on how we view this section. Why? Because εἰς ἡμᾶς is not “in front of us” but “toward us,” and that difference is the difference between us watching a sunrise and us simply being warmed by it. In short, if you are in Christ the glory is coming at you like a speeding bullet, not just past you as if you were a random person walking on a shooting range. No you are the target that God will hit with salvation!²⁸

Verses 19–22: Hope

ἡ γὰρ ἀποκαραδοκία τῆς κτίσεως τὴν ἀποκάλυψιν τῶν υἱῶν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀπεκδέχεται. τῇ γὰρ ματαιότητι ἡ κτίσις ὑπετάγη, οὐχ ἑκοῦσα ἀλλὰ διὰ τὸν ὑποτάξαντα, ἐφʼ ἑλπίδι ὅτι καὶ αὐτὴ ἡ κτίσις ἐλευθερωθήσεται ἀπὸ τῆς δουλείας τῆς φθορᾶς εἰς τὴν ἐλευθερίαν τῆς δόξης τῶν τέκνων τοῦ θεοῦ. (Rom. 8:19–21). Schreiner reads ἀποκαραδοκία as eager longing and takes vv. 20–22 as Paul’s explanation, marked by the γὰρ, of why the creation anticipates so avidly the future revelation of God’s sons and daughters.²⁹ That is, creation was subjected to futility not by its own choice, and the return of nature to its purpose will coincide with the freedom of the children of God.³⁰ The crux here is the identity of the one who did the subjecting. Longenecker lists no less than eight proposals for the referent of κτίσις and then bascially says, to which I agree, that Cranfield has done a fantastic job evaluated them by a process of elimination.³¹ I am not going to rehash all eight due to space. Regardless, the bottom line is that the subjector is God, because only God subjects something in hope.³² The subjection itself was Genesis 3, where the ground is cursed for the man’s sake, and the hope is the children’s glory, into which creation itself is going to be drawn, freed from the slavery of corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God.³³ That brings us to v. 22 and the first of the three groanings: οἴδαμεν γὰρ ὅτι πᾶσα ἡ κτίσις συστενάζει καὶ συνωδίνει ἄχρι τοῦ νῦν· (Rom. 8:22). Cranfield reads this as the whole creation groaning and travailing together, and Moo reads it as Paul returning to the longing of creation for deliverance that the subparagraph started with back in v. 19.³⁴ What I want to stress is that creation’s groaning is not despair. Why? Because the second verb is συνωδίνει, and that is the groaning of birth pangs.³⁵ Birth pangs hurt, but they end in a birth and the wonders of life that miricle entails. That is the whole point.

Verses 23–25: Firstfruits

οὐ μόνον δέ, ἀλλὰ καὶ αὐτοὶ τὴν ἀπαρχὴν τοῦ πνεύματος ἔχοντες, ἡμεῖς καὶ αὐτοὶ ἐν ἑαυτοῖς στενάζομεν υἱοθεσίαν ἀπεκδεχόμενοι, τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν. (Rom. 8:23). The second groaning belongs to believers, and honestly this is the surprising one, because it is the groaning of people who have already received the Spirit. Longenecker traces ἀπαρχὴν back to fifth century classical usage in Herodotus and Euripides and reads 8:23–25 as a major implication of what it means for a person to be in Christ. Schreiner reads v. 23 as the turn from creation’s longing to the believer’s, since in vv. 19–22 Paul has argued that the glory of the future age is so beautiful that even creation longs for it, and he reads vv. 24–25 as Paul’s emphasis that the fullness of what believers will be is still hidden.³⁶ The genitive matters here. I take τὴν ἀπαρχὴν τοῦ πνεύματος as appositional, the Spirit who is the firstfruits. That is, the gift we already have is the first portion of a harvest that is still coming in, and our groaning is the groaning of people who have tasted it and know exactly what they are waiting for.³⁷ Now here is the tension the whole essay lives on. In 8:15 the readers have already received the Spirit of adoption. In 8:23 they are still waiting for adoption. Both are true, and the second half of v. 23 tells us what the awaited adoption actually is: the redemption of our body. In other words, adoption in full is resurrection.³⁸ Moo reads vv. 24–25 as the return to the section’s central theme, the need in this age of tension between the already and the not yet for earnest waiting. Longenecker asks why Paul even bothered to include the very brief comment that hope that is seen is no hope at all, and answers that it is a rhetorical break of intensity.³⁹ τῇ γὰρ ἐλπίδι ἐσώθημεν· ἐλπὶς δὲ βλεπομένη οὐκ ἔστιν ἐλπίς· ὃ γὰρ βλέπει τίς ἐλπίζει; εἰ δὲ ὃ οὐ βλέπομεν ἐλπίζομεν, διʼ ὑπομονῆς ἀπεκδεχόμεθα. (Rom. 8:24–25). The dative τῇ γὰρ is the point. We were saved in hope, in the mode of hope if you will, which is to say saved in a way that has not been seen yet. So waiting with endurance is not some kind of deficiency in our salvation. It is simply what salvation looks like right now.

Verses 26–27: Intercession

Ὡσαύτως δὲ καὶ τὸ πνεῦμα συναντιλαμβάνεται τῇ ἀσθενείᾳ ἡμῶν· τὸ γὰρ τί προσευξώμεθα καθὸ δεῖ οὐκ οἴδαμεν, ἀλλʼ αὐτὸ τὸ πνεῦμα ὑπερεντυγχάνει στεναγμοῖς ἀλαλήτοις· ὁ δὲ ἐραυνῶν τὰς καρδίας οἶδεν τί τὸ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος, ὅτι κατὰ θεὸν ἐντυγχάνει ὑπὲρ ἁγίων. (Rom. 8:26–27). The third groaning belongs to the Spirit, and it answers a weakness that Paul is not embarrassed to name.⁴⁰ Schreiner heads the unit hope in prayer and reads the Spirit’s help in our weakness as the hope of believers strengthened by the assistance of the Holy Spirit. The main burden of the two verses, he says, is that the Spirit counterbalances the handicap of believers in prayer, and he lists and rejects the reasons some people find tongues in the unspeakable groanings.⁴¹ Longenecker works the double prefix compound συναντιλαμβάνεται from Deissmann and reads the neuter article τὸ in front of “what we should pray for” as marking the whole clause as the object of not knowing.⁴² Moo reads the weakness as specifically the weakness of not knowing what to pray for as we ought, takes the groans as the Spirit’s own, and reads v. 27 as saying that the Spirit’s intercession is completely in line with God’s will. Cranfield adds that God knows the Spirit’s intention without it ever being expressed, and compares the searcher of hearts in v. 27 with 1 Samuel 16:7.⁴³ Jewett reads v. 26 as continuing the active idea of awaiting with perseverance from v. 25, and reads v. 27 as the claim that the Spirit’s intercession, even in its most unintelligible form, is perfectly understandable to God. Dunn, who gives the glossolalia question its fullest hearing of anybody, ends up locating the Spirit’s help not as of a distant intercessor in heaven but as a very present help within.⁴⁴ So what do we do with this? Paul flat out concedes that Christians do not know how to pray.⁴⁵ And the remedy he names is not better praying. It is a second intercessor.⁴⁶ It should also be noted that the verb ὑπερεντυγχάνει in v. 26 and the verb ἐντυγχάνει in v. 27 are the same root that is going to come back in v. 34, this time of Christ. Two intercessors, one within and one above. I am going to hold that thought for the correlation, because that is where Dunn’s “within” meets Hebrews’ “above.”

