Latest / Reformed Thinking / No Condemnation, No Separation (Romans 8) | Matthew Poole

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No Condemnation, No Separation (Romans 8) | Matthew Poole · Reformed Thinking

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  Welcome to another session of Reformed thinking.
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  I'm really looking forward to this one because we are doing
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  something a bit different today. Yeah.
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  We aren't just skimming the surface of a popular verse.
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  We're not looking for a quick emotional fix.
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  We are doing a real theological excavation.
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  A heavy lift. Very heavy.
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  We're looking into one of the most intellectually rigorous
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  texts in the Puritan tradition, specifically Matthew Poole's
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  commentary on Romans chapter 8. And that is a massive
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  undertaking. Romans 8 is often called the
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  cathedral of the Christian faith for good reason, right?
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  It starts with no condemnation and ends with no separation.
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  And everything between those two pillars is the entire economy of
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  salvation. Yeah.
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  But you're spot on to highlight that we are analyzing this
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  through Matthew Poole because this isn't a modern devotion.
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  No, not at all. The goal here isn't just to make
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  you feel good for 5 minutes on your morning commute.
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  Poole was a 17th century non conformist, a man of immense
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  learning, and his approach is. It's architectural.
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  Architectural, Yes. He looks at the text with his
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  logical precision. That is pretty rare today.
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  Which is what drew me to the source material in the 1st
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  place, because we hear Romans 8 quoted in fragments all the
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  time. Usually on a coffee mug.
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  A coffee mug. A generic inspirational poster.
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  But Poole treats it like a legal document or a complex biological
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  system. He connects the dots.
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  He does. He forces you to think, not just
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  feel. He connects the golden chain of
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  salvation which we adhering to the Westminster Confession,
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  finds so central to our faith. Absolutely.
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  So let's jump right into the first section.
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  The verdict. Romans 8.1 starts with that
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  famous declaration. There is therefore now no
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  condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.
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  And Pool stops us right at the very first word.
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  Therefore, therefore it is so easy to gloss over it.
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  But Pool notes that this word is a heavy iron link.
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  It drags the entire weed of the previous chapter right along
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  with. It Chapter 7.
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  Right. Romans 7 ended with that
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  agonizing struggle of the Apostle Paul.
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  The things I want to do, I do not do.
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  The things I hate that I do. Exactly, it was a picture of the
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  believers battle with remaining sin, so that therefore signals a
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  shift. A shift from the battlefield of
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  corruption to the courtroom of justification.
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  I want to pause there for a second, because that context is
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  vital. If you don't feel the weight of
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  Chapter 7, the relief of Chapter 8 just doesn't land.
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  It falls flat. In Chapter 7, Paul sounds like a
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  man who is losing. Exhausted.
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  Crying out, oh wretched man that I am, he's looking at his own
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  performance and seeing nothing but failure.
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  And then, without a break, comes this.
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  Therefore it seems almost jarring.
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  It is meant to be jarring. It is a violent shift in
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  perspective. How so?
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  Well, Poole argues that the therefore is the hinge upon
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  which a believer sanity rests. Wow, sanity.
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  Yeah, because if you stay in the analysis of Chapter 7, just
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  looking at your own navel, your own failures, your own
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  inability, you will despair. You'll drown in it.
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  Right, but therefore grabs you by the collar and turns your
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  face toward the legal reality of what Christ has done.
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  It moves you from subjective experience to objective status.
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  And Poole makes a very nuanced point here about what no
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  condemnation actually means. I think this is where many
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  people get confused. Because we feel condemned.
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  We feel it because we know we have sin.
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  We know we aren't perfect. Does Poole address that tension?
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  He addresses it directly. He notes that the text does not
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  say there is no matter of condemnation.
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  Matter of condemnation. Right, Poole writes.
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  He does not say There is no matter of condemnation or
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  nothing damnable in them. And then he adds, there is
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  enough and enough of that. Enough and enough of that.
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  That is such a Puritan way to phrase it.
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  It really is. It sounds like he's saying the
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  evidence against us is piled up high.
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  It's in the drawers, it's in the closet.
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  It's everywhere. Precisely.
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  The evidence is real. The combustible nature of our
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  sin is a reality. Poole's point is that while the
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  material for condemnation exists, the sentence of
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  condemnation has never passed. The judge has banged the gavel.
