Romans (The NIV Application Commentary)

Psalm 44:22

God created the world, pronounced it good, and entrusted its care to human beings. True, God gave human beings the right to use its resources for our good. But in making us “rulers” (Gen. 1:26) of the created world, he does not give us the right to do anything we want with it. Rather, we are appointed as stewards of creation.

It is God who justifies.

no spiritual being can separate us from Christ is needed in the church today.

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

“Don’t be upset about your fiancé breaking off your engagement, because God must have an even better life partner for you; Romans 8:28 promises….” The difficulty with this application is

Your God Is Too Small, the title of the popular book by J. B. Phillips some years ago, is a criticism that might be rightly made to many Christians and many churches. Out of pride in ourselves and our achievements and a culturally influenced belief in ourselves as “masters of our fate,” we have a hard time giving God his due.

God’s “hardening,” then, does not cause spiritual insensitivity; it maintains people in the state of sin that they have already chosen. When God chooses people to be saved, he acts out of pure grace, granting a blessing to people who in no way deserve it. But when he destines people to wrath, he sentences them to the fate they have already chosen f

The people of Israel, therefore, focused narrowly on the works the law demanded and missed the larger demand of God to submit to him in faith. Thus they failed to obtain righteousness.