Verses 28–30: Chain

Οἴδαμεν δὲ ὅτι τοῖς ἀγαπῶσιν τὸν θεὸν πάντα συνεργεῖ εἰς ἀγαθόν, τοῖς κατὰ πρόθεσιν κλητοῖς οὖσιν. (Rom. 8:28). The confidence of this verse is the hinge between the groaning and the courtroom, and its first difficulty is the subject of συνεργεῖ. Schreiner opens his whole comment with that question. Cranfield sets out the punctuation options and reads Οἴδαμεν δὲ as Paul stating what he knows to be generally recognized as true. Moo reads the verse as possibly adversative to what came before: we groan, we do not know how to pray, but God is working.⁴⁷ Jewett sets out three options for translating the clause and notes that supplying God as the subject follows the logic of the early textual variant that did exactly that.⁴⁸ For what it is worth, I follow the reading that takes God as the subject, because the whole passage from v. 28 forward is about what God does and not about what “all things” manage to do on their own.⁴⁹ Then comes the chain. ὅτι οὓς προέγνω, καὶ προώρισεν συμμόρφους τῆς εἰκόνος τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ, εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδελφοῖς· οὓς δὲ προώρισεν, τούτους καὶ ἐκάλεσεν· καὶ οὓς ἐκάλεσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδικαίωσεν· οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασεν. (Rom. 8:29–30). Schreiner locates the background of προέγνω in the Old Testament, where for God to know somebody refers to his covenant love, and he treats foreknew and predestined as almost synonyms.⁵⁰ Cranfield reads εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδελφοῖς as God’s purpose in foreordaining, and he counts the fivefold chain link by link.⁵¹ Moo notes that after the interruption of v. 29b Paul picks the chain back up by repeating the verb right where he broke it off, and that the “not sparing” language of v. 32 has already been anticipated here.⁵² The exegetical point I want to make is the last aorist. ἐδόξασεν sits in the same tense as called and justified, as though glorification were already done. That is not a slip on Paul’s part, and I do not think it is a prophetic perfect borrowed from the prophets either. It is the far end of a chain whose every single link is God’s act, spoken of from the end because the one who started it is the one who finishes it. That is exactly why v. 30 can close the exposition and hand the passage over to celebration.

Verses 31–32: Courtroom

Τί οὖν ἐροῦμεν πρὸς ταῦτα; εἰ ὁ θεὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν, τίς καθʼ ἡμῶν; (Rom. 8:31). Moo reads the rhetorical question as Paul’s favorite device in Romans for moving the argument along, and Longenecker reads Paul’s own answer to his own question, God for us, taking ὑπὲρ in its root sense of “over,” so that the God who is over us is on our side.⁵³ Then comes the verse the whole peroration turns on. ὅς γε τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ οὐκ ἐφείσατο ἀλλʼ ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν πάντων παρέδωκεν αὐτόν, πῶς οὐχὶ καὶ σὺν αὐτῷ τὰ πάντα ἡμῖν χαρίσεται; (Rom. 8:32). Cranfield takes ὅς γε τοῦ ἰδίου υἱοῦ οὐκ ἐφείσατο as quite probably an intentional echo of Genesis 22:12, 16 LXX, hears the traditional language of the primitive church in “handed him over,” and reads the argument as similar in form and content to 5:9–10. Schreiner reads the same allusion to Genesis 22:16 LXX and argues that the τὰ πάντα of v. 32 should not be separated from the “all things” of v. 28, so that the good of v. 28 is actually defined by v. 32. Longenecker treats the Aqedah reading through Fitzmyer and Alan Segal, notes the enclitic γε, and observes that this is the only place in the New Testament where that particle stands with the masculine relative pronoun.⁵⁴ Three things need to be said here. First, the echo of Abraham is deliberate, and it makes the Father the one who actually does what Abraham was spared from doing. Second, the argument runs from the greater to the lesser, plain and simple: if God has already done the hard thing, the rest is a given. Third, the “all things” of v. 32 close the loop with v. 28. That is, the all things that work together for good are the very same all things that are given to us along with the Son.

Verses 33–34: Confession

τίς ἐγκαλέσει κατὰ ἐκλεκτῶν θεοῦ; θεὸς ὁ δικαιῶν· (Rom. 8:33). Schreiner reads the intent of the question as not denying that somebody may lodge an accusation against believers, but as denying that any accusation can stick. Moo basically says that there are at least five possible ways to punctuate this verse and the next one.⁵⁵ Then v. 34: τίς ὁ κατακρινῶν; Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς ὁ ἀποθανών, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐγερθείς, ὃς καί ἐστιν ἐν δεξιᾷ τοῦ θεοῦ, ὃς καὶ ἐντυγχάνει ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. (Rom. 8:34). Schreiner reads v. 34 as restating the question of v. 33 in other terms and notes that its answer does not really prepare the reader for v. 35. Cranfield takes the sentence beginning Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς as a statement rather than a further question and reads ὁ ἀποθανών, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐγερθείς and what follows as an ascending series. Moo reads the right hand from Psalm 110:1, one of the most quoted Old Testament verses in the entire New Testament next to Psalm 22.⁵⁶ Longenecker insists that the focus of 8:33–34, just like 8:31–32, is on the present.⁵⁷ Jewett follows the hypothesis developed by both Barrett and Fitzmyer on the punctuation here and, in his analysis of the unit, takes the four part confession of v. 34 as early kerygma. Having said that, Dunn reads the verse as another example of earliest Christology built on Psalm 110:1, and he says that it was very important for Hebrews, particularly in 7:25. Put simply he just says that the Judge’s right hand man is on our side.⁵⁸ My own exegesis of the verse follows the ascending series of the text championed by the late Dr. Kendell Easley. Died: the aorist participle, the past act. Rather, raised: the correction that will not let the death stand by itself. Who is at the right hand of God: the present tense, ἐστιν, the session of Psalm 110:1. Who also intercedes for us: we see the present tense again, ἐντυγχάνει, the same root as the Spirit’s intercession back in vv. 26–27.⁵⁹ So the answer to “who condemns” is not some past event. It is a present position and a present activity, and that is the bridge to the whole of the argument.