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  But the verdict is acquittal, even with the evidence sitting
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  right there. Are the defendants pockets?
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  Yeah, the distinction is between the presence of sin and the
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  legal ability of sin to damn you.
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  That is such a relief to hear. Many people confuse
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  justification with the sudden perfection of character.
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  They do, and Poole is saying no. The sin is there, but the legal
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  standing has changed. He also brings up a rhetorical
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  device here. Yes, meiosis.
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  Meiosis. I love when these old
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  commentators pull out the grammar textbooks.
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  What is he getting out with that?
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  Well, meiosis, a figure of speech where less is said than
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  is meant. When Paul says no condemnation,
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  it sounds like a simple negative, like you are not going
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  to jail, right? But Poole argues that the
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  negative implies a massive positive.
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  It implies full justification and eternal salvation.
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  It's an understatement A. Huge understatement.
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  It is like saying to a starving man, you won't be hungry
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  anymore. Which implies you're going to be
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  fed a feast. Exactly.
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  So no, condemnation is actually a shorthand for the entire
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  inheritance of glory. It's God's condemnation we are
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  exempted from, though as Poole Riley notes, we are often still
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  condemned by men. And frequently by our own
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  consciences. Oh, absolutely.
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  That is where the objective nature of the text helps us
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  fight our subjective feelings. Now Poole moves to the reason
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  why this verdict is possible. He talks about the law, verse
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  three. Yeah, verse 3 mentions that the
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  law was weak through the flesh. I found his analogy here
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  incredibly helpful because we often think, well, if the law is
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  from God, why couldn't it save us?
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  Is the law broken? Right.
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  And Poole defends the law. He says the law is holy, just
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  and good. The defect is in the subject,
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  not the standard. The subject being us.
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  US Poole uses the analogy of the sun in a blind eye.
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  The sun has the capacity to give light.
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  It is radiating illumination perfectly.
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  Doing exactly what a sun should do.
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  But it cannot give light to a blind eye.
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  Because the eye lacks the capacity to receive it.
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  Correct. The failure to see is not the
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  sun's fault, it is the eyes incapacity.
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  That makes a lot of sense. In the same way, the law cannot
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  justify A Sinner, not because the law is broken, but because
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  we are. We are weak through the flesh.
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  We have a blind eye. The law can condemn us.
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  It's very good at that. Very good at that, Yeah.
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  But it cannot exempt us from condemnation because we cannot
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  keep it. The tool is perfect.
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  The material it is working on is flawed.
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  So because the law was powerless due to our condition, God did
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  what the law couldn't. He sent his own son.
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  Yes. And here is where Poole gets
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  very precise with his theology, specifically regarding the
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  likeness of sinful flesh. This is a minefield if you
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  aren't careful. A massive theological precipice.
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  Why does he spend so much time on this specific phrase?
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  Because if you say Christ had sinful flesh, you destroy toy
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  his sinlessness. You destroy his ability to be a
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  spotless sacrifice. Right.
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  If he has sinful flesh, he is a Sinner.
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  And he needs a savior himself. But if you swing too far the
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  other way and say he didn't have flesh, you fall into Gnosticism.
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  Or dosatism. You deny his humanity.
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  Make him a ghost or a hologram. Poole navigates this with the
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  standard Reform distinction. Christ had real flesh, physical
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  human nature, subject to hunger, pain and death.
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  He was a biological descendant of Adam.
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  Yes, but he only had the likeness of sinful flesh, so he
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  looks like a normal man who falls under the covenant of
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  Adam, yet he was without the corruption of Adam.
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  He had the hardware, but not the virus.
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  That is a great way to put it. Hardware without the virus.
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  He took the nature, but not the contagion.
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  And the purpose of this was a transfer of guilt.
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  Paul says God condemned sin in the flesh.
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  Notice the preposition there in the.
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  Flesh explain that. God did not condemn the Sinner,
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  He condemned the sin. But sin is abstract.
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  You cannot punish theft or pride floating in the air.
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  You have to punish it in a person.
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  You have to punish it in a nature.
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  So God condemned sin in the flesh of Christ.
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  He punished the offense in the substitute so that the offender
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  could go free. It satisfies the law's demand
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  for punishment without destroying the person the law
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  was meant to govern. It is a masterpiece of divine
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  justice and mercy, or as Paul puts it, God finding a way that
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  shall do it effectually. Moving on to the next section,
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  verses 5 through 8, we get into the mindset of the believer
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  versus the unbeliever. The flesh versus the Spirit.
