All Things for Good (Rom. 8:28-30)
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| Jacob's sons selling their brother Joseph into slavery. Image from WikiMedia Commons. |
Verse 28 contains one of the greatest promises in the entire Bible. It is the promise that all things are working together for the good of those who love God. What makes it such a great promise? It’s great and wonderful because it means that for those who love God there is nothing meaningless that happens to us. It isn’t just a promise that everything is going to turn out okay, but that everything that happens to us along the way is contributing to our future and eternal good. That is amazing and breathtaking and hope-giving.
And it’s a great promise because it’s true. “And we know,” Paul begins. This is not something which may be true. It is true because God has revealed it to us in his word. This is not tentative for the Christian; it is something that is certain. And in our day when the world is the world, and there is so much chaos and uncertainty as regards so many things, the Christian can feel the everlasting arms of God beneath him at every moment. This is not something that changes depending on the weather or the political winds of the hour or on the health of the economy or on what China or Russia or North Korea or Iran are doing at the moment. This is always and unchangeably true: “all things work together for good to them that love God.”
These three verses teach us about what is sometimes called the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints, which means that a believer in Christ will never fall finally away from grace. They will be saved eternally. And they teach us that the reason why the saints will persevere, why they will be finally saved, why no one can take them out of the Father’s hands, is because of God’s all-pervasive plan and providence. In other words, this is a passage about the sovereignty of God over all things. Not just his sovereignty in salvation, but his sovereignty over all things. In fact, as we shall see, it is God’s sovereignty over all things that provides the basis for our confidence in his sovereignty in salvation. This text teaches us that the pervasive providence of God is the basis for the certainty of our salvation in Christ.
There are two things I want us to see here in this passage today. First, I want us to see what the promise is, and second, who the promise is for.
What you should know about the promise
The promise is “all things work together for good to them that love God.” All things for good. The first thing we want to consider here is the extent of “all things.” There are many who want to restrict the meaning of “all things,” and want to make it to be something less than that. There are those who will argue that God could not possibly work all things, especially bad things, including things like cancer and rape and murder, for our good. They can’t understand how God himself could be holy and good and do that. And so they will limit the meaning of “all things” to the things of verses 29-30. They will argue that the “all things” are just God’s foreknowledge of his people, his predestinating them to be conformed to the image of his Son, his calling, justifying, and glorifying them. Of course, we would agree that those are included. But it is poor hermeneutics indeed that leads one to the conclusion that that’s all they include.
When Paul wrote verse 28, I think he expected his readers to know what he meant by “all things” before they read verses 29-30. Really, those verses don’t so much explain the extent of the promise, as to why we can believe it to be true. You will notice that verse 28 begins with the word “and,” linking it to the previous verses. We’ve noted that in the previous verses the reality of suffering in the life of those who are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ is the reality that Paul has been grappling with. We have been told in the previous verses that we will be glorified with Christ if we suffer with him (17), and the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us (18). Then he goes on to describe how we live in a universe that is fallen and groaning and travailing in pain (22) and so do we (23). We live in hope because our salvation has not arrived yet (24-25). We need the aid of the Holy Spirit who helps us in our infirmities by interceding for us with groanings that cannot be uttered (26-27). This is the context of verse 28. This is what the word “and” is linking up with. In other words, the “all things” of verse 28 certainly includes all the sufferings that believers experience in a fallen and broken world.
In fact, I think that is primarily what is in view here. We don’t really need to know that good things are working for our good. That’s kind of obvious. Paul is not trying to insult your intelligence here. Rather, the problem is that when we are suffering we often wonder why God would allow these things to happen to us. And this is true especially when the suffering is particularly bad, and when we can’t see how it could possibly be doing us or anyone else any good. How can bad things be for our good? That is the question the apostle is answering for us. They are for our good because God is working them for our good.
That is not the only concern these verses deal with. Another concern that this promise addresses is the worry that bad things could happen to us that will turn us away from the faith. We all know about people who claimed to be Christian until some calamity overtook them or someone they loved. Then they became like the seed in our Lord’s parable that was sown on rocky ground: “But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended” (Mt. 13:20-21). However, those who do not endure to the end will not be saved (Mt. 24:13). So how can we be sure this will not happen to us? And the answer is that if we are united to Christ, if our faith is a genuine fruit of the Holy Spirit in our lives, then God will not allow us to fall away because he will be working all things for our good. So the “all things” is all things in the sense of “even the bad things that happen to us” God is working for our good.
