According to Romans 8:29, we have been predestinated to be conformed to the image of Christ, the Firstborn of God. God has predestinated us not simply that we may be sanctified, spiritual, and victorious but that we may be fully conformed to the image of His Son. This is our destiny, determined by God in eternity past. Conformation is the end result of transformation. It includes the changing of our inward essence and nature, and it also includes the changing of our outward form, that we may match the glorified image of Christ, the God-man. He is the prototype, and we are the mass reproduction. Both the inward and the outward changes in us, the product, are the result of the operation of the law of the Spirit of life in our being (v. 2).
The purpose of God’s foreknowledge, predestination, and calling is to prepare and produce many brothers for His firstborn Son that, on the one hand, they, together with God’s firstborn Son, may be the many sons of God with the divine life and nature for the expression of God, and that, on the other hand, they may be the many members who constitute the Body of God’s firstborn Son as the corporate expression of God in His firstborn Son, which is the fullness of God’s firstborn Son, that is, the fullness of God in His firstborn Son (Eph. 1:23; 3:19).
Many believers know that in incarnation Christ was born of Mary, the virgin, to be the Son of Man, but very few believers know that in resurrection Christ was born again to be the firstborn Son of God. It is as the firstborn Son of God that Christ is our prototype. Today we can experience and enjoy Him as our prototype, for He is the firstborn Son of God who is not only God with divinity but also a man possessing humanity. Formerly, we as men had only humanity, but when we believed into Christ and received Him, we received His divinity. Now we are the same as Christ, our unique prototype. He is the prototype, and we are His mass reproduction. He is the firstborn Son of God, and we are the many sons of God.
Romans 8:32-39 presents Christ as the One who makes us more than conquerors.
Romans 8:32 says, “Indeed, He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely give us all things?” This verse shows that God freely gives us all things with Christ.
Romans 8:34 goes on to say, “Who is he who condemns? It is Christ Jesus who died and, rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” This verse tells us that Christ died for us and that after being raised, He is interceding for us at the right hand of God. This verse states that Christ today is at the right hand of God in the heavens; verse 10, however, states that He is now in us, in our spirit (2 Tim. 4:22). As the Spirit (2 Cor. 3:17), He is omnipresent, being both at the right hand of God and in our spirit, both in heaven and on earth.
In Romans 8:34 it is Christ who intercedes for us, yet in verse 26 it is the Spirit who intercedes for us. These are not two Intercessors but one, the Lord Spirit (2 Cor. 3:18). He is interceding for us at two ends. At one end it is the Spirit in us, probably initiating the intercession for us; at the other end it is the Lord Christ at the right hand of God, probably completing the intercession for us, which must be mainly that we will be conformed to His image and brought into His glory.
Romans 8:35 continues, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation or anguish or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?” No suffering including tribulation, anguish, persecution, famine, nakedness, and peril shall separate us from the love of Christ.