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  Right. And Poole defines walking here
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  in a way that I think challenges the static view of Christianity.
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  We often think of holiness as just not doing bad things.
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  He really challenges that passivity.
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  He stresses that walking is a progressive continued motion.
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  It is not a single jump. And it is not standing still,
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  no. He makes a point that negative
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  holiness, simply abstaining from evil, is insufficient.
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  You can stand still and not commit murder, but that is not
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  walking after the Spirit. A statue does not commit
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  adultery, but a statue is not holy.
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  Exactly. Walking implies A trajectory, a
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  regulation of the whole conversation of life according
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  to the square of God's Word. It's active.
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  It requires energy and direction.
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  It is the difference between a statue that does no harm and a
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  living man who does good. But then he contrasts this with
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  the carnal mind and this is where pool it's intense.
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  Very intense. He analyzes the word enmity in
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  verse 7. The carnal mind is enmity
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  against God. He points out that Paul doesn't
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  say the carnal mind is an enemy. That is a terrifying
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  distinction. An enemy can be reconciled.
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  Pool gives the example of Esau and Jacob.
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  They were enemies. They wanted to kill each other,
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  but they eventually embraced. An enemy is a person, a subject
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  who can change his mind. But enmity?
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  Enmity is an abstract quality. It is the essence of hatred
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  itself, Poole says. Black may be made white, but
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  blackness cannot wow. You cannot reconcile enmity.
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  You can only destroy it or replace it.
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  That paints a very bleak picture of the human condition apart
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  from Grace. It suggests that the problem
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  isn't just that we make bad choices, but that we are the
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  problem. It shows the depth of human
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  depravity. The unregenerate mind isn't just
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  a little bit confused. It isn't just wandering.
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  It is the very definition of opposition to God.
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  It's not that it has some enmity.
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  It is enmity. That explains the cannot in
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  verse 8. So then they that are in the
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  flesh cannot please God. It is a moral impotency.
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  Precisely, it is not that they possess the machinery to please
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  God, but just lack the instruction manual.
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  They lack the nature. And Poole uses a phrase here
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  that sticks with you. Oh, about their good works.
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  Yeah, He describes the so-called good works of the unregenerate,
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  their philanthropy, their civic virtue, their politeness.
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  He calls them dead works, or, and this is the phrase, silken
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  sins. They look in sins.
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  That is incredibly evocative. It sounds soft and valuable on
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  the outside. It feels nice to the touch.
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  It looks respectable in society, yeah, but the core is sinful
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  because the motive isn't the glory of God, right?
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  Pool gives a great comparison. If a rebel general feeds his
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  troops well and treats them kindly, he is still a rebel
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  general waging war against the king.
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  His kindness is part of his rebellion.
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  That is the condition of the man in the flesh.
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  His best works are just smooth, silken acts of treason because
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  he refuses to submit to the king.
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  That is a heavy diagnosis. It is, but it sets the stage for
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  the cure. Which brings us to Section 3,
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  adoption and the witness. Verse 9 shifts the tone.
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  But ye are not in the flesh, but in the spirit.
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  The indwelling spirit. Poole talks about this in
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  dwelling. He gives 2 marks of what it
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  means for the spirit to dwell in a person.
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  It is not just a visitor stopping by for the weekend.
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  No, the two marks are ruling and abiding.
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  Ruling first. Yes, the Spirit rules as a Lord
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  in his house. If the Spirit is there, he is in
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  charge. He's in the guest in the guest
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  room. He holds the deed to the
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  property. He rearranges the furniture.
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  He evicts the squatters and 2nd abiding implies permanence.
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  He doesn't come and go based on our performance.
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  Poole uses a commercial metaphor here, doesn't he?
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  He does, He says. If a man does not have the
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  spirit of Christ, he's like goods without a merchant's seal.
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  That is a great image from the 17th century marketplace.
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  If you saw a Bale of wool or a crate of spices on the dock
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  without a seal, what did that mean?
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  It meant it didn't belong to anyone.
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  It was unclaimed up for grabs. The spirit is the mark of
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  ownership. If you don't have the seal, you
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  don't belong to the owner. Which is Christ, Yeah.
