Here, in a certain sense, the long golden chain of _the doctrine_ of the Epistle ends--in the hand of the King who thus crowns the sinners whose redemption, faith, acceptance, and holiness, He had, in the Heaven of His own Being, fore-willed and fore-ordered, "before the world began," above all time. What remains of the chapter is the application of the doctrine. But what an application! The Apostle brings his converts out into the open field of trial, and bids them _use_ his doctrine _there_. Are they thus dear to the Father in the Son? Is their every need thus met? Is their guilt cancelled in Christ's mighty merit? Is their existence filled with Christ's eternal Spirit? Is sin thus cast beneath their feet, and is such a heaven opened above their heads? "Then what have they to fear," before man, or before God? What power in the universe, of whatever order of being, can really hurt them? For what can separate them from their portion in their glorified Lord, and in His Father's love in Him? Again we listen, with Tertius, as the voice goes on: [Sidenote: Ver. 31.] =What therefore shall we say in view of these things? If God is for us, who is against us?= [Sidenote: Ver. 32.] =HE[147] who did not spare His own true (ἰδίου) Son, but for us all handed Him over= to that awful expiatory, propitiatory, darkness and death, so that HE was "pleased to bruise Him, to put Him to grief" (Isai. liii. 10), all for His own great glory, but, no whit the less, all for our pure blessing; =how= (wonderful "_how_"!) =shall He not also with Him,= because _all_ is included and involved in Him who is the Father's All, =give us also freely all things= (τὰ πάντα, "_the all_ things that are")? And do we want to be sure that He will not, after all, find a flaw in our claim, and cast us in His court? [Sidenote: Ver. 33.] =Who will lodge a charge against God's chosen ones?= Will =God--who justifies them?[148] Who will condemn them,= if the charge _is_ lodged? Will =Christ--who died, nay rather who rose, who is on the right hand of God, who is actually (καὶ) interceding for us?= (Observe this one mention in the whole Epistle of His Ascension, and His action for us above, as He is, by the fact of His Session on the Throne, our sure Channel of eternal blessing, unworthy that we are.) Do we need assurance, amidst "the sufferings of this present time," that through them always the invincible hands of Christ clasp us, with untired love? We "look upon the covenant" of our acceptance and life in Him who died for us, and who lives both for and in us, and we meet the fiercest buffet of these waves in peace. [Sidenote: Ver. 35.] =Who shall sunder us from the love of Christ?= There rise before him, as he asks, like so many angry personalities,[149] the outward woes of the pilgrimage. =Tribulation? or Perplexity? or Persecution? or Famine? or Nakedness? or Peril? or Sword?= [Sidenote: Ver. 36.] =As it stands written,= in that deep song of anguish and faith (Psal.