Nnamdi was fifteen when he brought the letter home. It was in a brown school envelope, sealed, addressed to “The Parent or Guardian of Okafor Nnamdi, SS2B.” He knew what it said because the vice-principal had read it aloud to him before sealing it. During the second-term mathematics examination, an invigilator had found a mobile phone in his pocket. The school treated phones in the examination hall as evidence of malpractice. His parents were invited to appear before the disciplinary panel at ten o’clock on Tuesday morning, and he was suspended until then.
The phone was his. That part was true. He had forgotten to leave it in his bag at the gate, and he had been too frightened to raise his hand and hand it over once the papers were distributed. But he had not touched it. He had not cheated. The trouble was that nobody seemed interested in the difference.
He rode home in a danfo with the envelope inside his shirt, rehearsing what he would say. His father was a quiet man, an engineer with the water corporation, who rarely raised his voice but whose silences could fill a house. Nnamdi spent the whole journey imagining that silence.
His father read the letter at the dining table that evening. He read it twice. Then he put it down, took off his reading glasses and said, “Sit down. Tell me everything. All of it, the true version.” So Nnamdi told him: the forgotten phone, the fear, the invigilator, the vice-principal’s office. When he finished, his father was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “You should have handed it in. We will talk about that. But hear me clearly. On Tuesday morning I am going into that room with you, and I am going in on your side.”
Nnamdi told me years later that he slept that night for the first time in two days. Nothing had been decided. The panel had not met. The phone was still a problem, and his father had made it plain that it would be addressed. But the question that had been tormenting him most was settled. He was not going to face the room alone, and the person whose opinion mattered most to him was for him.
Many believers carry their troubles like that envelope inside the shirt. The difficulty is real enough. But underneath the difficulty sits a heavier question: Where does God stand in all this? Is He for me, or has He finally turned against me? As long as that question is open, there is no peace, however the circumstances turn out. When it is settled, a person can face a great deal.
The question Paul asks
Paul spends the first eight chapters of Romans building one of the most careful arguments ever written. He has shown that the whole world stands guilty before God. He has shown that righteousness is given as a gift through faith in Jesus Christ. He has shown that believers have died with Christ and been raised to new life, and that the Spirit now lives in them as the Spirit of adoption. Then, near the end of chapter 8, he stops and gathers it all into a single question:
What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.
“What shall we then say to these things?” These things are everything he has just written: the justification, the adoption, the indwelling Spirit, the groaning creation, the purpose of God that runs from foreknowledge to glory. Paul is asking, in effect, “Given all that God has done, what conclusion should we draw?”
His answer comes as another question. “If God be for us, who can be against us?” The little word for translates the Greek preposition hyper, which carries the sense of acting on behalf of someone. It is the same word Paul uses a verse later when he says God delivered up His Son “for us all.” God is not a neutral observer of your life, weighing the evidence from a distance. He has taken a side. He has committed Himself on your behalf.
Notice that the if does not express doubt. In Greek the sentence assumes the condition is true. We could fairly translate it, “Since God is for us.” Paul is telling you that God is on your side, and asking you to follow that fact to its conclusion.
That conclusion is not that nobody will ever oppose you. Paul knew opposition intimately. He had been stoned, beaten, imprisoned and shipwrecked. The question “who can be against us?” means something more like “who can successfully stand against us?” Plenty of people and powers may try. None of them can overturn what God has determined to do for those who belong to Him.
The proof is the cross
How can Paul be so sure? He does not point to his circumstances. If he had, his argument would have collapsed, because his circumstances were often terrible. He points instead to the one event that settles what God thinks about us: “He that spared not his own Son... how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”
This is an argument from the greater to the lesser. If God has already given the most costly gift imaginable, His own Son, then every lesser gift is secure. A father who has given his kidney to save his child is not going to refuse that child a plate of food. The greater sacrifice guarantees the smaller provision.
The phrase “spared not his own Son” echoes the story of Abraham on Mount Moriah, where God said to Abraham, “thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me” (Genesis 22:12). Abraham’s hand was stopped. A ram was provided, and Isaac walked down the mountain alive. But on the hill outside Jerusalem, no hand stopped the Father. He did not withhold His Son. Paul wants us to feel the weight of that. What Abraham was spared, God Himself was willing to bear.
This is why our peace cannot rest on reading our circumstances. A good week does not prove that God is for you, and a terrible week does not prove that He is against you. If you try to interpret His heart from the weather of your life, you will swing between confidence and despair every few days. The cross is the place God has chosen to show His heart. “But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). He demonstrated His love before you had done anything to deserve it and while you were still His enemy. He is hardly going to withdraw it now that you are His child.
