but first, here is Romans 7:14-8:39 (NIV) a little lengthy, but worth reading through again
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my innter being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. Those who live according to the sinful nature have their minds set on what that nature desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind of sinful man is death, but the mind controlled by the Spirit is life and peace; the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God's law, nor can it do so. Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you. Therefore brothers, we have an obligation-but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. for if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit, you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Aba, Father." The Spirit himself testitifes with our spirit, that we are God's children. Now if we are children, then we are heirs-heirs of God, and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedomof the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God's will.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
What then, shall we say in response to this? if God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charege against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus who died==more than that, who was raised to life-is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution, or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
"What then shall we say to these things?"…In asking his readers to speak, Paul calls on them first to think. He wants them to work out with him how "these things" bear on teir present state-in other words, to apply the facts to themselves. Though he does not know them personally (nor us who read him in the twentieth century), he knows that what determines their state is two factors common to all real Christians everywhere in every age. The first is commitment to all-round righteousness. Romans 8:31-39 assumes that its readers are yielded to God as "slaves of righteousness" (6:13,18) and are seeking to do the will of God with no halfway measures.
The second factor is exposure to all-round pressures. Romans 8:13-39 treats material hardship and human hostility as the common lot of Christians; it is "we," not just Paul, who face tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. As Paul had taught the converts of his first missionary journey, "We must go through many hardships to enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). Some trouble (not all) can perhaps be dodged for the moment(not for good) by trimming one's spiritual sails, but Paul knows that those set on what the Puritans called "universal obedience" have to swim against the world's stream all the way and are constantly made to feel it. So Paul pictures his readers; and we recognize ourselves in his mirror. Here are Christian individuals troubled by the memory of a moral lapse; Christians whose integrity has lost them a friend or a job; Christian parents whose children are disappointing them; Christians facing serious problems of health or physical limitation; Christians made to feel like outsiders at home or at work because of their faith; Christians burdened by the death of someone they feel should have lived, or by the continued life of a senile relative or suffering child who they feel should have died; Christians who feel God cannot care for them or their life would be less rough; and many more. But it is precisely people like this-people , in other words, like us-whom Paul is challenging. "what shall we say to these things? Think-think-think!" What does Paul want to happen to us? He wants us to possess our possessions (to use a sometimes abused phrase). Our unpossessed possessions are not, as is sometimes thought, techniques of sinlessness, but the peace, hope and joy in God's love, which are the Christian's birthright. Paul knows that "emotional thinking" under life's pressures-that is, the rationalization of reactions-forfeits these possessions: hence his demand for a reaction, not now to those things, but to "these things" set out in verses 1-30. Think of what you know of God through the gospel, says Paul, and apply it. Think against your feelings; argue yourself out of the gloom they have spread; unmask the unbelief they have nourished; take yourself in hand, talk to yourself, make yourself look up from your problems to the God of the gospel; let evangelical thinking correct emotional thinking. By this means (so Paul believes) the indwelling Holy Spirit, whose ministry it is to assure us that we are God's beloved children and heirs (vs15-16), will lead us to the point where Paul's last triumphant inference-"I am convinced that neither death nor life…nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (vv.38-39)-will evoke from us the response: "And am I! Hallelujah!" For in this response, as Paul knows, lies the secret of the "more-than-conquerors" experience, which is the victory that overcomes the world and the Christian's heaven on earth. "What then shall we say to these things?" Paul's model answer consists of four thoughts, each focused in a further question. (Questions, after all, make people think!) "If God is for us, who is against us…Will he not also give us all things with him [Christ]? Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?…Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?" (vv.31-35 RSV). The recurring key word of the first three thoughts is for (Greek, hyper, "on behalf of"): God is for us…he delivered up his son for us all…Christ intercedes for us. The fourth thought is a conclusion from the first three together: Nothing can ever separate us from the love of God which comes to us in Christ Jesus our Lord. … Now, if you are a Christian, you know that you, too are being claimed in the same way. God did not spare his Son, but delivered him up for you; Christ loved you, and gave himself for you, to save you out of the spiritual Egypt of bondage to sin and Satan. The first commandment, in its positive form, is put to you by Christ himself: "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind' This is the first and greatest commandment" (Mt 22:37-38). The claim rests on the right of both creation and redemption, and it cannot be evaded.
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[second excerpt from Chapter 22, The Adequacy of God: No Good Thing
Withheld]
You know what kind of life it is that Christ calls you, as his disciple, to live. His own example and teaching in the Gospels (to look no further in the book of God than that) make it abundantly clear. You are called to go through this world as a pilgrim, a mere temporary resident, traveling light, and willing, as Christ directs, to do what the rich young ruler refused to do: give up material wealth and the security it provides and live in a way that involves you in poverty and loss of possessions. Having your treasure in heaven, you are not to budget for treasure on earth, nor for a high standard of living-you may well be required to forego both. You are called to follow Christ, carrying your cross…
Now let us call a spade a spade. The name of the game we are playing is unbelief, and Paul's "he will give us all things" stands as an everlasting rebuke to us. Paul is teling us that there is no ultimate loss or irreparable impoverishment to be feared; if God denies us something, it is only in order to make room for one or other of the things he has in mind. Are we, perhaps, still assuming that a person's life consists, partly at any rate, in the things he possesses?
But that is to budget for discontent, and to block the blessing-for Paul's "all things" is not a plethora of material possessions, and the passion for possessions has to be cast out of us in order to let the "all things" in. For this phrase has to do with knowing and enjoying God, and not with anything else. The meaning of "he will give us all things" can be put thus: one day we shall see that nothing-literally nothing-which could have increased our eternal happiness has been denied us, and that nothing-literally nothing-that could have reduced that happiness has been left with us. What higher assurance do we want than that? Yet when it comes to cheerful self-abandonment in Christ's service we dither. Why? Out of unbelief, pure and simple.
Do we fear that God lacks strength or wisdom for fulfilling his declared purpose? But it is he who made the worlds, and rules them, and ordains all that takes place, from the careers of Pharaoh and Nebuchadnezzar to the fall of a sparrow.
Or do we fear that he is infirm of purpose, and that as good folks with good intentions sometimes let down their friends, so our God may fail to carry out his god intentions toward us? But paul states it as a fact that "in everything God works for good with those who love him." And who are you to suppose that you will be the first exception, the first person to find God wavering and failing to keep his word? Do you not see how you dishonor God by such fears?
Or do we doubt his constancy, suspecting that he has "emerged" or "developed" or "died" in the interim between Bible times and our own, and that now he is no longer quite the God with whom the saints of Scripture had to do? But "I the Lord do not change" (Mal 3:6), and "Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever" (Heb 13:8).
Have you been holding back from a risky, costly course to which you know in your heart God has called you? Hold back no longer. Your God is faithful to you, and he is adequate for you. You will never need more than he can supply, and what he supplies, both materially and spiritually will always be enough for the present. "No good thing does the Lord withhold from those who walk uprightly" (Ps 84:11 RSV). "God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your strength, but with the temptation will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it" (1 Cor 10:13 RSV). "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness" (2Cor 12:9). Think on these things!-and let your thoughts drive out your inhibitions about serving your Master.