I want you to notice that Paul does not say that all things are good. He doesn’t say that suffering is good. He isn’t saying that persecution is good. He isn’t saying that injustice is good. He doesn’t say that pain is good. He doesn’t say every loss is good. What he says is that God is working them for our good. God is so sovereign, so powerful, and so good, that he can take the evil things that happen to us that break our hearts and spirits and make us groan and he can bring good out of that.
Now you will notice perhaps that it doesn’t explicitly say that God is the subject of the verb “worketh together” in verse 28, although some ancient manuscripts and versions do have God as the subject. But be that as it may, God is the one who makes all things work together for good. Again, verses 26-27 help us here (as well of course verses 29-30): God is helping us in our infirmity through the Holy Spirit in us, especially when we don’t know what to pray for. God knows what is best for us, what ought to happen to us, how our circumstances would best be fitted for his glory and our good. And then comes verse 28: “And we know that all things work together for good…”. It would be unthinkable to go from God working in us and for us for our good in verses 26-27 and then proceed to verse 28 to a universe where things just work themselves out in some impersonal deterministic way. No, my friends, all things work together for good because God makes them so. As Paul will end the eleventh chapter: “For of him, and through him, and to him, are all things: to whom be glory forever. Amen” (Rom. 11:36). Or as Paul writes to the Ephesians, “In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will” (Eph. 1:11). Notice how Paul reasons there: we know we will have the inheritance promised because the God who promised it is the one who works “all things after the counsel of his own will.” God’s sovereignty over all things is again the ground for our confidence in the final perseverance of the saints.
This is not only taught all over Scripture, but also illustrated for us there as well. Think of the experience of Joseph. He was hated by his brothers and sold into slavery. Then, when he seemed to finally be getting somewhere again in Potipher’s house, his master’s wife falsely accuses him of raping her and he is thrown into prison where he languishes for years. Finally, after successfully interpreting the dreams of two of Pharaoh’s officials, he is brought out of prison and make a ruler in the land of Egypt. Later, after Jacob his father dies, Joseph’s brothers are afraid that he is finally going to get revenge on his brothers (which it would clearly have been very easy for him to do). Here is what he said: “And Joseph said unto them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God? But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive” (Gen. 50:19-20).
Joseph didn’t interpret the events of his life as if they had been haphazard, and that he had just had some runs of bad luck and some of good luck. He saw all that happened as the result of God’s purposeful sovereignty in his life, the bad and the good. Listen again to how he puts it. He tells his brothers, “You meant it for evil, but God meant it for good.” God purposed that the evil thing that Joseph’s brothers did to him would work out for good. And it did, not only for Joseph but for you and me as well, for if his family had perished in the famine, God’s word of promise to Abraham would have fallen to the ground. Thank God, “the word of God standeth sure”!
Or think about what happened to Job. Job was a godly man of great faith, so great that even God bragged on Job to Satan. But then God allowed Satan to afflict Job in horrible ways, to take away not only all his livelihood, but even his children, and then his health. After that, his wife who should have supported him in their shared misery, tells him to curse God and die. And then when his friends come, they only turn out to be miserable comforters, accusing him of some great and hidden evil that God is now punishing him for.
Of course we all know, from the vantage point of the reader, that God has been sovereign over all this. He didn’t directly cause it; Satan did, but God did allow it. He only didn’t allow Satan to take Job’s life. That was the limit. We know that, but Job didn’t see what was happening in heaven between Satan and God. And yet, I want you to see how Job, even in his extremity, even when he is full of doubt and fear and confusion about how God is dealing with him, even then he says these amazing words: “Behold, I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him: on the left hand, where he doth work, but I cannot behold him: he hideth himself on the right hand, that I cannot see him: but he knoweth the way that I take: when he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:8-10). Job understood that what he didn’t understand, God did. And he understood that God was working in all of it for his good, just as Paul says in Rom. 8:28. As James puts it, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy” (Jam. 5:11).
The Bible teaches this everywhere. It doesn’t just tell us that God will bring us out of sufferings but that he will work them for our good. The apostle Peter wrote, for example, “Wherein [that is, in their eternal inheritance] ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations: that the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ” (1 Pet. 1:6-7). You will notice that he is likening their faith to gold and their sufferings to the fires that refine the gold. It’s not just that gold is rescued from the fire but that the fire purifies it. There is a good purpose to the fire. That is what Peter is saying that suffering is doing for the believers to whom he is writing. It is true of all believers. And it’s not just for temporal benefit, but that it “might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.” Paul says essentially the same thing to the Corinthians in 2 Cor. 4:16-18. God is working these things for our good. It is why Peter says later, “Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator” (1 Pet. 4:19).
