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Examined Doctrine
PASSAGE · BSB

Romans 8

23 positions in the corpus lean on this chapter. Cited verses are marked.

1Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

2For in Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set you free from the law of sin and death.

3For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful man, as an offering for sin. He thus condemned sin in the flesh,

4so that the righteous standard of the law might be fulfilled in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.

5Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.

6The mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace,

7because the mind of the flesh is hostile to God: It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.

8Those controlled by the flesh cannot please God.

9You, however, are controlled not by the flesh, 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.

10But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness.

11And if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit, who lives in you.

12Therefore, brothers, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh, to live according to it.

13For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.

15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery that returns you to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!”

16The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children.

17And if we are children, then we are heirs: heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with Him, so that we may also be glorified with Him.

18I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us.

19The creation waits in eager expectation for the revelation of the sons of God.

20For the creation was subjected to futility, not by its own will, but because of the One who subjected it, in hope

21that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God.

22We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until the present time.

23Not only that, 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.

24For in this hope we were saved; but hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he can already see?

25But if we hope for what we do not yet see, we wait for it patiently.

26In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.

27And He who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God.

28And we know that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, who are called according to His purpose.

29For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.

30And those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.

31What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

32He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?

33Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies.

34Who is there to condemn us? For Christ Jesus, who died, and more than that was raised to life, is at the right hand of God—and He is interceding for us.

35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

36As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us.

38For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

39neither 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.

Who leans on it

Aquinas on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Predestination is real and rests on God's will, not foreseen merit — though set within a framework of secondary causes that leaves human agency genuinely operative.Jacobus Arminius on election & predestinationSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Election is conditional, grounded in God's foreknowledge of who will believe rather than in a prior unconditional decree.Jacobus Arminius on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Union with Christ — and therefore the Spirit's indwelling — is the effect of faith, not its cause. Arminius calls that union 'the primary and immediate effect of that faith by which men believe in him as the only saviour…Calvin on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCELEANS°Calvin opens Book III by insisting that everything Christ did stays outside us until the Spirit brings it in: 'so long as we are without Christ and separated from him, nothing which he suffered and did for the salvation …Chrysostom on the trinityPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Post-Nicene and unambiguous. The three are one undivided essence, so completely that where one Person is present the whole Trinity is present. Against the Macedonians he presses the Spirit's deity from the grammar of 1 C…Jonathan Edwards on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The Spirit does not merely act upon the saints; he is communicated to them and united to their faculties as a new principle of nature, and every gracious act — faith among them — is an exercise of that principle. Natural…M. Heiser on election & predestinationDISPUTED READINGNO FIT°Affirms individual election unto salvation and predestination as real, while denying that foreknowledge entails predestination — God foreknows all actual and all possible futures, and 1 Samuel 23 shows him foreknowing th…Josh Howerton on perseverance & eternal securityPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°A genuinely saved person cannot finally fall — 'the same grace that saves us also changes and sustains us.' The Hebrews warning passages and the parable of the sower are handled via the visible/invisible church distincti…Josh Howerton on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Predestination is taught in Scripture; divine sovereignty and human responsibility are 'not enemies,' and a right grasp of it should strengthen rather than undermine evangelism. Compatibilism affirmed, open theism reject…Josh Howerton on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Compatibilist: God is sovereign over all things including suffering, while human choices remain genuinely responsible. Open theism is named and rejected.Second London Baptist Confession on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 6 has Adam's guilt imputed and corrupt nature conveyed to all his posterity, leaving them 'utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good' (6.4). Chapter 9 then answers the will question directly: na…John MacArthur on perseverance & eternal securityPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Eternal security, joined directly to the lordship-salvation reading of apparent apostasy: someone who professes faith and later denies Christ demonstrates by that denial that they were never genuinely saved, rather than …John MacArthur on indwelling of the holy spiritSTANDARD ACCOUNTAFFIRMS°Indwelling is ordinary, permanent, and true of every believer at all times — stated directly in the doctrinal statement and used there to explain the sense in which the Lord's Supper is 'an actual communion with the rise…John Owen on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°The will is in bondage and no bestowed ability short of regeneration frees it. Owen distinguishes a remote power — the bare faculties of mind and will, which remain — from a next power, an actual ability to believe, and …Justin Peters on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°God chooses to redeem some of mankind for Himself and as a gift to the Son, and that sovereign choice does not cancel human accountability. He argues the doctrine is commonly misread as God keeping people out of heaven, …Justin Peters on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Spirit baptism happens at conversion and is identical with being placed into the Body of Christ at regeneration. He presses the point that it is positional rather than experiential — a fact, not a feeling — and notes tha…Charles Haddon Spurgeon on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Grounded explicitly in God's free choice, not foreseen faith — and Spurgeon states the negative case directly, walking through and rejecting the foreseen-faith argument step by step: Christ could not have died for him be…Charles Haddon Spurgeon on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Reformed Baptist. Faith itself is named as the Spirit's own work, which places the Spirit's operation before the act of believing rather than after it — the monergistic order, stated directly rather than inferred. The wi…Wesley on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Grounded in God's foreknowledge of who will believe, not an eternal decree that causes belief or unbelief. Reworks Romans 8:29-30 as the order salvation follows rather than a causal chain fixed from eternity: God's knowl…Wesley on the nature of saving faithPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°A trust that grasps Christ, inseparable from an assurance of pardon rather than a bare intellectual assent. Explicitly collapses a distinction some drew between a "faith of adherence" and a "faith of assurance": confiden…Wesley on indwelling of the holy spiritPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Baptism is the ordinary means of a real regeneration in which 'a principle of grace is infused,' so for an infant there is no conscious entry point at all — but the grace given is conditional on a life lived in keeping w…Westminster Confession on original sin & the human willPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°Chapter 6 supplies the anthropology - fallen nature 'utterly indisposed, disabled, and made opposite to all good' (6.4) - and chapter 9 draws the conclusion about the will. The loss in 9.3 is total but bounded: what is l…Westminster Confession on election & predestinationPRIMARY SOURCEAFFIRMS°WCF 3.5 rules out foreseen faith by name, and then rules out every substitute for it - foreseen works, foreseen perseverance, 'or any other thing in the creature, as conditions, or causes moving Him thereunto.' WCF 3.2 h…