James Nisbet Commentary - Romans 8:22 - 8:22

Online Resource Library

Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | Download

James Nisbet Commentary - Romans 8:22 - 8:22


(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)

This Chapter Verse Commentaries:

CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE

‘For we know.’

Rom_8:22

St. Paul was no mean man. If ever a strong man lived, that man was St. Paul. And, more than that, he was a man who had sacrificed a great deal for what he had believed. Brought up at the feet of Gamaliel; Pharisee of the Pharisees; he lost all for the sake of Christ. Nor was he a mere enthusiast. For thirty years that man lived suffering all kinds of persecutions for his faith. And he was a man of no mean experience. He was converted by Christ Himself—the only one after the thief. He was caught up into the seventh heaven, and heard unspeakable things. And he could raise the dead. That is the man he was—sure about his faith.

I. He knew Whom he had believed.—It is not enough that a man should know of his salvation, but you should know the grounds of your salvation. They do not rest upon us. You need not go searching within you to find the grounds upon which you believe your salvation. They are in Christ. We know of our salvation, and we know that our salvation rests simply and merely upon Christ. This is the grace of God given to us through faith in Jesus Christ—the first thread which makes up the cord. St. Paul knew, not only of his salvation, but he knew upon what his salvation rested—upon Christ.

II. He knew that all things work together for good to them that love God.—That amid all the provisions of life, however strange they may be, however unintelligible, through all the darkness and difficulty, and trouble, and pain, and through the tears He sees all. There is a certainty for you! ‘I know that all things work together for good to them that love God.’ Go out into the world with that amid all the uncertainties of your life. You know not what a day may bring forth. What does it matter, if behind it all there is God and His love?

III. He knew that ‘if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands.’—Here is something grand, seeing right beyond into death. Do you know that if you die you have a habitation with God in the heavens, not made with hands? Did not the Lord Jesus say, ‘I go to prepare a place for you’? And do you think that at the end of your life there awaits you annihilation, or that because, as they tell us nowadays, the brain ceases to act, the soul exists not—the modern philosophy? Listen to St. Paul: ‘We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands.’ There is a threefold cord to bind you by faith to God!

—
Rev. A. H. Stanton.



THE SACRING OF PAIN

‘The whole creation … travaileth in pain.’

Rom_8:22

It is held that pain came in with sin; and will go out with sin. This, however, is to be taken with certain reservations.

I. The relationship between sin and suffering is a general one.—We are deterred by the language of our Lord Himself from tracing the links between particular sufferings and individual sins.

II. The fact of pre-Adamite death being revealed, revealed also is pre-Adamite decay; and it is hard to accept this fact without considering that it includes the presence of physical pain: hence we appear forced to hold, that pain was in the world before sin; and consequently that it became a natural consequence of man sharing in the mortality which was before and around him, that he should also share in the pain physically inseparable from mortality.

III. Vicarious pain.—A shallow divinity has attacked the doctrine of the Cross, on the ground that it is an exhibition of injustice. If it be, then all terrestrial life is a wider exhibition of injustice, for it starts from vicarious pain, and is sustained by it. Wherever we turn, we encounter the working of this great law of sacrifice. The Cross, instead of colliding with the natural order, is but the culmination of the vicarious suffering of which the world is full. If, then, we cannot live this life save through the loss, the pain, of others, it is at least in harmony with this fact that we cannot attain to the next save by the same means.

IV. Whatever Jesus Christ touched or utilised, He consecrated.—He has consecrated life by accepting it. He has consecrated death by dying. He has consecrated tears by shedding them. He has consecrated burdens by bearing them. And pain, too, has been consecrated, for He has felt it—felt it in its extremest forms; and none may think their own has not been embraced within the compass of His. The sufferers of earth’s suffering family have something of sacredness about them. If in nothing else, they have fellowship with the Man of Sorrows through theirs; the pinched face of want, the drawn face of physical anguish, the furrowed face of care, have something of a halo round them; and an angel’s eye may see the nimbus though we may not.

—
Bishop A. Pearson.

Illustration

‘Pain is a worker, pleasure an idler, in God’s universe. As one has said: “The pleasures of each generation evaporate in air; it is their pains that increase the spiritual momentum of the world.” ’