A Golden Chain—Or Is It?

Romans 8:30 is often called the “golden chain” that links together several elements of our salvation. Today, Sinclair Ferguson explains that there may be an even better way of thinking about this cherished verse.

Welcome to another week on Things Unseen. If you’re new to our weekday podcast, you’re certainly very welcome indeed. And we always have a theme that runs through the working week. And last week, we took a kind of pretty quick helicopter ride through the whole of Paul’s letter to the Romans, and I signed off on Friday using a different metaphor from the helicopter one. We’ve had the equivalent of a kind of city tour bus ride, and I hoped that all of us would go back and look at the wonderful sites that we’d seen and spend more time on each one of them.

So, I thought it might actually be a good idea this week just to do that, to stay in Romans, but this time to stop with just one verse, and not the whole of 16 chapters. But which verse? Well, I’ve landed on Romans 8:30, a very famous verse: “And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

I’m sure you’re familiar with this verse, and perhaps you’re also familiar with the fact that it’s often been referred to as the “golden chain,” or perhaps the “chain of salvation.” That expression goes back a long way, I think at least four hundred years, and you can see why it’s been so popular. It’s as though Paul is describing four links in a chain that has been forged. And you’ll notice the sense of completion, even in the word “glorified.” And when we read the words out loud, they exude a sense of certainty. They sound like the thump, thump, thump of a well-disciplined troop of soldiers marching across the parade ground, everyone in place, in time, reliable, certain, unconquerable: “Those he predestined he called, those he called he justified, those he justified he glorified.”

And that’s exactly what this verse is meant to sound like. Paul has been speaking about the trials of life, and a few verses later on, he’ll talk about situations that threaten every Christian and that might threaten our sense of security in the love of Christ: tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or nakedness, or danger, or sword. And that was, in fact, the final threat that Paul himself faced—execution under the emperor Nero by beheading. But Paul’s confidence in the face of all this lies not in himself and in his own plans, although as we saw last week, he did have some immediate plans. No, his security, and ours, and our confidence in God and in the reliability of His purposes and His ability to accomplish His plans—they all rest on God’s certain promises. His purposes cannot be broken. They will not fail. They will not fall.

But that said, I think it’s helpful to notice that Paul doesn’t actually mention a chain here. I know many of us are so used to that way of looking at Romans 8:30 that those words may sound a little odd, perhaps even almost heretical—this is the golden chain. And I don’t want to spoil that idea, because it’s helped many Christians, but Paul doesn’t really mention any chain here, does he?

Now, I mention this because sometimes seeing these words as four links in a chain can actually distort Paul’s own perspective. What do I mean? Well, I’ve heard people say something like this: “Romans 8:30 is the golden chain. Predestination causes calling, calling then causes justification, justification then causes glorification.”

And my question is this: Where is the Lord Jesus in this chain? Do you get my point? It’s this: when we see these words as a chain, we relate predestination, calling, justification, and glorification to each other, one link closing round the next link, that link closing round the next, and so on. And the problem, maybe even the danger, is that linking them to each other in this way, we haven’t left any room for the Lord Jesus. We focus on predestination, or calling, or justification, or glorification, as though somehow they existed on their own, almost apart from Christ.

But there’s something in Romans 8:30, or just before it, that really helps us here. It’s the very first word, “and”—yes, “and.” It’s an indication to us that these actions of God—predestination, calling, justification, glorification—don’t exist in splendid isolation. They belong to something else. They’re aspects, dimensions of something else, something even bigger.

Something bigger? Is that possible? Well, yes it is. And here it is: “Those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son” (Rom. 8:29). In other words, these wonderful privileges in Romans 8:30 are actually four aspects of that union with Christ that leads to us becoming like Him. So, if you do want to think about Romans 8:30 as a golden chain, remember that it’s the Lord Jesus Christ Himself who is the gold.

Well, we’ll think more about Romans 8:30 tomorrow, and I hope you’ll join us again on Things Unseen.