Verses 35–39: Verdict

τίς ἡμᾶς χωρίσει ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ Χριστοῦ; θλῖψις ἢ στενοχωρία ἢ διωγμὸς ἢ λιμὸς ἢ γυμνότης ἢ κίνδυνος ἢ μάχαιρα; καθὼς γέγραπται ὅτι ἕνεκεν σοῦ θανατούμεθα ὅλην τὴν ἡμέραν, ἐλογίσθημεν ὡς πρόβατα σφαγῆς. (Rom. 8:35–36). The catalogue is pretty concrete, and the citation of Psalm 44:22 makes it even more solid. That is, the people of God have always been sheep for the slaughter, so the present sufferings are not evidence of separation. In an odd way, suffering like this just proves the ordinary condition of the people who are loved. ἀλλʼ ἐν τούτοις πᾶσιν ὑπερνικῶμεν διὰ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντος ἡμᾶς. (Rom. 8:37). Schreiner reads ὑπερνικῶμεν as more than conquer and refuses any ultimate separation between the love of Christ in v. 35 and the love of God in v. 39.⁶⁰ So yes the conquering happens διὰ τοῦ ἀγαπήσαντος ἡμᾶς, but we also must see the aorist participle that points us right back to the cross of v. 32.⁶¹ πέπεισμαι γὰρ ὅτι οὔτε θάνατος οὔτε ζωὴ οὔτε ἄγγελοι οὔτε ἀρχαὶ οὔτε ἐνεστῶτα οὔτε μέλλοντα οὔτε δυνάμεις οὔτε ὕψωμα οὔτε βάθος οὔτε τις κτίσις ἑτέρα δυνήσεται ἡμᾶς χωρίσαι ἀπὸ τῆς ἀγάπης τοῦ θεοῦ τῆς ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ τῷ κυρίῳ ἡμῶν. (Rom. 8:38–39). Look at that. It shows ten items in five pairs and then a final catch all, “nor any other created thing,” so that the only thing not on the list is the Creator himself. Notice that the verdict goes right back to the vocabulary of the thesis. The “things to come” of v. 38 are the coming glory of v. 18, and they cannot separate us, because the one who was reckoning in v. 18 is now persuaded in v. 38. Paul ends where he ends, in Christ Jesus our Lord, and I think it is no accident that the last words of the paragraph are the first words of the chapter: ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ (Rom. 8:1). No condemnation and no separation are the same fact seen from the beginning and from the end.

Correlation: Romans 8 Read Beside Hebrews

The rubric asks for interpretive and thematic correlation, including intertextual links and biblical theological implications. I want to offer four links, each one either lexical or structural and each one checkable in the Greek. I am presenting these as correlation and not as argument, because this essay is a commentary on Romans. Hebrews is the neighbor here, not the subject: but it’s the focus of my dissertation.

First, the intercessor at the right hand (Rom. 8:34; Heb. 7:25). Paul’s four part confession, died, raised, at the right hand, interceding, is Psalm 110:1 with intercession attached. Hebrews attaches the same intercession to the same session with the same verb: ὅθεν καὶ σῴζειν εἰς τὸ παντελὲς δύναται τοὺς προσερχομένους διʼ αὐτοῦ τῷ θεῷ, πάντοτε ζῶν εἰς τὸ ἐντυγχάνειν ὑπὲρ αὐτῶν. (Heb. 7:25). Cockerill describes Christ’s present, enduring, postsacrificial ministry as intercession for those who come to God through him, and reads the verse as restating the burden of 7:24, that he is always living. Moo, for his part, reads the right hand of Rom. 8:34 from Psalm 110:1.⁶² And this link is not something I pulled out of thin air. Dunn, commenting on Romans, names Hebrews 7:25 as the place where the same early confession is developed.⁶³ The implication is simple: in both letters the answer to condemnation is a living intercessor, and in both the intercession rests on a completed death and a present session. Therefore, Romans says it in a courtroom and Hebrews says it in a sanctuary, but the two pictures are really one and the same, because the judge’s bench and the mercy seat are the same throne in this case.

Second, weakness and the two intercessions (Rom. 8:26; Heb. 4:15–16). Paul’s Spirit helps us in our ἀσθενείᾳ and intercedes for us. The high priest of Hebrews is able to sympathize with our weaknesses: οὐ γὰρ ἔχομεν ἀρχιερέα μὴ δυνάμενον συμπαθῆσαι ταῖς ἀσθενείαις ἡμῶν, πεπειρασμένον δὲ κατὰ πάντα καθʼ ὁμοιότητα χωρὶς ἁμαρτίας. προσερχώμεθα οὖν μετὰ παρρησίας τῷ θρόνῳ τῆς χάριτος, ἵνα λάβωμεν ἔλεος καὶ χάριν εὕρωμεν εἰς εὔκαιρον βοήθειαν. (Heb. 4:15–16).⁶⁴ Cockerill reads the underlying word as a bond that is a lot stronger than the English “sympathize,” reads the perfect participle “has been tempted.” That is, as temptation endured through the whole of Jesus’ life, it adds that his full experience of human temptation would have been useless had he not been without sin. He therefore reads 4:16 as the invitation to approach the throne of grace that follows from having such a priest.⁶⁵ So here is the implication. Romans gives the believer an intercessor within, the Spirit who groans in us, and Hebrews gives the believer an intercessor above, the Son who sympathizes with us. Both name the very same human condition, with weakness, as the occasion. In short, Dunn’s phrase for Romans, “a very present help within”, is the exact complement of Hebrews’ priest who has passed through the heavens.⁶⁶

Third, the Son not spared (Rom. 8:32; Gen. 22; Heb. 11:17–19). Paul reads the cross through Abraham’s offering: the Father did not spare his own Son. Cranfield, Schreiner and Longenecker all correctly see Genesis 22 here.⁶⁷ Hebrews reads the same offering from Abraham’s side of the altar. Cockerill takes λογισάμενος, “having reckoned,” in 11:19 as a causal participle that shows why Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac, reads the infinitive “to raise” as a present of general statement, and notes that the hypothetical raising of Isaac may have been only a temporal resurrection.⁶⁸ That is, the two letters read Genesis 22 from opposite ends. Romans stands with the Father who gives and does not spare. Hebrews stands with the father who offers and receives back, in a figure. Both make the not sparing the ground of assurance, Romans by the argument from greater to lesser, and Hebrews by the faith that reckons God able to raise the dead. The figure Abraham received is the fact Paul’s readers are standing on.

