Romans 8:33-34 Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifies.… Let your first act be an act of reliance upon Christ for pardon; let this act be so repeated by you day after day, as to ripen into a habit of reliance, and then shall we confidently look for the marks and evidences of your regeneration. And these marks may at length so multiply upon you — they might so brighten that you shall begin to suspect, nay, further, to guess, nay, further still, to be assured, and to read the full assurance that you are indeed one of the elect of God. If you are wise you do not meddle with the doctrine of election at the outset, whatever comfort or establishment of heart you may draw from it in the ulterior stages of your spiritual progress. When you go forth on the career of Christianity you look at the free offer of the gospel. You perceive it to be addressed to you, as well as to others. You yield a compliance therewith. You enter into peace with God in obedience to His own call, whereby He now beseeches you to be reconciled to Him. It were great presumption indeed for you to start with the assurance that your name is in the book of God's decrees, which He keeps beside Himself in heaven; but no presumption at all to set out with the assurance that you are spoken to in that book of God's declarations, which He circulates through the world. The "look unto Me all" and the "come unto Me all" and the "whosoever will let him come" — these are sayings in which one and all of the human family have most obvious interest. You presume nothing when you presume upon the honesty of these sayings. And if, furthermore, you proceed upon them, and forthwith enter upon that walk by which they who receive Christ, and receive along with Him power to become the children of God, separate themselves from the world; and pray for grace that you may be upheld and carried forward therein, and combine a life of activity with a life of prayer, then, and after perhaps many months of successful perseverance, you may talk of your election, because now you can read it, not in the book of life that is in heaven, but in the book of your own history upon earth. Even the apostle went no higher than this when judging of the state of his own converts. Their election was to him not a thing of presumption, but a thing of inference — drawn, not from what he guessed, but from what he saw — brought, not from those third heavens which he had at one time visited, but lying palpably before him (1 Thessalonians 1:4-7). (T. Chalmers, D.D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God's elect? It is God that justifieth.WEB: Who could bring a charge against God's chosen ones? It is God who justifies. |
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