<p>8:31&nbsp;<i>What then shall we say to these things?&ndash;&nbsp;</i>Paul returns to the rhetorical, legal style which he used earlier in Romans. The phrase could be an allusion to a legal one; as if to say to the accused or to the jury: &lsquo;What then do you say to these things?&rsquo;. We are invited to be the jury at our own trial. The evidence that we shall be saved is devastating; nothing can be said against it. Or it could be that Paul is in the place of the defence, going on the attack against the prosecutor. What can be argued against all this evidence? And there would have to be silence. The case is set in concrete. The arguments simply cannot be answered. Paul has previously thrown down the challenge after some of his previous depositions of evidence in this very public case of God&rsquo;s Gracious, Certain Salvation vs. All Human Doubts And Fears. Four times he has challenged: What then shall we say to this (Rom. 3:5; 4:1; 6:1; 7:7)? And there can only be silence. But Paul&rsquo;s rhetorical style is almost aggressive; he is the counsel for the defence who is on the offensive rather than the apologetic and defensive. But it seems Paul isn&rsquo;t satisfied with winning the case. He drives it home now in the final verses of this chapter in a kind of&nbsp;<i>tour de triumph,&nbsp;</i>a victory lap before all of creation. He is exalting, both intellectually and emotionally, in God&rsquo;s grace and the certainty of our salvation. But he&rsquo;s not exalting just for the sake of it; he is aware of his own cries of frustration with his own failure which he voiced in Romans 7, and he is aware of how cautious and weak in faith are we his readers, who struggle to believe the goodness of this good news, this Gospel of grace. And so he has to hammer it home. &quot;What shall we then say to these things?&quot;- i.e. 'what form of words, of 'saying', is adequate response to them?' (Rom. 8:31; Paul uses that phrase seven times in Romans, so beyond words did he find the atonement wrought in Christ). Words aren't symbols sufficient for our experience of God's grace and love; all commentary is bathos, like trying to explain a symphony in words; we experience a collapse of language. What remains, I suppose, is to live, to exist, in the sober knowledge of this grace, to never lose sight of them in our hearts; and all the rest, the rest of life and living and all the decisions and responses we are supposed to make, will somehow come naturally.</p><p><i>If God is for us, who can be against us?</i>- The songs of the suffering Servant are applied to us in Rom. 8:31, where Paul exalts that &quot;if God be for us, who is against us?&quot;- alluding to Is. 50:8 &quot;The Lord God is helping me- who is he that would convict me?&quot;. If we are in Christ, we like Him cannot be condemned. In the legal context, if the judge of all is legally &ldquo;for us&rdquo;, then there effectively is no accuser, nothing and nobody standing against us. It&rsquo;s as if Paul has rightly guessed his readers&rsquo; response: &lsquo;OK Paul, I have nothing to say against your argument, but all the same you don&rsquo;t know what a sinner I am, what a line of sins I have waiting there to condemn me&rsquo;. And Paul&rsquo;s exultant answer is that if God is &ldquo;for us&rdquo;- and he has demonstrated this time and again, that God quite simply wants to save us- then nothing and nobody, not even our own sins, can ultimately stand against us. The idea of God being &ldquo;for us&rdquo; is repeated twice elsewhere in Romans. In Rom. 5:8 we read that God commended His love toward us in that Christ, His Son, died &ldquo;for us&rdquo;. This is the extent to which God is &ldquo;for us&rdquo;. And in Rom. 8:34, Christ makes intercession &ldquo;for us&rdquo; to God the judge; and yet God the judge is also &ldquo;for us&rdquo;. All this legal language is only metaphor, and all metaphors break down at some point if pushed too far. If in this case we push it too far, we would end up saying that God is somehow unjust, His sense of legal justice lacks integrity and so is worthless in an ethical, moral sense. However, the broad brush impression is that in the highest, ultimate court analysis of our case, both the judge and the counsel for the defence are passionately &ldquo;for us&rdquo; on a personal level. In God&rsquo;s case, He was &ldquo;for us&rdquo; to the extent of giving His Son to die &ldquo;for us&rdquo;, for the sake of our sins and failures for which we are in the dock. Col. 2:14 uses the same phrase to describe how the Mosaic Law which was &ldquo;against us&rdquo; has been taken out of the way through Christ&rsquo;s death; and Paul has argued that the strength of sin is in the Law. If that is taken away, then sin will not have power in the lives of those who are &ldquo;in Christ&rdquo;, in whom such law and legality is now no more. As an aside, it should be noted that when the Lord told John to &ldquo;Forbid not; for he that is not against us is for us&rdquo; (Lk. 9:50 Gk.), He could have been referring to God; as if to say that we don&rsquo;t need to as it were defend Him against possible impostors, because&nbsp;God Himself is the One who is not against us but for us. In this case, here in Rom. 8:31 we would have yet another of Paul&rsquo;s allusions to the Gospels; his point would be that if God is for us and not against us, then nothing at all nor anybody, not even ourselves and our sins, can be against us.</p>