Fourth, suffering into glory, many sons (Rom. 8:17–18, 29–30; Heb. 2:10). Paul’s chain ends in conformity to the image of the Son: firstborn among many brothers. Cranfield reads that phrase as God’s purpose in foreordaining.⁶⁹ Hebrews states the very same movement as “fittingness”: Ἔπρεπεν γὰρ αὐτῷ, διʼ ὃν τὰ πάντα καὶ διʼ οὗ τὰ πάντα, πολλοὺς υἱοὺς εἰς δόξαν ἀγαγόντα τὸν ἀρχηγὸν τῆς σωτηρίας αὐτῶν διὰ παθημάτων τελειῶσαι. (Heb. 2:10). In both letters the Son’s own road through suffering to glory is the road along which the many are brought. The firstborn language of Romans and the many sons of Hebrews are the same family, seen once from the Son’s side and once from the sons’ side.

Conclusion

Romans 8:18–39 begins with a reckoning and ends with a verdict, and in between it teaches the church how to groan. It is ok to suffer, it just means we are doing it right. Creation groans toward its freedom as it should, believers groan toward the redemption of their bodies as they should, and the Spirit groans on their behalf when they do not know what to say. None of the three groanings should be seen as despair or that we have failed God and that he is punishing us. Why? Because each one is a birth pang, and the chain of v. 30 has already spoken the birth in the past tense. Paul turns from exposition to the courtroom, and the answer to every single charge is not what the believer has done but where Christ now is: died, raised, at the right hand, interceding. Everything in salvation points to Jesus and His work, not the believers. The bottom line is that the sufferings of the present time, weighed against the glory to come, weigh nothing at all. So yes, we still suffer and we still die. But none of it is in vain, and none of it can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Rom. 8:39). Magnify Him.

Bibliography

Aland, Kurt, et al., eds. Novum Testamentum Graece. 28th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2012.

Balz, Horst, and Gerhard Schneider, eds. Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990–1993.

Bauer, Walter, Frederick W. Danker, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich. A Greek- English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature. 3rd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Bauernfeind, Otto. “τυγχάνω, ἐντυγχάνω, ὑπερεντυγχάνω, ἔντευξις.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 8. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Burke, Trevor J. Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor. New Studies in Biblical Theology 22. Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006.

Calvin, John. Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans. Translated and edited by John Owen. Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010.

Chrysostom, John. Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 11, edited by Philip Schaff. New York: Christian Literature Company, 1889.

Cockerill, Gareth Lee. The Epistle to the Hebrews. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.

Cranfield, C. E. B. A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans. Vol. 1. International Critical Commentary. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975.

Delling, Gerhard. “ἀπαρχή.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964.

Dunn, James D. G. Romans 1–8. Word Biblical Commentary 38A. Dallas: Word, 1988.

Ellingworth, Paul. The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993.

Hengel, Martin. Studies in Early Christology. London: T&T Clark, 2004.

Jewett, Robert. Romans: A Commentary. Hermeneia. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007.

Kruse, Colin G. Paul’s Letter to the Romans. Pillar New Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012.

Ladd, George Eldon. The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974.

Lane, William L. Hebrews 1–8. Word Biblical Commentary 47A. Dallas: Word, 1991.

Lewis, C. S. A Grief Observed. New York: HarperOne, 1996.

Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: HarperOne, 2001.

Lewis, C. S. The Problem of Pain. New York: HarperOne, 2001.

Lewis, C. S. The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses. New York: HarperOne, 2001.

Longenecker, Richard N. The Epistle to the Romans. New International Greek Testament Commentary. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.

Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene A. Nida, eds. Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains. 2nd ed. New York: United Bible Societies, 1996.

Moo, Douglas J. The Letter to the Romans. 2nd ed. New International Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018.

Piper, John. Future Grace. Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1995.

Schneider, Johannes. “στενάζω, στεναγμός, συστενάζω.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 7. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971.

Schreiner, Thomas R. Romans. 2nd ed. Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018.

Schweizer, Eduard. “υἱοθεσία.” In Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, vol. 8. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972.

Thielman, Frank. Romans. Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018.

Vos, Geerhardus. The Pauline Eschatology. Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1930.

