<p>8:32&nbsp;<i>He that spared not His own son</i>- Perhaps alluding to how God commended Abraham for not having spared his son (Gen. 22:16). As noted on Rom. 8:31, God our judge is &ldquo;for us&rdquo; in that He gave His own Son to die &ldquo;for us&rdquo;, for our sins. The idea of God not sparing people is usually used in the sense of &lsquo;not sparing them from condemnation&rsquo;, and it is used like this twice elsewhere in Romans (Rom. 11:21 twice; 2 Cor. 13:2; 2 Pet. 2:4,5). The Lord Jesus bore our sins in that He identified with them; and the Old Testament idea of sin bearing meant to bear condemnation for sin. As the representative of we who are sinners, He in some sense died the death of a condemned man; His final cry &ldquo;Why have You forsaken me?&rdquo; (Mt. 27:46) was surely rooted in the Old Testament theme that God will forsake sinners but never forsake the righteous. He felt&nbsp;<i>as</i>&nbsp;a sinner, although He was not one. The language of God not sparing His own Son could be read as meaning that God treated Him as condemned, in the sense that the Lord Jesus was to such an extent our representative. If this is the correct line of interpretation, then Paul would again be tackling our objection that we are such awful sinners that perhaps his fantastic news of grace still doesn&rsquo;t apply to us personally. And he would be answering it by saying that because we are in Christ and Christ in us, Christ died as our representative, deeply identifying with us as characters and persons and thereby with the sinfulness and failure which is such a significant part of us. And therefore as our representative He died and rose again, so that we might be able to believe &lsquo;into Him&rsquo; and thereby share in His resurrection and glorification.</p><p>God &lsquo;spared not&rsquo; His own son is alluding to the LXX of Gen. 22:16, where Abraham spares not his son. The Greek phrase is elsewhere used about God not sparing people when He assigns them to condemnation (Rom. 11:21; 2 Cor. 13:2; 2 Pet. 2:4,5). The Lord Jesus knows how not only sinners feel but how the rejected will feel- for He &lsquo;bore condemnation&rsquo; in this sense. We should be condemned. But He as our representative was condemned, although not personally guilty. He so empathized with us through the experience of the cross that He came to&nbsp;<i>feel</i>&nbsp;like a sinner, although He was not one. And thus He has freed us from condemnation. When Paul asks in Rom. 8:33,34 &lsquo;Who can accuse us? Where are those people? Who can condemn us, if God justifies us?&rsquo;, he is alluding to the woman taken in adultery. For the Lord asked the very same rhetorical questions on that occasion. Paul&rsquo;s point is that we each one are that woman. We are under accusations which we can&rsquo;t refute. The Lord never denied her guilt; but He took it away. The Lord comforted her that no&nbsp;<i>man</i>&nbsp;has condemned her nor can condemn her, and He who alone could do so, instead pronounces her free from condemnation.</p><p><i>But delivered Him up for us all</i>- The Greek is three times used in Is. 53 LXX about the handing over to Jesus to His death. The moment of the Lord being delivered over by Pilate is so emphasized. There are few details in the record which are recorded verbatim by all the writers (Mt. 27:26; Mk. 15:15; Lk. 23:25; Jn. 19:16). The Lord had prophesied this moment of handing over, as if this was something which He dreaded (Mk. 9:31; 10:33); that point when He was outside the legal process, and must now face His destruction. The Angels reminded the disciples: &quot;Remember&nbsp;<i>how</i>&nbsp;he spake unto you when he was yet in Galilee, saying, The Son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men&quot; (Lk. 24:6,7). The emphasis is on &quot;<i>How</i>&quot;, with what passion and emphasis. Rom. 4:25 makes this moment of handing over equivalent to His actual death: &quot; Who was<i> delivered</i>&nbsp;(s.w.) for our offences, and raised again for our justification&quot;. So much stress is put on this moment of being delivered over to crucifixion. The Gospel records stress that Pilate delivered Him up; but in fact God did (Rom. 8:32); indeed, the Lord delivered Himself up (Gal. 2:20; Eph. 5:2,25). Always the same word is used. These passages also stress that He delivered Himself up, and was delivered up,&nbsp;<i>for us</i>. It was&nbsp;<i>our salvation</i>&nbsp;which motivated Him at the moment of being delivered up. Perhaps it was at that moment that He had the greatest temptation to walk through the midst of them and back to Galilee. As the crowd surged forward and cheered, knowing they'd won the battle of wills with Pilate...