Marriage counselors discourage couples from using the word “always”. This is because the word “always” is rarely accurate and, therefore, almost always counterproductive.
Your husband might not take the sort of interest in your kids that he should, but it isn’t fair or helpful to say that he always ignores them. Your wife might not clean up after herself the way you would like but it isn’t fair or helpful to say that she always leaves the dishes in the sink.
We should rarely use the word “always” because there is precious little in this life that is always true. It isn’t always better to remain silent. It isn’t always better to speak. A decision might be right 99 circumstances and dead wrong in the hundredth circumstance. The word “always” doesn’t leave room for that hundredth circumstance. The word “always” doesn’t leave room for nuance and wisdom involves nuance. Emerson was right to say that, “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”
There is very little that is always true. There is very little of importance than can be safely said about “all things”, and now we come across the words, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”
Careful minds say that very little is always true and yet Paul, who was speaking on behalf of God, made one of the broadest statements involving the word “always” that you could imagine. It covered everything and anything in life it is apparently always true. Apparently things always work for the good for those who love God.
Now this was either a cosmic blunder on Paul’s part or it is a truth that must always inform the way you think about everything. In other words, either God is able to work all things for your good or He isn’t. Either God is able to work right now for your good, or He isn’t. Either God is able to work everything and anything in your past for your good, or He isn’t. Either God is able to work anything to come for your good, or He isn’t. Either Paul is right, or he isn’t. What say you?
Your answer is crucially important. If you agree with Paul, you will find hope. To always have hope, you must know how God can use anything and everything for your good. This Scripture is here to show you how God can use anything and everything for your good. It is here to give you hope. Have hope. God can use all things to make you like Jesus and to bring you to glory. That is the claim of this sermon: Have hope. God can use all things to make you like Jesus and to bring you to glory.
We will study this in three points. First: God works all things for your good. Second: God uses all things to make you like Jesus. Third: God uses all things bring you to glory. We see that all things work for your good in verse 28. We see that God uses all things to make you like Jesus in verse 29. We see that God uses all things bring you to glory in verse 30.
First: God works all things for your good. Many people are taken aback by Paul’s words that “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him,” but Paul’s first readers would not be among that group. You see that in the words, “and we know,” in verse 28, “and we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”
The idea that God worked all things together for good for those who love Him was very familiar to the Jews and God-fearers of that day. As Peter Stuhlmacher put it, ‘According to a common Jewish teaching, a person should get in the habit of saying, “everything the All-Merciful does, He does for good.”’
Now life hit those people as hard as it hits us. They weren’t inexperienced or gullible enough to believe that life is good all the time. There are, after all, two ways to say, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” One man can say those words with no experience. He hasn’t really suffered. He has had no cause to question God’s goodness. Another man can say those same words after a great deal of pain. If you are rejecting those words as true because you think Paul was inexperienced, I beg you to consider Paul.
He lost his reputation and prestige. The man who wrote, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him,” forfeited comfort and security for God’s sake and in their place found persecution and danger. He certainly put more on the line for God than I have and suffered many more sucker punches as a result. If you find yourself balking at the words, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him,” please have some respect for the speaker. He has certainly earned the right to be heard.
He does not, however, need to earn this right to be heard because he was simply repeating the common refrain of Scripture. There is nothing new in Romans 8:28. It is found all over the book of Job and the Psalms. Abraham wouldn’t have been surprised to read Romans 8:28 and neither would Moses. All of them would have nodded their heads when Paul said, “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.”
Paul took this familiar idea that God could use anything for people’s good and applied to difficulties. If you scan your eyes up the page of Romans 8, you will see words like suffering, frustration, waiting, and groaning.
The world is waiting to be made new, but it clearly isn’t new yet. Five minutes of watching the news will show you that. Five minutes of considering your own life will show you that. There are still sorrows and troubles. You know yours and I know mine. These, however, are not able to separate you from God’s plan or God’s love. They can be used by God for your good. To put it another way, the words, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him,” are simply the flip side of the coin, “neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Now either trouble can separate you from God’s love or God can use trouble for His plan which is for your good. They cannot both be true. Perhaps you need to write down which one you believe is true and tape it to your bathroom mirror so you see it every day.
Paul knew that all things worked together for God’s purpose and that God’s purpose was for his good. “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.” In our next point, we will see that part of God’s purpose is to make you like Jesus. In our final point, we will see that part of God’s purpose is to bring you home to Himself.
God can use anything and everything to achieve those purposes. “There is nothing in this world that is not intended by God to assist us on our earthly pilgrimage and to bring us safely and certainly to the glorious destination of that pilgrimage,” as Doug Moo put it.