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  But if you have the seal, you are his property.
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  Yeah, and he protects his property.
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  And part of having that seal is the work of mortification
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  mentioned in verse 13. We talked about walking, but now
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  we talk about killing. Pool is very firm here.
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  Sin must be mortified. He says it is not enough to
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  suppress it. I think of suppression like
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  holding a beach ball underwater. That is a really good analogy.
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  Suppression is just holding it down.
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  Eventually your arm gets tired and it pops back up with force.
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  Mortification is puncturing the ball.
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  Yes, Poole says. Sin must be crucified.
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  It is a violent, intentional act of putting sin to death is not a
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  passive drift into holiness. You have to hunt it down and
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  kill it. You do.
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  But this violence against sin is done in the context of a new
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  relationship. We haven't been drafted into an
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  army of slaves. We've been adopted into a
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  family. We have received the spirit of
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  adoption. Not the spirit of bondage.
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  Poole contrasts the fear of Mount Sinai with the intimacy of
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  the New Covenant, and he digs into the phrase ABBA Father.
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  He asks a great question there. Why the double usage?
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  Why use the Aramaic ABBA and the Greek patter side by side?
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  He offers 2 fascinating reasons for.
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  That Let's hear the first one. The first is theological.
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  And Mishinal ABBA represents the Jewish believers.
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  It was the intimate word for father in their language.
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  Yeah. And Peter?
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  Peter represents the Gentiles, the Greek speakers.
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  By putting them together, Paul is showing that God is the
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  father of both. The dividing wall is broken
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  down. They are united in one cry.
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  Exactly. And the second reason.
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  The second reason is psychological or emotional.
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  He calls it ingemination. Ingemination.
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  Now there is a word we have lost.
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  It comes from the Latin for doubling or repeating.
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  It just means repetition for the sake of earnestness or
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  intensity. Like when you're a desperate.
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  When you're desperate or deeply moved, you repeat yourself.
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  Father. Father.
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  It denotes A fervency and prayer.
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  It shows that our relationship with God is not cold and formal.
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  It is passionate and urgent. It is the cry of a child running
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  to a parent, not a petitioner reading a script to a king.
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  And how do we know we have this relationship?
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  Verse 16 says the Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit.
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  I think this is where many people get confused.
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  They look for a sign in the sky. Or a shiver down their spine.
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  Poole is very careful to define what this witness is not.
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  He is extremely careful here because the Puritan era had its
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  share of enthusiasts who claimed all sorts of wild revelations,
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  right? Poole rejects the idea of
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  audible voices. He says we shouldn't expect an
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  Angel to visit us like Daniel or a voice like the one to the
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  Virgin Mary. This is not about external
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  phenomena, no. Poole calls it an inward secret
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  suggestion and persuasion. But notice the preposition the
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  Spirit witnesses with, our Spirit with.
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  It is a concurrent testimony. Right.
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  It is a dialogue or a harmony between two witnesses.
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  It is not just the spirit shouting over.
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  Us Imagine a courtroom. OK, you have two witnesses on
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  the stand. First, your own Spirit takes the
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  stand. Your conscience looks at your
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  life and sees the fruit, the hatred of sin, the love for the
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  brethren, the reliance on Christ.
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  And it says based on the evidence, I believe I am a child
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  of. God, but that witness can be
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  shaky. We are imperfect and our
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  conscience can be clouded. We have bad days where the
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  evidence looks incredibly. Slim.
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  Exactly. So the Holy Spirit comes
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  alongside that evidence and acts as the second witness.
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  He stamps the evidence with assurance.
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  He shines a light on the work of grace in our hearts and says,
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  yes, this is God's work, you are His.
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  It is. It is a joint testimony that
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  settles the court of conscience. Moving from the internal court
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  to the external universe, Section 4 deals with the
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  groaning cosmos, verses 17 to 25.
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  This is one of the most poetic and difficult parts of Romans.
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  Paul talks about suffering and glory.
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  Pool does some spiritual arithmetic here with the word
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  reckon in verse 18, For I reckon that the sufferings of this
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  present time are not worthy to be compared.
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  Poole points out that the Greek word for reckon is a
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  mathematical or logical term. It refers to casting accounts.
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  Or balancing a Ledger. Paul is acting like an
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  accountant here. On one side of the scale you put
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  all the suffering of this present time.