Notes

1. Lewis makes the same refusal from the other side: “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 91. ↩
2. The force of εἴπερ is important here because Paul joins all Christians with participation in Christ’s suffering: εἴπερ συμπάσχομεν ἵνα καὶ συνδοξασθῶμεν, “if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.” If we look closely we can see that both of the principal verbs contain the prefix συν, “with.” The correspondence is very intentional: συμπάσχομεν, “we suffer with,” is answered by συνδοξασθῶμεν, “we may be glorified with.” In short, Paul does not describe suffering and glory as two totally separated experiences for us. That is, they both occur in union with Christ. It should also be noted that in this case the ἵνα clause connects the two by placing shared suffering in relation to shared glorification. So the Greek shows that it is not just suffering to glory, but rather from suffering with Christ to being glorified with Christ. That distinction matters, because we are not just suffering alone. That is, Jesus is suffering with us and we are suffering with Jesus. I am not alone in this interpretation. Moo, for example, takes the γάρ of 8:18 as introducing “the entire paragraph that follows, as an elaboration of the sequence of suffering and glory attributed to believers in v. 17b,” and Schreiner also reads vv. 15–16 as confirming “that believers are children of God” and v. 17 as the step from children to heirs. Burke notes the same conjunction from the adoption side: “Just as Jesus, God’s Son, suffered, so the adopted son is called upon to share in Jesus’ sufferings.” Douglas J. Moo, The Letter to the Romans, 2nd ed., New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 533; Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, 2nd ed., Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018), 421; Trevor J. Burke, Adopted into God’s Family: Exploring a Pauline Metaphor, New Studies in Biblical Theology 22 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 95–96. ↩
3. Paul marks the movement of Romans 8:22–26 through some interesting language. Creation συστενάζει, for example, “groans together” (Rom. 8:22); even as believers ἐν ἑαυτοῖς στενάζομεν, “groan within ourselves” (Rom. 8:23); and the Spirit intercedes στεναγμοῖς ἀλαλήτοις, “with groanings too deep for words” (Rom. 8:26). That is a lot of groaning! We also must see that the shared στεν root ties all three of these together. That is, creation “groans” because it awaits liberation from the corruption of sin. Believers groan because, although they possess the Spirit as ἀπαρχή, the “firstfruits,” they still await τὴν ἀπολύτρωσιν τοῦ σώματος ἡμῶν, “the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). Having said all of that, the Spirit’s groaning is a different kind of groaning. Why? Because of course we know that the Spirit, as God, is not awaiting redemption, but he enters the weakness of believers and intercedes for them. Based upon all of these facts, this repetition in the Greek reveals more clearly to us Paul’s theology of the present age. That is, we can see that he thinks redemption is genuinely present, but its consummation, or final revealing if you will, remains at some point in the future. Again, in my research I did not happen upon these ideas myself. Cranfield reads v. 22 as “the whole creation … groaning and travailing” and v. 23 as the turn from “the sub-human creation” to believers; Moo reads v. 22 as “concluding the subparagraph on the hope of the creation” by returning “to the theme with which the paragraph began (v. 19): the longing of creation for deliverance”; Longenecker reads 8:23–25 “as a major implication of what it means for a person to be ‘in Christ’”; Schreiner states “the main burden of these two verses” as the Spirit’s counterbalancing “the handicap of believers in prayer”; and Dunn locates the help “not as of a distant intercessor in heaven … but as a very present help within.” The Exegetical Dictionary puts the three groanings under one heading: the verb and noun “are usually used metonymically as strong expressions for human lament and powerless suffering in situations that people cannot change on their own,” and when used of prayer they “characterize not the content of prayer so much as its profundity and intensity.” C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, vol. 1, International Critical Commentary (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1975), 416; Moo, Romans, 540; Richard N. Longenecker, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016), 726; Schreiner, Romans, 430, 436; James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1–8, Word Biblical Commentary 38A (Dallas: Word, 1988), 492; Horst Balz and Gerhard Schneider, eds., Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, 3 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990– 1993), 3:272. ↩
4. Schreiner reads vv. 20–22 as Paul’s explanation (γάρ) of “why the creation anticipates so avidly the future revelation of God’s sons and daughters”: “the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own choice,” and “the return of nature to its purpose will coincide with the freedom of the children of God.” Dunn hears in “futility” “the same sense of futility of life which found expression in Jewish thought most clearly in Ecclesiastes,” and reads v. 21 as “eschatological liberation, liberation from the slavery of corruption.” On the referent of κτίσις Longenecker lists eight proposals and judges that Cranfield “has most cogently, as well as most concisely, evaluated” them by “process of elimination.” Schreiner, Romans, 426–28; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 488; Longenecker, Romans, 720. ↩
5. Λογίζομαι is a verb of calculation rather than feeling, which seems to get imported into the meaning from the English “I am reckoning” or “I am assuming something to be the case based on XYZ.” Cranfield reads it as “a firm conviction reached by rational thought on the basis of the gospel.” Longenecker notes that λογίζομαι ὅτι “functions in an epistolary fashion” and that τὰ παθήματα τοῦ νῦν καιροῦ “is a general reference,” not a pointer to one persecution, which is just a fancy way to say that the reckoning is not a feeling, and its object is the ordinary suffering of the age, not a new crisis. That is what lets v. 18 function as a thesis for everything through v. 39. That is, Paul is making a claim about how the whole present time of suffering is set against the coming glory. Moo spends a great deal of time talking about the image of the scale. This is to show that the sufferings here are in fact weighed against the glory, and “so ‘weighty,’ so transcendently wonderful, is this glory that suffering flies in the air as if it had no weight at all.” It should also be noted that he reads the glory as revealed “to us,” so that believers are not spectators of it but the ones toward whom all of it is directed. Thielman agrees that “the notion of calculation implicit in Paul’s use of the term translated ‘reckon,’ then, is probably intentional”; Louw and Nida file the verb under holding “a view or ... an opinion with regard to something”; and Chrysostom already saw that Paul “does not allow that the afflictions were light; but still he mingles comfort with them by the compensation which good things to come afford.” Cranfield, Romans, 1:408; Longenecker, Romans, 718; Moo, Romans, 533; Frank Thielman, Romans, Zondervan Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 401; Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, eds., Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 2nd ed. (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), §31.1; John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, First Series, vol. 11, ed. Philip Schaff (New York: Christian Literature Company, 1889), 443. ↩