When fear rises and the old question returns, go back to the cross. Do not first look at the bank balance, the medical report or the latest text message from the person who is making your life difficult. Look at what God has already done. The verdict on His attitude toward you was given there, and it was given in blood.
PunchlineDo not try to read God’s heart from the weather of your life. He chose the cross as the place to show you where He stands.
No charge that can stand
Paul’s language now moves into a courtroom. “Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect?” The verb is a legal one. It means to bring a formal accusation against someone. Picture a trial in which the prosecution rises to read the indictment against you. Paul asks, “Who will dare?”
Then he answers. “It is God that justifieth.” The Judge Himself has already declared you righteous. That verdict was not reached by overlooking the evidence. Paul has spent chapters 3 and 4 explaining how God can be “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (Romans 3:26). Your sin was not ignored. It was judged in the body of Christ. The penalty has been paid, and the court has ruled.
“Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.” Look at the four things Paul says about Jesus. He died, so the penalty is paid. He rose, so the payment has been accepted. He sits at the right hand of God, so He has authority. And He intercedes, so He is actively representing you right now. Hebrews says the same: “he is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them” (Hebrews 7:25).
The only person in the universe qualified to condemn you is the One who died for you. And He is speaking on your behalf.
This matters enormously for peace, because so much of our inner turmoil comes from accusation. Scripture calls Satan “the accuser of our brethren” who accused them “before our God day and night” (Revelation 12:10). Accusation can also come through our own conscience, through the memory of what we have done, or through people who will not let us forget. Some accusations are false. Others are painfully accurate. Paul’s answer covers both. Even where the charge is true, it cannot stand, because it has already been dealt with.
That does not mean we ignore our conscience when it rightly troubles us. There is a difference between conviction and condemnation. Conviction is the Spirit pointing to a specific wrong so that you can bring it to God, put it right where you can, and walk on. Condemnation is a verdict against your person that pushes you away from God. The first draws you to the Father. The second drives you from Him. When you have done wrong, come to Christ honestly, confess the matter, and take responsibility toward anyone you have hurt. Then refuse to keep standing in the dock for a case that has been closed.
Nnamdi’s father did not pretend that the phone had never been in his son’s pocket. He told him plainly that he should have handed it in. But he refused to let that mistake become a charge of cheating that would follow the boy for years. Being for someone includes telling them the truth.
What God means by good
Just before his great question, Paul writes one of the most quoted and most misunderstood verses in the Bible:
And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Many people hear Romans 8:28 as a promise that everything will turn out pleasantly. If you lose your job, a better one will come. If a relationship ends, someone more suitable is on the way. Sometimes that happens, and we can thank God when it does. But that is not what Paul is promising.
Read the next verse. The good that God is working toward is defined right there: “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” God’s purpose is to make you like Jesus. Everything in your life, including things that are genuinely bad, is being drawn by His hand into the service of that purpose. The chain that follows, foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified, is unbroken. Paul even speaks of glorification in the past tense, as though it were already done, because from God’s side it is that certain.
This protects us from two errors. The first is calling evil good. Paul does not say that all things are good. Abuse is not good. Betrayal is not good. The death of a child is not good. Scripture never asks us to put a smile on tragedy or to tell a grieving mother that God needed another angel. The promise is that God works in all things for good, not that all things are secretly good already.
The second error is assuming that God’s good must match our definition of success. We may think that what we most need is promotion, comfort, the contract or the visa. God is committed to something deeper. He may refuse a course we were sure would be best because it would have fed our pride, damaged our integrity or taken us away from Him. His being for us includes His being for the person we are becoming, and sometimes that means saying no to what we are asking.
Notice also what comes just before verse 28. Paul has written about creation groaning, believers groaning, and the Spirit Himself making intercession for us “with groanings which cannot be uttered” (Romans 8:26). The promise of good is planted in a chapter full of honest pain. You are allowed to groan. The Spirit groans with you. God’s purpose does not require you to pretend that you are not hurting.
There will be matters you do not understand. You can grieve, seek help, pursue justice where it is needed, and make necessary changes without having a full explanation of God’s providence. The absence of an explanation is not the absence of His care.
Nothing can separate you
Paul then lists the worst things he can think of. “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” (Romans 8:35). This is not an abstract list. Paul had experienced nearly every item on it. He quotes Psalm 44 to show that God’s people have always suffered: “For thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter” (Romans 8:36).
Then comes the triumphant turn: “Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us” (Romans 8:37). Notice the phrase in all these things. Not after them. Not by avoiding them. In them. The believer is more than a conqueror while still walking through tribulation and distress. The victory is not that trouble never comes. It is that trouble cannot achieve what it threatens, which is to cut you off from the love of God.