That’s true for all who love Him. You see that in the phrase, “in all things God works for the good of those who love Him.” The phrase “those who love Him,” is simply another way of saying God’s people. Paul wasn’t talking about gradations of love. He wasn’t saying, ‘well you didn’t love God enough at the time of that accident, so God won’t work it for your good.’ He wasn’t saying, ‘you simply don’t love God enough today, which is why you can’t see how God is working your secret heartache for good.’
Paul was telling these Roman Christians, who had struggles just like you, that if they belonged to God, they could rest assured that they were doing all they needed to do for God to work all things for their good. The ball was now in God’s hands.
I wonder if you can say that the ball is in God’s hands. I wonder if you belong to God. You can. You can know that all things work for your good. Simply love God. You love God by responding to Jesus. The way you respond to Jesus is the way you respond to God. You come to God by coming to Jesus. So come to Jesus. Tell him that you know that your sin deserves condemnation but that you’ve read here in Romans 8 that there is no condemnation for those who belong to Jesus.
You will find Jesus better than you ever imagined. Think about it; you certainly wouldn’t have imagined twenty minutes ago that he was able to turn all things for your good, but now you know that He can. Who knows what other goodness he has in store for you? Only God knows so go to Him.
God works all things for the good of His people. Part of this good is becoming like Jesus. We see that in our second point: God uses all things to make you like Jesus. We often struggle with the idea of how exactly God works all things for our good because we have a very impoverished view of what is good. I’m not saying that what we want is bad. Restored families aren’t bad. Restored health isn’t bad. It simply isn’t good enough. Jesus is good enough and God is using all things to make you more like Jesus. Verse 29, “For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
You can certainly understand how God can use something like suffering to make you more like Jesus. You know how rejection could make a man more like Jesus. You know how being misunderstood could make a woman more like Jesus. You know how being betrayed could make you more like Jesus.
Now betrayals, misunderstandings, and rejections are not good, but God can use them to make you more like Jesus. You will never encounter anything that causes God to look at your situation, wring His hands, and say, ‘I can’t do anything with this.’ God can use anything including suffering to make you more like Jesus.
Now we need to be very careful here because some of us have a martyr mentality. Perhaps you idealize suffering because suffering will make you more like Jesus. There is a long history of masochism in Christianity. It’s not right. It wasn’t and isn’t the way of Jesus. He never pursued pain in that way, and neither should you. Yes, God can use suffering to make you more like Jesus. He can also use the fact that you know that He loves you to make you more like Jesus. He can also use your acts of forgiveness to make you more like Jesus. He can use all things to make you more like Jesus. Don’t pursue troubles in hopes of becoming like Jesus. Troubles will come in God’s time.
God can use them then and He will use them. The Spirit guarantees that fact. You can see that in the section that comes right before ours. Paul wrote, “the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.”
Even seemingly hopeless situations will make you more like Jesus if you belong to him because the Spirit asks the Father to make you more like Jesus. Imagine a man who has a daughter who has been rather wayward lately. She doesn’t recognize the heartache she is causing her parents. She is only thinking about herself right now. Now this daughter and her mother fight all the time. The daughter is certainly sinning, but his wife’s responses just make the situation worse. This man feels stuck in the middle. What is the man to do? He’s stuck in the middle. Well the Spirit helps him in that weakness. The Spirit takes that man’s difficulties and uses them to make him more like Jesus.
If you belong to Jesus, God is working all things to make you more like Jesus and you can be certain of that because the Holy Spirit is asking for that on your behalf and working that out on your behalf. If you love God, the ball is in the Spirit’s hands on this one.
It is God’s plan to make all his children more like Jesus and He uses everything to accomplish that purpose. It is part of why He predestined us. Verse 29, “those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
Here we come to the doctrine of predestination, which has sadly caused a great deal of heartache. Many Christians, and a disproportionate number of Christians in this area, are torn up about this doctrine. Maybe you fear this doctrine or even hate this doctrine. Maybe you fear it because you can’t seem to know if you’ve been predestined. If that is the case, listen to Luther. He said, “If one fears that he is not elected or is otherwise troubled about his election, he should be thankful that he has such fear… it is not… characteristic of reprobates to tremble at the secret counsel of God; but that is the characteristic of the elect.”
Luther wasn’t encouraging people to worry about their salvation. He was making clear that people without the Spirit never get a second thought to these matters. They have no longings after holiness. They aren’t willing to suffer to become like Jesus. At best, they presume upon the grace of God and at worst, they mock the grace of God. They don’t crave the grace of God. They don’t long to be chosen. Chosen people long to be chosen.