6. Verses 38–39 end with “any other created thing,” so that the only thing that is not named is actually the Creator himself. I thought it also striking how Schreiner reads ὑπερνικῶμεν in v. 37 as more “than conquer.” I think he is correct to refuse interpretations that say there can be separation between the love of Christ in v. 35 and the love of God in v. 39. In doing so he has a timeless quote that we know is true, but this section gives us a prooftext for his statement that “No ultimate separation should be erected between Christ’s love and God’s love.” Regardless, the verdict the Greek gives us here closes this section where the chapter began. That is, ἐν Χριστῷ Ἰησοῦ (8:1). The bottom line is that God sees it all from the start to the finish, and he is really the one in the driver’s seat, which should be a great relief. Because if we were in charge we would probably fail; in this case no failure is possible. Schreiner, Romans, 456. ↩
7. These four members taken together form an ascending series, and the last two are in the present tense. Cranfield takes the sentence beginning Χριστὸς Ἰησοῦς as a statement rather than some kind of additional question. In doing so he correctly reads ὁ ἀποθανών, μᾶλλον δὲ ἐγερθείς and what follows as “an ascending series.” Schreiner reads v. 34 as restating “in other terms the question from verse 33.” Jewett, following Barrett and Fitzmyer on the punctuation, hears early kerygma in the four-part confession; Dunn calls the verse “another example of earliest Christology,” remarks that the thought “was very important for Hebrews (particularly 7:25),” and in his exposition puts it plainly: “the Judge’s ‘right-hand man’ is on our side.” The verb of intercession, ἐντυγχάνει, is the root already used of the Spirit in vv. 26–27, so that the passage names two intercessors, one within and one from above. Hengel calls 8:33f. “a high-point of the entire letter” that “summarizes in hymnic prose the meaning of ὁ θεὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν,” and he agrees with Cranfield that v. 34 “cannot, therefore, with Zahn and Lohfink be taken as a rhetorical question, but has basic assertatory-homological meaning.” Thielman reads the same “ascending series of affirmations,” and Calvin drew the pastoral conclusion long ago: “he then who seeks hereafter to condemn us, must bring back Christ himself to death again.” Cranfield, Romans, 1:438; Schreiner, Romans, 454; Robert Jewett, Romans: A Commentary, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 532, 541–43; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 504, 511; Martin Hengel, Studies in Early Christology (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 138, 139–40; Thielman, Romans, 424; John Calvin, Commentary on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, trans. and ed. John Owen (Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software, 2010), 324. ↩
8. Longenecker treats the whole of 8:18–30 under the theme of the hope of glory, noting that Henning Paulsen drew attention to that theme’s centrality, and reads 8:23–25 “as a major implication of what it means for a person to be ‘in Christ.’” Longenecker, Romans, 716, 726. ↩
9. Schreiner’s section headings are “Hope of a New Creation (8:18–25),” “Hope in Prayer (8:26–27),” “Hope of Glorification (8:28–30)” and “Certainty of Hope in Suffering (8:31–39).” Schreiner, Romans, 424, 434, 440, 448. ↩
10. The return of 5:3–10 in 8:18–39 is noticed by the commentators at two points. Dunn reads the “patience” of 8:25 as confirming “that Paul’s thought is moving along the same lines as in 5:3–5,” and Cranfield reads the argument of 8:32 as “similar both in form and content to that of 5:9–10.” Dunn, Romans 1–8, 476; Cranfield, Romans, 1:436. ↩
11. Moo reads the sufferings of 8:18 as weighed against the glory on a scale, “so ‘weighty,’ so transcendently wonderful, is this glory that suffering flies in the air as if it had no weight at all”; on the Spirit as present proof, Dunn locates the help of 8:26 “not as of a distant intercessor in heaven … but as a very present help within.” Thielman: “a sober calculation of their relative weight yields this result (cf. 2 Cor 4:17).” Moo, Romans, 533; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 492; Thielman, Romans, 401. ↩
12. Schreiner, Romans, 421; Moo, Romans, 533. ↩
13. Moo, Romans, 560. ↩
14. Lewis: “the point in Christianity which gives us the greatest shock is the statement that by attaching ourselves to Christ, we can ‘become Sons of God,’” and later, in one line, “The Son of God became a man to enable men to become sons of God.” Schweizer explains why the word matters: “The choice of the word shows already that the sonship is not regarded as a natural one but as a sonship conferred by God’s act.” Burke states the tension exactly: “The alpha point, the already, is the present reality of the ‘Spirit of huiothesia’ (Rom. 8:15), which believers now have; but the omega point, its completion, still lies ahead.” C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 156, 178; Eduard Schweizer, “υἱοθεσία,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 8:399; Burke, Adopted into God’s Family, 44. ↩
15. Lewis ends the same sermon with the picture the essay needs for a hope that is not yet seen: “The door on which we have been knocking all our lives will open at last.” Vos hears the same posture in the vocabulary: “The etymological coloring of such words as ‘apokaradokia’ and ‘apekdechesthai’ in itself bears witness to the eager state of mind depicted.” C. S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory: And Other Addresses (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 41; Geerhardus Vos, The Pauline Eschatology (Princeton, NJ: Geerhardus Vos, 1930), 30. ↩
16. Moo reads vv. 24–25 as the return to the section’s central theme, the need in this age of tension between the already and the not yet for earnest waiting. Ladd reads the gift of the Spirit as “a ‘down-payment’ (2 Cor. 1:22; 5:5; Eph. 1:14) and a ‘first fruit’ (Rom. 8:23) of the eschatological inheritance.” Moo, Romans, 544; George Eldon Ladd, The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974), 271. ↩
17. Cranfield reads the argument of 8:32 as “similar both in form and content to that of 5:9–10.” Piper builds a whole chapter on that logic: “If this is true, says the logic of heaven, then God will most surely give all things to those for whom he gave his Son.” Cranfield, Romans, 1:436; John Piper, Future Grace (Sisters, OR: Multnomah, 1995), 111. ↩
18. Lewis adds the caution that belongs with any theology of suffering: “No doubt Pain as God’s megaphone is a terrible instrument; it may lead to final and unrepented rebellion.” Paul’s sufferings of the present time are weighed, not romanticized. Lewis, Problem of Pain, 93. ↩
19. Moo reads “the sufferings of this present time” as the whole range of suffering in the present age and not persecution alone, and takes “this present time” as the age that Christ has conquered but within which Christians still live. Chrysostom read the phrase the same way: “For these sufferings, whatever they are, are attached to our present life.” Moo, Romans, 533–34; Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 443. ↩
20. Hengel: Rom. 8:33f. “summarizes in hymnic prose the meaning of ὁ θεὸς ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν (8:31), which as a summation encapsulates his entire theology.” Schreiner, Romans, 448; Longenecker, Romans, 752; Moo, Romans, 560; Hengel, Studies in Early Christology, 138. ↩