Paul ends with his personal testimony: “For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, Nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 8:38-39). He sweeps through every category he can name. Death cannot do it. Life, with all its pressures and temptations, cannot do it. Spiritual powers cannot do it. The present cannot do it, and the unknown future cannot do it. Nothing above you and nothing below you. And then, in case anything has been missed, “nor any other creature.” Everything that exists, apart from God Himself, is included in that phrase. The only One who could separate you from His love is God, and He is the One who gave His Son to bring you in.
Why does Paul make the list so severe? Because a weak assurance would be useless. If God’s love could be cut off by a bad diagnosis or a business collapse, it would fail us at exactly the moment we needed it most. Paul wants an assurance strong enough to hold under real suffering, and the love of God in Christ is exactly that.
This gives us a better foundation than treating every favourable event as evidence of God’s acceptance and every unfavourable event as evidence against it. Circumstances matter. We pray about them and act wisely in them. But they cannot carry the whole interpretation of your relationship with God. That interpretation has been given at the cross and sealed by the resurrection.
The God who was for David
NuggetLong before Paul wrote Romans, God’s people had learned that His being for them was the ground of their courage. One of the clearest examples comes from David in his most humiliating moment.
Psalm 56 carries a heading that tells us David wrote it when the Philistines seized him in Gath. He had run from Saul into enemy territory, the hometown of Goliath, carrying Goliath’s own sword. The servants of the Philistine king recognised him, and David was so afraid that he pretended to be insane, scratching on the doors of the gate and letting spittle run down his beard (1 Samuel 21:10-15). It is not the David of the stained-glass window. It is a frightened man with nowhere left to run.
And out of that moment comes this line: “When I cry unto thee, then shall mine enemies turn back: this I know; for God is for me” (Psalm 56:9). This I know. David’s circumstances were a disaster. His conduct was hardly heroic. But beneath all of it he had one settled conviction. God was for him.
Psalm 118 says something similar: “The LORD is on my side; I will not fear: what can man do unto me?” (Psalm 118:6). The writer does not claim that men can do nothing at all. They can do a great deal of harm. What they cannot do is undo the stance God has taken. Peace comes from knowing whose side He is on.
David’s greatest psalm of trust paints the same reality in pastoral colours:
The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
Look at where the Shepherd’s care is found. In green pastures and beside still waters, yes. But also in “the valley of the shadow of death.” The valley is still part of the journey. Its presence does not prove that the Shepherd has stopped leading. In fact, notice the change in the psalm at exactly that point. Up to verse 3, David speaks about the Lord: “he maketh me... he leadeth me... he restoreth my soul.” When he enters the valley, he begins speaking to Him: “for thou art with me.” Darkness brought him closer.
And the table is prepared “in the presence of mine enemies.” The enemies are still there. They have not been removed. But David is eating in front of them, anointed and overflowing, because his Host is for him. That is the peace this teaching is about. It does not depend on clearing the room of every threat.
When God is for you, He may oppose your plans
There is a part of this truth that we must not skip, because it is easy to hear “God is for you” as “God is for everything you want.” David mentions the Shepherd’s rod and staff, which comfort him. A shepherd’s rod defends the sheep from wolves. It can also be laid firmly across the back of a sheep heading towards a cliff.
Hebrews explains this side of the Father’s love:
And ye have forgotten the exhortation which speaketh unto you as unto children, My son, despise not thou the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when thou art rebuked of him: For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth. If ye endure chastening, God dealeth with you as with sons; for what son is he whom the father chasteneth not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons. Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us , and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live? For they verily for a few days chastened us after their own pleasure; but he for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness. Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.
“For whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth.” The word translated chastening has to do with the training of a child. It is the Greek word paideia, from the same root as the word for child. It is the whole process of raising a son or daughter: instruction, correction, encouragement and discipline. The writer’s point is that this training is a sign of belonging. A father puts this kind of effort only into his own children.
He also tells us its purpose: “that we might be partakers of his holiness,” and that it “yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” Notice that word peaceable. Even correction from the Father is aimed at peace. It may be grievous at the time. The writer admits that honestly. But its fruit is a settled, righteous life.
So when God refuses to bless a destructive decision, He is being for you. When He allows a sinful pattern to become painful so that you will turn from it, He is being for you. When a trusted friend tells you a hard truth that you needed to hear, the Father may be using that friend to be for you. Love that only ever agreed with us would not really be love at all.
