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 hope that all of us would go back and look at the wonderful

sights 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

chapter 8, verse 30. 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 400 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 you'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

...