This grand declaration follows upon the apostle's teaching on the doctrine of predestination and its accompanying adjuncts and consequences. The obvious conclusion to a person's being predestinated is that God is for them and therefore no one can be effectually against them. To draw any other conclusion from the context is to wrest the Scriptures, for the true meaning is crystal clear. 

    All the powers of hell are arrayed against the children of God, but that does not in the least degree change the fact that they were predestinated. That destiny is conformity to the image of God's Son (ver. 29). and the calling, justification and final glorification that follows is just as certain as if it had already occurred, and therefore it is expressed in the past tense by the apostle. 

    The persistent harassment that God's people have to endure at the hands of Satan as long as they live in this world, will not and cannot prevent God from calling them at His own appointed time. It cannot hinder their justification nor thwart their glorification. All these works are performed by the Lord no matter how strong and bitter may be the opposition of Satan. The children of God are secure in Christ because they are "kept by His power through faith unto salvation ready to be revealed in the last day" (I Peter 1:5). 

    The saints may so behave in this life as to lose fellowship with God and consequently to lose the joy of their relationship with Him, but they cannot destroy that relationship. Just as our relationship with our natural father could not be destroyed no matter how disobedient we were to him, so our relationship with our heavenly father cannot be destroyed by our disobedience. Our fellowship with Him can be interrupted or lost, but nor our relationship. Any other arrangement would have resulted in the final and total fall of all men "for in many things we offend all" (James 3:2): that is, in many things we are all offenders. If our eternal standing with God depended on our faithfulness our case would be hopeless.