What Does It Look Like to Be Blessed?
God Is for You
When we turn our attention to Romans 8:31–32, as always, we need to take these verses in context. We need to let them speak where they are. Many have noticed how Paul seems to be kind of wrapping up a discussion that he started in chapter five. So Romans 8 is really the end of a big section of Paul's thinking in the book of Romans, and it's important and weighty. Romans 8 is a beautiful chapter that talks about life in the Spirit for God's people, the future of creation, and how it's tied to that. It talks about how God's love is inseparable and how we can embrace God's plan for us in the midst of suffering. All of these are gospel issues for Paul.
So, when we get to Romans 8:31, Paul says, “If God is for us, who can be against us?” That idea is central to the notion of blessing. Blessing is this: God is for us; God is good to us. That's what it means for us to live blessed lives. It's as though Paul is saying, You want proof that God is for you, Christian? If you need proof that God is for you, he gave his only Son.
Divine Blessing and the Fullness of Life in the Presence of God
William R. Osborne
In this addition to the Short Studies in Biblical Theology series, William Osborne traces the theme of blessing throughout the Bible, equipping readers with a fuller understanding of God’s benevolence for everyday life.
What is the proof that God is for us? Where else do we need to look other than God giving the most valuable thing in the universe, offering up his one and only Son for his people? Will he not then graciously give us all things?
So this text is arguing from the greater to the lesser. It's saying God has given the most valuable thing in the world for his people to show you that he is good to you. What is he going to withhold? Is it really the fact that God's going to withhold the car that you need? Is God really going to keep good things from you when he's giving Jesus? So this text points us to the fact that as Christians, we can find comfort knowing that God is for us.
God has already given us the greatest blessing we can ever have in the redemption offered through his son Jesus.
And, God has already given us the greatest blessing we can ever have in the redemption offered through his son Jesus. In addition, we have an eternal hope of blessing that looks like God giving us everything he ever intended us to have with him. That's an important part of Romans 8:32. This isn't just God benevolently saying, Okay, I'm going to be just this grandfather in the sky and give everybody everything that they want. No, it is something that we possess in Christ—that it is with him that he will graciously give us all things.
So for God's people, like Paul, we can say I may be encountering suffering now, I might be hurting now, and I might be in prison now, but those things do not compare to the glory that is to be revealed in his coming. And what is that glory? Nothing short of all things that God intends us to have as his people, that future blessing that we await.
William R. Osborne is the author of Divine Blessing and the Fullness of Life in the Presence of God.
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