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  And let's be honest, that is a lot of weight.
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  Cancer, persecution, grief, death, betrayal.
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  It feels incredibly heavy to us. It feels unbearable, yeah, But
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  Poole says Paul puts that on one side, and then on the other side
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  he puts the future glory. And the result.
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  Poole says the suffering is the light end of the scale.
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  The glory is the heavyweight. It launches the suffering into
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  the air. Because there is no comparison.
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  It is not just that the glory is better, it is that the suffering
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  is not worthy to even be mentioned in the same breath.
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  Like comparing a grain of sand to a mountain.
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  Precisely. Then we get to the creature or
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  the creation, waiting with earnest expectation.
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  There has always been a debate here.
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  Is the creature, the Gentile world waiting for the gospel?
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  Or is it the physical universe? Pool outlines both options
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  fairly. Option A is the Gentile world.
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  They are subject to vanity and their idolatry and are waiting
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  to be revealed as sons of God. But Poole prefers option B.
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  He does, staying true to the breath of the text.
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  Option B is the physical universe, the frame of creation
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  itself. And he explains this using
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  another great term, Prasa papaya.
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  Yes, personification. The universe is depicted as a
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  rational person. Poole describes it as stretching
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  its neck. Standing on tip toes, looking
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  over the horizon, the trees, the mountains, the animals, They are
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  waiting. They're straining their eyes to
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  see something. What are they waiting for?
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  They're waiting to see the sons of God revealed.
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  Why? Because when Adam fell, creation
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  fell with him. The earth was cursed because of
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  us. It was subjected to vanity and
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  corruption. It is currently in a state of
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  decay. And it wants its master,
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  humanity, to be restored so that it can be restored.
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  The universe knows that its destiny is tied to ours.
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  The imagery continues with groaning.
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  He compares it to a man with a heavy burden or a woman in
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  labor. The labor metaphor is potent.
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  It is pain, yes, but it is productive pain.
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  It is pain that leads to new life.
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  It is not the death rattle, it is the birth pain.
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  And Poole notes that believers grown too.
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  We are not exempt. We have the first fruits, a
• 18:48
  handful of the crop, just a taste of the spirit, but we are
• 18:50
  waiting for the full harvest. And he identifies that harvest
• 18:54
  as the redemption of the body. He makes a specific anti gnostic
• 18:57
  point. There he does, because
• 18:59
  Gnosticism teaches that the physical world is bad and the
• 19:01
  spirit is good. So salvation means escaping the
• 19:04
  body to float around as a pure spirit.
• 19:06
  And Poole says absolutely not. Redemption isn't escaping the
• 19:10
  body, it is the raising of the body to glory.
• 19:13
  The body is part of the creature that gets redeemed.
• 19:16
  We don't hate our bodies, we groan for their glorification.
• 19:20
  We want the physical to be made imperishable.
• 19:23
  That brings us to Section 5, where the Spirit helps us in our
• 19:26
  present states, verses 26 and 27.
• 19:29
  The Spirit also help with our infirmities.
• 19:32
  Pool digs into the Greek word for help.
• 19:34
  It is a compound word, isn't it? It is.
• 19:37
  Suneti lambana tie. That is a mouthful.
• 19:40
  It is, but the etymology is beautiful.
• 19:42
  Sun means with OK, anti means against or on the opposite side.
• 19:46
  And the last part. Lambano means to take or to
• 19:49
  grasp. So grasping the opposite side
• 19:51
  with you. Exactly.
• 19:53
  Pool breaks down the metaphor. It implies someone stepping in
• 19:55
  to lift a heavy beam from the opposite side.
• 19:57
  You are struggling under the weight of the log.
• 20:00
  You can't move it and the spirit shoulders the other end to carry
• 20:03
  the load with you. That is fantastic.
• 20:06
  He also uses the image of a nurse, right?
• 20:08
  Yes, a nurse holding up a child who is unable to walk.
• 20:11
  We are wobbling, unable to move forward, and the Spirit supports
• 20:14
  our steps. He doesn't just watch us
• 20:16
  struggle. No, he engages with the weight
• 20:19
  we are carrying. And the specific infirmity here
• 20:21
  is prayer. We know not what we should pray
• 20:24
  for as we ought. That is surprising to read.
