The Apostle Paul has been leading us to consider the high privileges of sovereign mercy granted to God’s beloved people. Step by step he has been showing us the components of covenant grace. Link by link he has revealed the unbreakable chain of divine purpose. God’s great salvation originates in everlasting love and culminates in the church’s eternal glory. Every stage is carefully planned and executed to glorify God, honour the Son and bless the chosen vessels of mercy. 

The Apostle asks his readers, ‘What shall we then say to these things?’ It is a question as to what ‘things’ Paul is referring to. If it is ‘the sufferings of this present time’ in v. 18 then he has shown that for believers our sufferings, while real, are not to be compared to the blessing laid up in store ‘for them that love God’. All things are presently working for our good, even our sufferings, and every element in God’s sovereign plan of grace leads inevitably to our glory. Troubles are real We do not minimise the difficulties our brothers and sisters are called to face in this life. Pain, loss and hardship afflict the Lord’s people along with others. We are prone to…

It is a matter of great importance that the Bible speaks to sinful men and women about the possibility of eternal life, eternal glory and everlasting happiness in the divine presence. In the mercy of God He has secured atonement and granted forgiveness from sin by the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. In His goodness and grace He encourages hope amongst fallen creatures for more and better than we deserve.   All of God It is the church’s eternal glory Paul is speaking about in our verses and again we note the apostle’s emphasis that glorification is the work of God alone. It is God who glorifies His people. He does so by endowing them with all the blessings He has prepared…

Justification is an act of God’s grace and mercy. It originates in the sovereign will of God to save and bless His people; those He has loved, foreknown, called and chosen in the Lord Jesus Christ. Justification is God making and declaring His people righteous. It results from God taking all the sins of all the elect and laying them upon, or imputing them to, the account of the Lord Jesus. Simultaneously, He imputes the righteousness of God in Christ to the account of His elect. God knows who are His Those foreknown of God were loved in the infinite wisdom of God and distinguished in the mind of the Almighty before the world was formed. With sovereign purpose the Father chose and ordained them…

Paul has been speaking of a blessed and privileged people for whom all the works of creation, providence and redemption have been ordered to accomplish their earthly and eternal good. He identifies these individuals as the people foreknown of God, that is, men and women loved before time, called and set apart in union with the Lord Jesus Christ under the terms of the everlasting covenant of grace and peace. God knows who are His Those foreknown of God were loved in the infinite wisdom of God and distinguished in the mind of the Almighty before the world was formed. With sovereign purpose the Father chose and ordained them individually, personally and particularly to be united to His Son and made holy in Him with…

We learned last week that God foreknew a people from eternity whom He determined, lovingly, wisely and unconditionally to honour and bless with glory and eternal life. We noted God’s foreknowledge is personal and distinguishing. It is not what but whom He did foreknow. These individuals are saved and called, Paul tells Timothy, ‘according to his (God’s) own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began’.