Now you can know if you’ve been chosen. You can know if you’ve been predestined to salvation. You can know because you are being conformed to Jesus, it’s only because you’ve been chosen to be conformed to Jesus.
I hope you can say with confidence that God is making you more like Jesus. If you can’t say that God is making you more like Jesus, why not? Is it because you have malfunctioning conscience? If you fear being torn away from Jesus and yet you aren’t sure that God is making you more like Jesus, you have a malfunctioning conscience. If you are willing to change and be changed to become more like Jesus and yet you aren’t sure that God is making you more like Jesus, you have a malfunctioning conscience. Recognize that you are elect. The proof is in the fact that you’ve come to Jesus.
Now if you can’t say with any confidence that God is making you more like Jesus because to this point you haven’t cared in the least for Jesus and you are suddenly concerned about that fact, then your conscience is finally functioning as it ought. You have suddenly realized that you have no ground of hope as you currently are. What you need to do is come to Jesus. Come and find that God can use everything, even your past, to make you more like His Son.
God is able to work all things together for your good. They can all be used to make you like Jesus. They can all be used to bring you to glory. That is the claim of this sermon: God uses all things to bring you to glory. When you know God’s purpose, which is to make you more like Jesus, you can have confidence in any situation because you know that no situation is powerful enough to keep you from becoming more like Jesus.
The same is true about the hope of the new creation. When you know God’s purpose, which is to bring you to the new creation, you can have confidence in any situation because you know that no situation is powerful enough to keep you from arriving in the new creation.
You see this in verse 30, “And those He predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.” Now much has been made of this verse and rightly so. Scholars call it the golden chain of salvation and study how each link—predestination, calling, justification, and glory—relate to the others. This is well worth your time, but, of course, that list isn’t the entirety of salvation and Paul didn’t intend it to be so. His point was to remind Christians that our final hope is found in the new creation.
This golden chain ends in the new creation. It begins before you were born with predestination and it ends in the new creation and nothing between those two can separate you from reaching that destination. As Paul put it, “those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.” God can use all things in between to bring you to glory.
You see Paul’s confidence in his use of glorification in the past tense. Now, you have yet to be made new. The new creation isn’t here yet, so why would Paul talk about this glory in the past tense? Why would he say “glorified”? Paul used the word “glorified” because he knew that nothing could stand in God’s way of carrying all His children from predestination to glorification. It was as good as done. In other words, nothing could separate them from His love. In other words, all things must work together for their good. All things can be used by God to bring His children to glory.
This means that there will be many unanswered questions until the new creation. There will be occurrences that will make no sense in this life because they have more to do with the next life than this life. Don’t be surprised if the trouble of this life seems pointless and purposeless. It might actually be that way if it weren’t for the next life.
God’s people have always lived in that tension. As Hebrews 11 put it, “All these people were still living by faith when they died. They did not receive the things promised; they only saw them and welcomed them from a distance, admitting that they were foreigners and strangers on earth… they were longing for a better country—a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared a city for them.”
God’s purpose is to bring you to that city. That means that much of what happens in this life won’t make sense until you are in that city. So if you find yourself baffled by how God could turn something in your life to your good, or if even after twenty years you can’t see how any good came out of it, don’t be perplexed. You aren’t going through anything new. Abraham knew what you are going through. Moses knew what you are going through. Paul knew what you are going through. They would tell you to look forward to the new creation because that is God’s purpose for you. He won’t make everything right in this life. He hasn’t made all things new yet, but He will.
You can know that He will make you new. That is the confidence of entering this golden chain of, “those He predestined, He also called; those He called, He also justified; those He justified, He also glorified.” You can know today that you will declared righteous on judgment day. After all, this chapter did start with the words, “there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
If that is you, all things will make you more like Jesus and all things can be used by God to bring you to glory. That is a reason for hope that covid-19 can’t infect. That is a reason for hope that economic turmoil can’t disturb. That is a reason for hope that encompasses anything and everything that can happen to you. If you have it, be hopeful because nothing can separate you from it and in fact all things will contribute to it.
If you don’t have that hope, I beg you to inspect whatever hope is keeping you because it can’t bear all things like this hope can. It can’t really bear much of anything. God knows. That’s why He offers this hope. Jesus came so that we might have this hope. He came so that all things might make us more like him. He came so that all things might bring you to place where all things are made new, including you. Amen.
“28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose. 29 For those God foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of His Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. ”