• 20:27
  It is we have the Lord's Prayer, we have the Psalms, we have
• 20:30
  thousands of books on prayer. Why does Poole say we don't know
• 20:33
  what to ask for? Because while we have the
• 20:36
  general rules, we fail in the particulars.
• 20:40
  We are short sighted. Give me an example.
• 20:42
  Poole references Job or Paul asking for the thorn to be
• 20:46
  removed. Paul thought the best thing was
• 20:49
  for the thorn to go. He prayed 3 times for it.
• 20:51
  But God knew the best thing was for the grace to be sufficient.
• 20:55
  We often pray for things that would actually harm us or that
• 20:58
  contradict God's better plan. We are like children asking for
• 21:01
  candy when we need medicine. We don't know what is good for
• 21:05
  us in the long. Run.
• 21:05
  So the solution is this dual intercession.
• 21:08
  Christ intercedes for us in heaven, and the Spirit
• 21:11
  intercedes in us on earth. That is the distinction.
• 21:14
  Christ is our advocate at the right hand of the Father.
• 21:17
  He maintains our legal standing. And the Spirit.
• 21:20
  The Spirit is the advocate in our hearts, framing our desires.
• 21:24
  And Poole touches on the unutterable groans.
• 21:27
  He validates that prayer does not require vocal speech.
• 21:30
  This is a massive comfort for anyone who has been in so much
• 21:33
  pain they couldn't find words. Absolutely.
• 21:36
  Poole uses the example of Moses at the Red Sea in Exodus 14.
• 21:39
  The Egyptians are behind him. The sea is in front of.
• 21:41
  Him and Moses doesn't say a single word in the text, but God
• 21:44
  says to him, Why do you cry to me?
• 21:46
  His heart was screaming, even if his lips were silent.
• 21:50
  Poole calls these inward sighs, excited by the Spirit.
• 21:53
  They are valid, forceful prayers before God.
• 21:57
  God hears the grown meaning, not just the grammar.
• 22:01
  Now we arrive at Section 6, the summit of the chapter.
• 22:03
  The Golden Chain of Salvation, verses 28 to 30.
• 22:06
  It starts with the promise. All things work together for
• 22:09
  good. A verse often misused, but pool
• 22:12
  grounds it in Providence. He uses a medical analogy that I
• 22:15
  find perfect. Yeah, he compares Providence to
• 22:17
  a physician mixing simples. Simples being individual
• 22:20
  ingredients. Right.
• 22:21
  If you take one ingredient alone, it might be poison, it
• 22:24
  might be bitter, it might kill you.
• 22:25
  So poverty alone might be poison.
• 22:27
  Sickness alone might be poison. Affliction alone.
• 22:30
  Yes, Even sin and affliction, Pool argues, are ingredients.
• 22:35
  Taken in isolation, they are destructive.
• 22:37
  But in the hand of the great Physician.
• 22:39
  When they are mixed into a composition, a compound, they
• 22:42
  become a cure. The physician knows how to
• 22:45
  balance the toxic elements with the healing ones to produce
• 22:49
  health. All things implies that nothing
• 22:51
  is wasted in this mixture, nothing at all.
• 22:54
  Then Paul lists the links of the chain that anchor this promise.
• 22:57
  Foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification,
• 23:00
  glorification. Let's walk through Poole's
• 23:02
  definitions, because words matter here.
• 23:04
  They do. First, foreknowledge.
• 23:06
  Poole clarifies that this is not just God looking down the
• 23:09
  corridor of time to see who would choose him.
• 23:11
  That would make man the decisive actor.
• 23:13
  It would make God's choice dependent on our choice.
• 23:16
  Poole defines it as knowledge of approbation.
• 23:19
  Approbation that implies approval or affection.
• 23:22
  It means knowing with affection. It is loving beforehand.
• 23:26
  It is God setting His intimate favor upon a person before they
• 23:29
  exist. It is the difference between
• 23:31
  knowing a fact and knowing a friend.
• 23:33
  Exactly. God knew his people in a way he
• 23:36
  did not know the world. Then predestination.
• 23:40
  This is the appointment having loved them, God appoints them to
• 23:44
  a specific. End.
• 23:45
  And the end isn't just heaven. No, the end is conformity to the
• 23:50
  image of His Son. It is the architectural
• 23:53
  blueprint for the individuals eternal destiny.
