Study Desk

and the Searcher of hearts knows what the Spirit's meaning is, because His intercessions for God's people are in harmony with God's will.

Now we know that for those who love God all things are working together for good--for those, I mean, whom with deliberate purpose He has called.

For those whom He has known beforehand He has also pre-destined to bear the likeness of His Son, that He might be the Eldest in a vast family of brothers;

He who did not withhold even His own Son, but gave Him up for all of us, will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Who is there to condemn them? Christ Jesus died, or rather has risen to life again. He is also at the right hand of God, and is interceding for us.

As it stands written in the Scripture, "For Thy sake they are, all day long, trying to kill us. We have been looked upon as sheep destined for slaughter."

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither the lower ranks of evil angels nor the higher, neither things present nor things future, nor the forces of nature,

I am telling you the truth as a Christian man--it is no falsehood, for my conscience enlightened, as it is, by the Holy Spirit adds its testimony to mine--

For I could pray to be accursed from Christ on behalf of my brethren, my human kinsfolk--for such the Israelites are.

Not however that God's word has failed; for all who have sprung from Israel do not count as Israel,

For the words are the language of promise and run thus, "About this time next year I will come, and Sarah shall have a son."

And from this we learn that everything is dependent not on man's will or endeavour, but upon God who has mercy. For the Scripture said to Pharaoh,

"It is for this very purpose that I have lifted you so high--that I may make manifest in you My power, and that My name may be proclaimed far and wide in all the earth."

"Why then does God still find fault?" you will ask; "for who is resisting His will?"

Or has not the potter rightful power over the clay to make out of the same lump one vessel for more honourable and another for less honourable uses?

And what if God, while choosing to make manifest the terrors of His anger and to show what is possible with Him, has yet borne with long-forbearing patience with the subjects of His anger who stand ready for destruction,

in order to make known His infinite goodness towards the subjects of His mercy whom He has prepared beforehand for glory,

for the Lord will hold a reckoning upon the earth, making it efficacious and brief."

in agreement with the statement of Scripture, "See, I am placing on Mount Zion a stone for people to stumble at, and a rock for them to trip over, and yet he whose faith rests upon it shall never have reason to feel ashamed."

Brethren, the longing of my heart, and my prayer to God, on behalf of my countrymen is for their salvation.