&quot;take ye him and crucify him&quot; ringing in His mind... this was it. This was the end. How He must have been tempted to pray again His prayer: &quot;Let this cup pass from me...&quot;. Jerusalem was a small town by modern standards, with no more than 10,000 inhabitants. There must have been faces in that crowd which, through swollen eyes, He recognized; some whose children had benefited from His miracles, whose ears had heard His discourses with wonderment. The emphasis on this moment of delivering up is so great that there must have been an especial sacrifice on the Lord's part. But He &quot;gave himself up&quot; to&nbsp;<i>God</i>&nbsp;not men (1 Pet. 2:23); He knew He was giving Himself as an offering to&nbsp;<i>God</i>&nbsp;as the crowd came forward and the soldiers once again led Him. The almost terrifying thing is that&nbsp;<i>we,</i>&nbsp;for the sake of our identity with Christ, are also &quot;delivered up to death&quot; (2 Cor. 4:11). We are asked to share, in principle, the height of devotion that He reached in that moment.</p><p><i>How shall He not also with Him freely give us all things</i>- If so much was given to us by the death of Christ, if God gave His Son for us, then how much &lsquo;easier&rsquo; is it for Him to give us absolutely anything. For nothing compares to the gift of God&rsquo;s Son to die; this is the ultimate gift from God to man. To give us eternity and forgiveness for our sins is in far less than the gift of the blood of His Son. And further, if God gave us His Son in order to save us, in order to &ldquo;give us all things&rdquo;- is it really feasible that having given us His Son&nbsp;<i>so that</i>&nbsp;He might &ldquo;give us all things&rdquo;, He would then&nbsp;<i>not</i>&nbsp;&ldquo;give us all things&rdquo;? Again, Paul&rsquo;s logic is intrusive and powerful. We may shut the book, stop reading or listening, but the force of the argument silently echoes within our narrow and fearful minds. God did &ldquo;not spare&rdquo; His Son- by contrast, He &ldquo;freely gave&rdquo; Him Gk. &lsquo;to grace with&rsquo;, His Son was indeed &ldquo;all things&rdquo; to God, His only and beloved Son. Seeing God gave us Him, it&rsquo;s obvious that He is going to give us the things which that gift was given in order to make possible. &ldquo;Shall He not with Him also&rdquo; could be a reference to the resurrection- if God gave us so much in the&nbsp;<i>death&nbsp;</i>of His Son, think how much more was achieved and given to us through His resurrection. &ldquo;With him&rdquo; could be read another way, however- as referring to how Christ will meet the believers &ldquo;in the air&rdquo;, and they shall come &ldquo;with him&rdquo; to judgment (1 Thess. 4:14), with Him their judge clearly &ldquo;for them&rdquo;. However we must remember Paul is driving here at our fears that our sins are too great for the good news, however good it is, to be true for us personally. The Greek translated &ldquo;freely give&rdquo; is a form of the word&nbsp;<i>charis</i>, grace, and is often translated &ldquo;forgive&rdquo;. It&rsquo;s the same word used in Lk. 7:42, where God &lsquo;frankly forgives&rsquo; all the sins / debts of His servants. Perhaps Paul has this in mind. If God gave up His Son to die for us, in order to achieve forgiveness for our sins, then rather obviously, surely, He will &ldquo;frankly forgive&rdquo; or &ldquo;freely give&rdquo; us forgiveness for all things, all and any sin. We shouldn&rsquo;t think that this is somehow harder for God than to give us His Son to die for our sins. He has already done that. And so giving us the forgiveness which Christ died to attain isn&rsquo;t therefore so difficult. If we are in Christ, then God has &ldquo;quickened us together with Him, having forgiven us s.w. &ldquo;freely give&rdquo; in Rom. 8:32 all trespasses&rdquo;. The &ldquo;all things&rdquo; of Rom. 8:32 can thus be understood as &ldquo;all our trespasses&rdquo;. And so Paul goes on to triumph in Rom. 8:37 that we are conquerors in &ldquo;all things&rdquo;, over all our sins, because we are in Him that loved us.</p>