• 23:56
  He predestines them to look like Jesus.
• 23:59
  Then calling and. Poole specifies this is
• 24:01
  effectual calling. Not just as general invitation.
• 24:04
  Right. Not the general invitation of
• 24:06
  the Gospel that many reject. It is the summons that creates
• 24:09
  life, like Jesus calling Lazarus out of the tomb.
• 24:13
  It's the moment the foreknowledge and predestination
• 24:15
  break into real time history. And wake the person up from
• 24:18
  spiritual death. Then justification.
• 24:20
  The absolution of guilt. The legal standing we discussed
• 24:23
  in verse one. And finally, glorification.
• 24:26
  But there is a grammatical quirk here that Pool highlights.
• 24:29
  Paul speaks of it in the past tense.
• 24:30
  Them he also glorified. But we aren't glorified yet.
• 24:33
  We are still groaning. We are still in the suffering
• 24:36
  part of the scale. It is the prophetic past tense.
• 24:40
  It is spoken of as done because in the mind of God and the
• 24:43
  certainty of the decree, it is as good as done.
• 24:47
  If you have the first link for knowledge.
• 24:49
  You will inevitably have the last link glorification.
• 24:53
  The chain cannot break. You cannot be justified and then
• 24:56
  fall out of the chain before glorification.
• 24:59
  It is a closed loop of divine omnipotence that is the bedrock
• 25:04
  of Reformed assurance. It is not about your grip on the
• 25:07
  chain. It is about the chain's grip on
• 25:09
  you. Which leads perfectly into the
• 25:10
  final section, the Hymn of Assurance, verses 31 to 39.
• 25:15
  If God be for us, who can be against us?
• 25:18
  Poole knows that if isn't a question.
• 25:20
  No, it is a particle of certainty.
• 25:22
  It means since God is for us. And Poole mentions Maximilian,
• 25:25
  the Holy Roman Emperor. He was so taken by this verse
• 25:28
  that he wrote it over his dining table.
• 25:30
  He wanted it in his eye constantly while he ate.
• 25:33
  It is the ultimate rhetorical question.
• 25:35
  It doesn't mean no one will attack us.
• 25:37
  It means no one can successfully prosecute us.
• 25:39
  Poole uses the greater to the lesser argument here regarding
• 25:42
  the gift of the Son. Logic again, if God gave the
• 25:46
  greatest possible gift, his own Son, the uncreated eternal Word,
• 25:52
  to die for us while we were enemies, will.
• 25:54
  He suddenly become stingy with the lesser gifts.
• 25:56
  Will he withhold daily bread? Will he withhold protection?
• 26:00
  Final salvation. Those are trivial compared to
• 26:02
  the gift of the Son. If he paid the $1,000,000 debt,
• 26:05
  he will cover the $0.10 tip. Spot on.
• 26:07
  Then we enter the courtroom imagery again.
• 26:10
  Who accuses? Who condemns?
• 26:12
  Satan accuses, the law accuses, but Poole points to the defense.
• 26:16
  God justifies. Christ died Rose and sits at the
• 26:20
  right hand. It is a challenge issue to the
• 26:22
  universe. Bring your best case against my
• 26:25
  client. And the judge says I've already
• 26:27
  paid the debt myself. That case is thrown out.
• 26:29
  Thrown out entirely. But what about physical
• 26:31
  separation? Verse 35 lists the separators
• 26:33
  Tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness,
• 26:36
  peril, sword. Pool breaks these down.
• 26:39
  Tribulation is pinching, Distress is straightness of
• 26:42
  place. It is a catalog of horrors.
• 26:44
  And to illustrate the reality of sword pool sites.
• 26:46
  A historical anecdote that is truly graphic.
• 26:50
  But it was fresh in the collective memory of his time.
• 26:52
  He references the persecution in Calabria in 1560.
• 26:56
  This was the story about the sheep, right?
• 26:58
  It is hard to listen to, but it illustrates the text perfectly.
• 27:01
  Yes, it illustrates verse 36. We are accounted as sheep for
• 27:06
  the slaughter. Walk us through it.
• 27:10
  Poole recounts how the executioner led the Christians
• 27:12
  out of a house 1 by 1. He blindfolded them, marched
• 27:16
  them out, cut their throats and then went back inside with the
• 27:19
  bloody knife to get the next one.
