With this lesson of uttermost humiliation the truth of the heavenly Choice, and its effectual Call, brings us also that of an encouragement altogether divine. Such a "purpose" is no fluctuating thing, shifting with the currents of time. Such a call to such an embrace means a tenacity, as well as a welcome, worthy of God. "Who shall separate us?" "Neither shall any pluck them out of My Father's hand." And this is the motive of the words in this wonderful context, where everything is made to bear on _the safety_ of the children of God, in the midst of all imaginable dangers. [Sidenote: Ver. 29.] =For whom He knew beforehand,= with a foreknowledge which, in this argument, can mean nothing short of foredecision[143]--no mere foreknowledge of what they would do, but rather of what He would do for them--=those He also set apart beforehand, for conformation,= deep and genuine, a resemblance due to kindred _being_,[144] =to the image,= the manifested Countenance, =of His Son, that He might be Firstborn amongst many brethren,= surrounded by the circling host of kindred faces, congenial beings, His Father's children by their union with Himself. So, as ever in the Scriptures, mystery bears full on character. The man is saved that he may be holy. His "_predestination_"[145] is not merely not to perish, but to be made like Christ, in a spiritual transformation, coming out in the moral features of the family of heaven. And all bears ultimately on the glory of Christ. The gathered saints are an organism, a family, before the Father; and their vital Centre is the Beloved Son, who sees in their true sonship the fruit of "the travail of His soul." [Sidenote: Ver. 30.] =But those whom He thus set apart beforehand, He also called,= effectually drew so as truly and freely to choose Christ; =and those whom He= thus =called= to Christ, =He also justified= in Christ, in that great way of propitiation and faith of which the Epistle has so largely spoken; =but[146] those whom He= thus =justified, He also glorified.= "_Glorified_": it is a marvellous past tense. It reminds us that in this passage we are placed, as it were, upon the mountain of the Throne; our finite thought is allowed to speak for once (however little it understands it) the language of eternity, to utter the facts as the Eternal sees them. To Him, the pilgrim is already in the immortal Country; the bondservant is already at his day's end, receiving His Master's "Well done, good and faithful." He to whom time is not as it is to us thus sees His purposes complete, always and for ever. We see through His sight, in hearing His word about it. So for us, in wonderful paradox, our glorification is presented, as truly as our call, in terms of accomplished fact. * * * * *