Romans 8:29

f. These verses give the proof that God in all things co-operates for good with the called. They show how His gracious purpose, beginning with foreknowledge and foreordination perfects all that concerns them on to the final glory. οὓς προέγνω : those whom He foreknew in what sense? as persons who would answer His love with love? This is at least irrelevant, and alien to Paul's general mode of thought. That salvation begins with God, and begins in eternity, are fundamental ideas with him, which he here applies to Christians, without raising any of the problems involved in the relation of the human will to the Divine. He comes upon these in chap. 9, but not here. Yet we may be sure that προέγνω has the pregnant sense that γιγνώσκω (יָדַע) often has in Scripture: e.g., in Psalms 1:6; Amos 3:2 : hence we may render, “those of whom God took knowledge from eternity” (Ephesians 1:4). καὶ προώρισεν κ. τ. λ., “he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of His Son”. This conformity is the last stage in salvation, as προέγνω is the first. The image is in import not merely spiritual but eschatological. The Son of God is the Lord who appeared to Paul by Damascus: to be conformed to His image is to share His glory as well as His holiness. The Pauline Gospel is hopelessly distorted when this is forgotten. εἰς τὸ εἶναι αὐτὸν πρωτότοκον ἐν πολλοῖς ἀδελφοῖς : the end in all this is the exaltation of Christ. It is implied in πρωτότοκον that He also is regarded as only having attained the fulness of His Son-ship through the resurrection (cf. Romans 1:4, and Colossians 1:18 πρωτότοκος ἐκ τῶν νεκρῶν). The idea of Christ's dignity as firstborn among many brethren who all owe their salvation to Him is sublimely interpreted in Hebrews 2:10-13. The Apostle now resumes the series of the Divine acts in our salvation. οὓς δὲ προώρισεν, τούτους καὶ ἐκάλεσεν. The eternal foreordination appears in time as “calling,” of course as effectual calling: where salvation is contemplated as the work of God alone (as here) there can be no breakdown in its processes. The next stages are summarily indicated. ἐδικαίωσεν : God in Jesus Christ forgave our sins, and accepted us as righteous in His sight; ungodly as we had been, He put us right with Himself. In that, everything else is included. The whole argument of chaps. 6 8 has been that justification and the new life of holiness in the Spirit are inseparable experiences. Hence Paul can take one step to the end, and write οὓς δὲ ἐδικαίωσεν, τούτους καὶ ἐδόξασεν. Yet the tense in the last word is amazing. It is the most daring anticipation of faith that even the N.T. contains: the life is not to be taken out of it by the philosophical consideration that with God there is neither before nor after.