21. Jewett, Romans, 532; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 498. ↩
22. Hengel reaches the same verdict: v. 34 “cannot, therefore, with Zahn and Lohfink be taken as a rhetorical question, but has basic assertatory-homological meaning.” Cranfield, Romans, 1:438; Hengel, Studies in Early Christology, 139–40. ↩
23. Vos: “In Rom. 8:19–23 the final stage appears as a painful birth-process.” Thielman notes that the Spirit’s “groans” “recall the groaning ([συν-] στενάζω) of creation and believers (8:22–23),” and that the word “appears in the LXX description of how God heard the ‘groaning’ of his people in slavery in Egypt (Exod 2:24; cf. Acts 7:34).” Cranfield, Romans, 1:416; Moo, Romans, 540; Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 84; Thielman, Romans, 407. ↩
24. BDAG opens the entry by noting that λογίζομαι is “prim. a mathematical and accounting term, then of cognitive processes,” and gives as its first sense “to determine by mathematical process, reckon, calculate” (597). Romans 8:18 itself is placed under the third sense, “to hold a view about someth., think, believe, be of the opinion,” with the ὅτι clause following (598). The point for the essay is that even the “opinion” sense is a conclusion somebody reached by adding things up. Louw and Nida place it with φρονέω and κρίνω, “to hold a view, to have an opinion, to consider, to regard.” Thielman: “Paul is not merely saying that he ‘considers’ or ‘believes’ the present suffering of Christians to be outweighed by their future glorification ... but that a sober calculation of their relative weight yields this result.” Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), s.v. “λογίζομαι,” 597, 598; Louw and Nida, Lexicon, §31.1; Thielman, Romans, 401. ↩
25. Cranfield: “a firm conviction reached by rational thought on the basis of the gospel.” Cranfield, Romans, 1:408. ↩
26. Longenecker, Romans, 717–18. ↩
27. Moo: “so ‘weighty,’ so transcendently wonderful, is this glory that suffering flies in the air as if it had no weight at all.” Moo, Romans, 533. ↩
28. Lewis, and I use him for his uncanny pastorial ability, puts the same direction of the glory in plain English. The weight of glory is the prospect of being “a real ingredient in the divine happiness … to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son,” and what we really want is “to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” Thielman reads the εἰς the same way: the glory “comes to them from the outside and transforms them.” Chrysostom: Paul “does not say, that which is to be, but ‘which shall be revealed in us,’ as if already existing but unrevealed.” Lewis, Weight of Glory, 39, 42; Thielman, Romans, 401; Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 443. ↩
29. BDAG derives ἀποκαραδοκία from κάρα, “head,” and δοκέω, “think, imagine,” and notes that the word is found only in Christian writers, and glosses it “eager expectation,” so that ἡ ἀποκαραδοκία τῆς κτίσεως is “the eagerly awaiting creation” (Ro 8:19). The picture we should gather here is that a head stretched forward to see what is coming. Think of pulling up to an intersection and being forced to roll the window down due to a foggy window to see outside the right way to go. Vos: the word’s “etymological coloring ... in itself bears witness to the eager state of mind depicted.” BDAG, s.v. “ἀποκαραδοκία,” 112; Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 30. ↩
30. Schreiner, Romans, 426–28. ↩
31. Longenecker, Romans, 720. ↩
32. BDAG defines ματαιότης as the “state of being without use or value, emptiness, futility, purposelessness, transitoriness,” and renders τῇ ματαιότητι ἡ κτίσις ὑπετάγη as “the creation was subjected to frustration” (Ro 8:20). BDAG, s.v. “ματαιότης,” 621. ↩
33. This is what Lewis was after when he wrote, “There are no ordinary people,” and, a page earlier, that “the load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken.” Creation is waiting for people like that to be unveiled. Lewis, Weight of Glory, 45, 46. ↩
34. Cranfield, Romans, 1:416; Moo, Romans, 540. ↩
35. BDAG glosses συνωδίνω (from ὠδίνω, “be in pain” as in childbirth) as “suffer agony together” and renders the clause “all creation lets out a groan in common pain” (Ro 8:22). Schneider reads the three sighings of the passage as one movement: “To the sighing of creation and the children of God there then corresponds the sighing of the Spirit, v. 26f.” Vos: “the final stage appears as a painful birth-process.” BDAG, s.v. “συνωδίνω,” 977; Johannes Schneider, “στενάζω, στεναγμός, συστενάζω,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1971), 7:602; Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 84. ↩
36. Longenecker, Romans, 726; Schreiner, Romans, 430–32. ↩
37. I traced ἀπαρχή to ἀπάρχομαι, “make a beginning” in sacrifice, originally “of hair cut from the forehead and cast into the fire,” hence “beginning of a sacrifice,” which gives the first sense as the cultic technical term “first fruits, first portion” of any kind, consecrated to the deity before the rest could be put to any kind of secular use. That background is why the word carries a promise at all for us: that is, a first portion assumes a harvest behind it. Louw and Nida define it as “the first portion of something which has been set aside and offered to God before the rest of the substance or objects can be used.” Delling notes that in Rom. 8:23 “the relationship of giver and recipient is reversed and ἀπαρχή is the first-fruits of God to man ... The gift of the pneuma is only provisional. It is only the beginning which will ultimately be followed by υἱοθεσία.” The Exegetical Dictionary calls the Spirit here “an eschatological pledge (cf. 2 Cor 5:5 and → ἀρραβών with the same meaning in 2 Cor 1:22).” Vos and Ladd both read the phrase as the first-fruits of the resurrection inheritance. BDAG, s.v. “ἀπαρχή,” 98; Louw and Nida, Lexicon, §53.23; Gerhard Delling, “ἀπαρχή,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), 1:485; EDNT, 1:116; Vos, Pauline Eschatology, 165; Ladd, Presence of the Future, 271. ↩
38. BDAG calls υἱοθεσία “a legal t.t. of ‘adoption’ of children,” used by Paul “only in a transferred sense of a transcendent filial relationship between God and humans,” and it states the tension of the passage in one sentence: “The believers enter into full enjoyment of their υἱοθεσία only when the time of fulfillment releases them fr. the earthly body vs. 23.” Schweizer: “God follows a uniform course in His dealings with believers, so that sanctification acquires its meaning from the goal of the perfect and definitive consummation in which our body ... will be redeemed from the conflicts of unbelief and error and death, so that faith becomes sight.” Burke: “the omega point, its completion, still lies ahead: ‘as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons’ (Rom. 8:23).” The Exegetical Dictionary: the firstfruits of the Spirit “establishes in us the anticipation of the full consequences of this adoption, the ‘redemption of our bodies’ (v. 23).” BDAG, s.v. “υἱοθεσία,” 1024; Schweizer, “υἱοθεσία,” 8:399; Burke, Adopted into God’s Family, 44; EDNT, 3:381. ↩
39. Moo, Romans, 544; Longenecker, Romans, 728. ↩
