Who Shall Bring Any Charge?

Satan accuses the people of God day and night. We’ll never escape his charges of sin and guilt by looking to our merits. Today, Sinclair Ferguson points out where we must go to find assurance against our enemy’s accusations.

I can’t remember when or how it struck me that the famous series of questions Paul asks in Romans 8:31–35 all begin with the personal interrogative pronoun, the pronoun who, despite the fact that when he gives a list of the opposition the Christian experiences, more or less, everything in it is a what and not a who. But now, I can’t read these great verses without reflecting on this striking feature of this amazing passage. There’s no variation in it. He keeps asking the question, “Who?” And we’ve seen that the who about whom he is thinking is the one that Simon Peter describes as your adversary, the devil. That’s who Paul has in mind when he asks, “Who is against us?” And it’s also who he has in mind now, when he asks, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?”

The fact is that many people did bring charges against Christians, the Acts of the Apostles makes that clear enough. And there are several occasions when the Apostles were actually brought before the religious or civil authorities to face accusations. But that’s not, I think, what Paul is ultimately talking about here, and his answers seem to make that clear.

The accusations Paul is talking about here are those the devil brings against us. Scripture tells us that these charges against us are made in the courtroom of heaven. Remember Revelation 12:10? The devil is the accuser of the brothers who “accuses them day and night before our God.” Now, there’s something mysterious about this, isn’t there? This isn’t something that we see or hear directly. But elsewhere in Scripture, we learn about this activity of the devil. Remember what Jesus said to Peter: “Satan has demanded to have you to sift you like wheat, but I’ve prayed for you that your faith won’t fail.” And of course, in the opening chapters of the book of Job, we’re told how the devil accused Job before God saying, “Job’s in it only for what he can get out of it.”

And then there’s that amazing scene in Zechariah 3. There the prophet has a vision of Joshua, the high priest, standing in the presence of God, and Satan standing at his right hand to accuse him. And what makes the picture so dramatic is that Joshua is wearing dirty clothes that represent his sinfulness. He’s standing before God’s judgment throne. Satan is accusing him before God, saying: “He has no right to be here. He deserves to be excluded from heaven and sent into the outer darkness that will match the dark stains on the clothing he’s wearing.”

But then something wonderful happens: the angel of the Lord speaks. He says, “Behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments” (Zech. 3:4). So, he commands the filthy garments to be taken off Joshua and then has him robed from head to toe in clean vestments.

That’s surely a wonderful picture of the gospel, picture of the believer’s justification. The Lord Jesus takes our filthy garments of sin and swaps them for His pure garments of perfect righteousness. And when that happens, none of the adversary’s charges of sin and guilt before our God can ever stick to us. And that’s what Paul is talking about in Romans 8:33, “Who will bring any charge against God’s elect?”

Well, we know the answer, Satan does, but we also know his accusations cannot stick because, as Paul says, the One in whose court these charges are brought is none other than the God who justifies sinners in and through Jesus Christ. It’s God the Son, who could condemn us, who actually saves us. As the book of Revelation tells us, the saints overcome the accuser of the brethren not because of their own righteousness, but by the blood of the Lamb.

Isn’t that what John Newton teaches us to sing in his wonderful hymn:

Approach my soul, the mercy-seat Where Jesus answers prayer . . .

Be Thou my shield and hiding place, That, sheltered near Thy side, I may my fierce accuser face And tell him, Christ has died.

We saw yesterday that Paul is showing us that the death of Christ is the basis for the logic that nothing can ultimately be against us. And today is teaching us that the basis for our assurance that Satan’s accusations against us will not stick is the fact that we wear the garments of Christ’s righteousness. Isn’t that glorious? What a wonderful relief the gospel brings to our consciences. And I hope you’ll taste that today, and join us again tomorrow on Things Unseen.