We need two careful guard-rails here. First, this passage does not allow us to label every illness, accident or tragedy as God’s punishment. Jesus refused that kind of reasoning when His disciples asked about the man born blind (John 9:1-3). Hebrews encourages believers to receive difficulty as an occasion for growth. It does not give us a key to explain other people’s suffering, and it certainly gives us no right to tell a grieving family what God was doing.
Second, no human leader may use the language of fatherly discipline to justify control, cruelty or abuse. Fatherly care must be understood through Jesus, whose authority always serves the good of His people. If someone in authority over you is harming you and calling it God’s correction, that is not the Father’s training. Seek help, speak to someone you trust, and where there is danger, put your safety first.
Peace for ordinary days
Jesus spoke about peace on the night before His crucifixion, with betrayal minutes away and the disciples about to scatter:
Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
“Not as the world giveth.” The world’s peace is the absence of trouble. It arrives when the problem is solved and leaves when the next one appears. The peace Jesus gives is different. It is rooted in Him and in the Father’s love, and so it can be present in the middle of trouble. He spoke these words with the cross ahead of Him.
How does that peace work out in ordinary life?
It changes how you face accusation. When someone speaks falsely against you, you will still need to respond with wisdom. You may need to explain, document what happened, or take advice. You cannot always make every hearer agree with you. But you do not have to treat their opinion as the final word on who you are. God has already spoken, and the Judge is on your side.
It changes how you face decisions. Many believers are paralysed by the fear of choosing wrongly, as though God were waiting to punish them for a misstep. A child who knows his father is for him will still ask for guidance, but he does not freeze in terror. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee” (Isaiah 26:3). The mind stays on Him, not on the endless list of possible mistakes.
It changes how you face people you disagree with. If your worth is not on the line in every conflict, you can listen. You can pray for the person who opposes you. You can pursue what is just without needing to win every exchange. Security in God’s love makes generosity toward others possible.
It changes how you sleep. “I will both lay me down in peace, and sleep” (Psalm 4:8). The problems may still be on the table when you wake. But you can lie down, because the One who is for you does not sleep.
And it changes how you pray. You no longer need to open every prayer by persuading God to be kind. You can begin where Paul ended, with the settled knowledge that nothing can separate you from His love, and then bring your actual need.
On Tuesday morning, Nnamdi and his father sat before the disciplinary panel. His father did most of the talking. He did not make excuses. He said his son had broken the rule about phones, that the boy knew it, and that the family would accept whatever penalty the school set for that. Then he asked, respectfully but firmly, that the panel hear the invigilator’s own account of whether the phone had ever been used. The invigilator confirmed that it had been switched off and buried in the boy’s trouser pocket. The charge of malpractice was dropped. Nnamdi lost the phone for the rest of the term and spent two weeks of Saturdays cleaning the laboratories.
On the drive home, his father said almost nothing for a long time. Then, at the traffic light by the stadium, he said, “I hope you know that I was never against you. Not for one minute. Even when I was angry about the phone, I was on your side.”
PunchlineNnamdi said he cleaned those laboratories with a strange lightness. The correction was real, and he deserved it. But the question that had frightened him most had been answered before he ever walked into the room.
That is the peace God offers you. Your circumstances may still need attention. A mistake may still need correcting. A hard conversation may still be waiting on Tuesday morning. But the question beneath all of it has been answered at the cross. God is for you. He did not spare His own Son. Christ has died, risen, and is speaking on your behalf right now. Nothing in all creation can separate you from His love. Take the envelope out of your shirt and lay it on the table. Your Father has already said that He is going in with you.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- What circumstances have you been using to interpret whether God is for you or against you? How does Romans 8:32 challenge that way of thinking?
- Which accusations, true or false, have you allowed to keep you standing in the dock? What would it mean to hear “It is God that justifieth”?
- How has Romans 8:28 sometimes been misused, by you or by others? How does verse 29 correct that?
- Where might God be “for you” by opposing a course you are set on?
- What would change in your next difficult conversation if you were fully persuaded that God was on your side?
This Week
Each morning this week, read Romans 8:31-39 aloud, slowly. Then write down one situation that is troubling you, and beneath it write Paul’s question: “If God be for us, who can be against us?” Spend two minutes thinking about what God has already given you in Christ before you ask Him for anything about that situation. At the end of the week, look back over what you wrote and notice how your posture toward those situations has changed.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You are for me. You did not spare Your own Son but delivered Him up for me, and I know that You will not withhold any good thing from me. Thank You that You have justified me, and that Jesus is at Your right hand speaking on my behalf. When accusation comes, help me to stand in Your verdict. When trouble comes, help me to know that nothing can separate me from Your love. When You correct me, help me to receive it as the training of a loving Father. Give me Your peace, the peace that the world cannot give and cannot take away. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.