• 27:21
  He killed 88 people that way. Poole uses this to show that
• 27:24
  believers are often cheap in the eyes of the world.
• 27:27
  We are killed as easily and casually as butcher sheep.
• 27:30
  We are not valued by the world system.
• 27:32
  That is a stomach churning image.
• 27:35
  It brings to mind that reformed thinking isn't just academic.
• 27:38
  People died for this. They did.
• 27:40
  But it makes the next verse even more striking.
• 27:43
  Nay, in all of these things, we are more than conquerors.
• 27:45
  How can you be a conqueror when your throat is being cut?
• 27:48
  That seems like a defeat. That is the paradox of the
• 27:50
  cross. Poole explains that we conquer
• 27:53
  by being conquered. We don't defeat the enemy by
• 27:56
  avoiding the suffering. We defeat him by enduring it
• 27:59
  with faith. We use the enemy own weapons
• 28:02
  against him. Satan uses suffering to try to
• 28:05
  drive a wedge between US and Christ.
• 28:07
  But when we suffer and cling tighter to Christ.
• 28:09
  Satan's weapon backfires. It increases our patience and
• 28:13
  our zeal. There is that quote from Julian
• 28:15
  the Apostates noble. Yes, we Christians laugh at your
• 28:18
  cruelty and grow the more resolute we win by dying,
• 28:22
  because death sends us to Christ, which is the ultimate
• 28:25
  victory. We are super conquerors.
• 28:27
  Super Nicoman, We don't just barely survive, we triumph over
• 28:31
  the very thing meant to destroy us.
• 28:33
  And finally, the list of potential separators in the last
• 28:36
  two verses. Height, depth, angels,
• 28:38
  principalities. Poole notes that height and
• 28:41
  depth is a way of saying everything in the universe.
• 28:45
  Neither the height of honor nor the depth of disgrace.
• 28:47
  And just in case he missed anything, Paul adds.
• 28:49
  Nor any other creature. Poole calls that the catch all
• 28:52
  clause. Yes, if human fancy can imagine
• 28:55
  any other threat. Aliens, black holes, future
• 28:58
  technologies, demons we haven't named.
• 29:01
  They are created things. And no created thing has the
• 29:05
  capacity to sever the uncreated bond of love between the Father
• 29:09
  and the elect in Christ. It is an absolute hermetically
• 29:12
  sealed assurance. It is.
• 29:14
  Absolutely unbreakable. So what does this all mean for
• 29:17
  us today? We have walked through the
• 29:19
  verdict, the struggle, the adoption, the groaning, the
• 29:22
  chain and the. I think it brings us back to
• 29:25
  that golden chain. How so?
• 29:26
  If you are a listener today and you are feeling the groaning of
• 29:30
  verse 23, the anxiety, the sickness, the frustration of
• 29:34
  this fallen world. It is easy to interpret that as
• 29:37
  God being absent. But Poole's logic flips that the
• 29:41
  groaning is actually proof that you are part of the story.
• 29:44
  You are groaning because you have the first fruits of the
• 29:47
  Spirit. The dead don't groan, they rot.
• 29:49
  The living groan for redemption. That is a massive shift in
• 29:51
  perspective. And here's a provocative thought
• 29:53
  to end on if the first link of the chain foreknowledge was set
• 29:58
  by God in eternity past, before you did anything good or bad,
• 30:01
  right? And if the last link
• 30:03
  glorification is spoken of in the past tense because it is so
• 30:06
  certain. Then why are we so paralyzed by
• 30:08
  the middle of the chain? Why do we act as if our daily
• 30:12
  performance determines our eternal standing?
• 30:14
  We are living in the messy middle, yes.
• 30:16
  But the bookends are iron. The beginning and the end are
• 30:20
  fixed by God. Perhaps we should spend less
• 30:23
  time looking at our own feet to see if we are walking perfectly,
• 30:26
  and more time looking at the chain that is pulling us
• 30:28
  inevitably toward glory. That is something to chew on.
• 30:32
  The groaning is not the end, it is just the engine of our hope.
• 30:36
  Thank you for joining us on this deep dive into Matthew Poole's
• 30:39
  Romans 8. It has been a heavy lift, but a
• 30:41
  glorious 1. It is good to be shown that the
• 30:43
  chain holds. Until next time, keep thinking.