40. συναντιλαμβάνομαι, basically just means to “take part with,” hence “to come to the aid of, be of assistance to, help,” and it renders the clause “the Spirit helps us in our weakness” (Ro 8:26). The compound ὑπερεντυγχάνω it glosses “to intercede in behalf of another, plead, intercede,” noting that some manuscripts add ὑπὲρ ἡμῶν. Calvin felt the force of the compound: “there is great force in the Greek word συναντιλαμβάνεται, which means that the Spirit takes on himself a part of the burden, by which our weakness is oppressed; so that he not only helps and succours us, but lifts us up; as though he went under the burden with us.” Thielman illustrates it from Luke 10:38– 42, where Martha “wanted someone to labor beside her to help relieve her stress and lighten her load. This is precisely the role that Paul gives to the Spirit here.” Kruse: “the Spirit’s groaning is clearly of a different order ... his groaning is associated with intercession for believers.” BDAG, s.v. “συναντιλαμβάνομαι,” 965; s.v. “ὑπερεντυγχάνω,” 1033; Calvin, Romans, 311; Thielman, Romans, 407; Colin G. Kruse, Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Pillar New Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 352. ↩
41. Schreiner, Romans, 434–36. ↩
42. Longenecker, Romans, 732. ↩
43. Moo, Romans, 545–48; Cranfield, Romans, 1:421–24. ↩
44. Dunn: “not as of a distant intercessor in heaven … but as a very present help within.” Jewett, Romans, 521–25; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 476–80, 492. ↩
45. Lewis describes what that not knowing feels like from the inside: “A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside.” Paul’s answer is that the door is not the last word, because the Spirit is already praying where the believer cannot. Chrysostom noticed the grace in the grammar: “In order that the learner might not feel any shame at his ignorance, he does not say, ye know not, but, ‘we know not.’” C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed (New York: HarperOne, 1996), 6; Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 446. ↩
46. BDAG defines στεναγμός as “an involuntary expression of great concern or stress, sigh, groan, groaning,” with στεναγμοὶ ἀλάλητοι of Ro 8:26 as its plural example, and στενάζω as “to express oneself involuntarily in the face of an undesirable circumstance, sigh, groan,” with στενάζω ἐν ἑαυτῷ, “sigh to oneself,” for Ro 8:23. Schneider is firm that the Spirit’s groans “are not unspoken, wordless sighs but sighs which cannot be grasped in words,” and that “God understands the language of the Spirit.” Louw and Nida: “to groan or sigh as the result of deep concern or stress.” The Exegetical Dictionary: such groaning characterizes “not the content of prayer so much as its profundity and intensity ... God answers such prayer, since it constitutes a cry of extreme distress.” BDAG, s.v. “στεναγμός,” 942; s.v. “στενάζω,” 942; Schneider, “στενάζω,” 7:602; Louw and Nida, Lexicon, §25.143; EDNT, 3:272. ↩
47. Schreiner, Romans, 440; Cranfield, Romans, 1:424; Moo, Romans, 548. ↩
48. Jewett, Romans, 526. ↩
49. BDAG: συνεργέω, “to engage in cooperative endeavor, work together with, assist, help”; with the goal marked by εἰς, as in Ro 8:28, it “means assist (or work with) someone to obtain someth. or bring someth. about.” BDAG, s.v. “συνεργέω,” 969. ↩
50. BDAG gives the first sense of προγινώσκω as “to know beforehand or in advance, have foreknowledge (of),” adds that “closely connected is the idea of choice that suggests foreknowledge,” and then places Ro 8:29 under the second sense, “choose beforehand τινά someone.” Ibid., s.v. “προγινώσκω,” 866. ↩
51. Schreiner, Romans, 444; Cranfield, Romans, 1:432. ↩
52. Moo, Romans, 556. ↩
53. Ibid., 560; Longenecker, Romans, 752. ↩
54. Piper: “what puts Romans 8:32 in a class by itself is the logic that gives rise to the promise and makes it as solid and unshakable as God’s love for his infinitely admirable Son.” Cranfield, Romans, 1:436–37; Schreiner, Romans, 450–52; Longenecker, Romans, 754; Piper, Future Grace, 111. ↩
55. Schreiner, Romans, 454; Moo, Romans, 562–63. ↩
56. Schreiner, Romans, 454–55; Cranfield, Romans, 1:438; Moo, Romans, 563–65. ↩
57. Longenecker, Romans, 755–56. ↩
58. Dunn: “another example of earliest Christology”; the thought “was very important for Hebrews (particularly 7:25)”; “the Judge’s ‘right-hand man’ is on our side.” Jewett, Romans, 532, 541–43; Dunn, Romans 1–8, 503–4, 511. ↩
59. BDAG shows Ro 8:27, Ro 8:34 and Hebrews 7:25 side by side under ἐντυγχάνω 1a, “approach or appeal to someone,” in the construction ὑπέρ τινος, “plead for someone”: “of intercession by the Holy Spirit … Ro 8:27. Of Christ’s intercession Ro 8:34; Hebrews 7:25.” I hope to draw some of this into my dissertation as a result. Regardless, that one lexicon line is the correlation. The Exegetical Dictionary reads the verb from “the conceptual world of the ruler’s court ... where accusations against another and where requests on behalf of another are made with the hope of receiving a hearing.” Bauernfeind says why the two intercessions belong together: since Paul uses the verb nowhere else and Hebrews 7:25 calls it “the work of the High-priest who ever lives,” the statements “rest on an underlying theological idea which, applicable like παράκλητος ... either to Christ or the Spirit, had already received a fixed form.” His summary: “the believer may know that he is not left in helpless isolation. There is an ἐντυγχάνειν for him which reaches up to the very top.” Louw and Nida gloss the verb “to ask for something with urgency and intensity: ‘to plead, to beg, to appeal to, to petition.’” Lane: Rom 8:34 stands “in a passage that appears to belong to the tradition,” and Michel suggested that Rom 8:34 and Heb 7:25 “may preserve variant forms of an early Christian confession that regarded the exalted Christ as the ‘Advocate of the community.’” Chrysostom: the intercession “is not a sign of inferiority, but of love only.” BDAG, s.v. “ἐντυγχάνω,” 341; EDNT, 1:461; Otto Bauernfeind, “τυγχάνω, ἐντυγχάνω, ὑπερεντυγχάνω, ἔντευξις,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972), 8:243; Louw and Nida, Lexicon, §33.169; William L. Lane, Hebrews 1–8, Word Biblical Commentary 47A (Dallas: Word, 1991), 190; Chrysostom, Homilies on Romans, 454. ↩
60. BDAG takes ὑπερνικάω “as a heightened form of νικᾶν,” “prevail completely,” and renders ὑπερνικῶμεν “we are winning a most glorious victory” (Ro 8:37). BDAG, s.v. “ὑπερνικάω,” 1034. ↩
61. “No ultimate separation should be erected between Christ’s love and God’s love.” Schreiner, Romans, 456. ↩
62. Ellingworth: “Here and in Rom. 8:27, 34 ἐντυγχάνω is used ... of action on behalf of another; only here and in Rom. 8:34 with Jesus as subject,” and “there is no logical or theological reason why the author should not have linked the one sacrifice and the constant intercession as naturally as Paul does in Rom. 8:34.” Lane: “With his exaltation to heaven, Jesus became the permanent intercessor for his people.” Gareth Lee Cockerill, The Epistle to the Hebrews, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012), 334–37; Moo, Romans, 564; Paul Ellingworth, The Epistle to the Hebrews: A Commentary on the Greek Text, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), 392; Lane, Hebrews 1–8, 190. ↩
63. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 504. ↩
64. BDAG: συμπαθέω, “to have/show sympathy with, sympathize with,” construed with the dative of the thing, ταῖς ἀσθενείαις ἡμῶν, in Hb 4:15. The weakness is the same noun Paul uses of prayer in Ro 8:26, τῇ ἀσθενείᾳ ἡμῶν. Ellingworth paraphrases the verse, “Our high priest can feel with us in our weaknesses, because he has been tempted in all respects as we are,” and reads it as saying “that Christ’s earthly life gives him inner understanding of human experience, and thus makes him ready and able to give active help.” BDAG, s.v. “συμπαθέω,” 958; Ellingworth, Hebrews, 268. ↩
65. Cockerill, Hebrews, 225–27. ↩
66. Dunn, Romans 1–8, 492. ↩
67. Cranfield, Romans, 1:436; Schreiner, Romans, 450; Longenecker, Romans, 754. ↩
68. Cockerill, Hebrews, 554–59. ↩
69. Cranfield, Romans, 1:432. ↩