You see this also in Heb. 12, where we read that God disciplines his children through suffering. We know that he is talking about suffering from persecution because the context is Jesus suffering at the hands of sinners. The Hebrew Christians were themselves suffering, though not unto blood (that is, they had not had to experience martyrdom), yet they had lost possessions and had been imprisoned. Here is how the author of Hebrews encourages them: tells them that this is God’s discipline, and that it if for their good, and a sign that they are in fact God’s children. He writes, “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11). This is God working suffering for our good, for the purpose of holiness of character in this life.
But the greatest example of God working bad things for good is in the death of our Savior for sinners. It is the clearest instance in all the Bible of the principle “what you meant for evil, God meant for good.” Here is how the apostle Peter describes what was done to Jesus on the cross: “Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know: Him, being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, ye have taken, and by wicked hands have crucified and slain” (Acts 2:22-23). God worked in the incredible evil of the priests and Pharisees and the Romans to bring about infinite and eternal good for God’s elect. In fact, all the good that God is working for his people stems from what Christ did for us on the cross. God took the evil that happened to Jesus and worked it for his good in order that through him he might take the bad things in our lives and work them for our good.
Now how should we respond to this? Well, clearly we should love the God does this for us. And we should trust him in all his providential dealings with us, knowing that they are for our good and that we though are tried by fire will come forth as gold. And it should cause us to be patient in our suffering. That doesn’t mean we have to be complacent in it, but it does mean that we should endure with faith and hope to the end, knowing that though the gate is narrow and way hard, yet the end is everlastingly good for us.
How do you know this promise belongs to you?
Now the second question that this verse requires us to ask is, who does it belong to? How do you know this promise belongs to you? Does God do this for everyone?
Verse 28 answers this question in two ways. The first answer is in the phrase “to them that love God.” Who is this for? It is for those who love God. In fact, in the Greek text, this phrase stands in front of the sentence, likely for emphasis, “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.” In other words, it’s not true for everyone. It is only true for those who love God.
Now lots of people will claim to love God, or at least to be on good terms with him. But loving God is not just not hating him. It’s not liking what you want him to be. It’s not loving an imagination of your own mind. Loving God means loving him as he has revealed himself in his word. It means loving the God of the Bible. It means loving the God who reveals himself as a Trinity of persons in the unity of the Godhead. It means loving Jesus as the Son of God. You cannot love the God of the Bible and reject Jesus as Lord and Savior. Our Lord himself said, “He that hateth me hateth my Father also” (Jn. 15:23). If you hate the Son of God, you hate his Father, and vice versa.
But how do we know that we love God? Talk is cheap. We know that we love God when we keep his commandments. This is what Jesus said: “If ye love me, keep my commandments. . . . He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him” (Jn. 14:15, 21). This means that those who don’t really care to know what God has to say in the Bible, who aren’t interested in the will of God for their life, they can’t claim to really love God. If you love someone, you want to please them. The one who loves God will want to please God, and there is only one way to do that, and that is to trust in him and to obey his word. This, by the way, goes all the way back to the Ten Commandments, when God declares from Mount Sinai, “I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments” (Exod. 20:5-6).
One of the ways we know that someone never really loved God is when they turn away from him and never return to him. If you are only willing to love God as long as he does what you want him to do, then you have never really loved him. This is one of the fascinating things about Job. As you read through the book of Job, he does get at times pretty upset with God. And later in the book, God rebukes him for it and he repents of it. But despite all that happened to him, no matter how bad things got, one thing Job was never willing to do was to give up on God. Instead, he says things like this: “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: but I will maintain mine own ways before him” (13:15). Those who love God will be like Job.
Now when we say that this promise is only for those who love God, that in itself could be discouraging. After all, our love to him is so imperfect, and sometimes it feels very fragile. We don’t always love him the way we ought. In fact, we very often fall short of the love that we owe him. But the thing we need to understand is that it is not our love that makes this promise true. Our love to God is not the key that makes this promise go. Rather, it is his sovereign, holy, good, and unfailing purpose that stands as the foundation of all God’s acts towards those who love him.
And so Paul goes on to say, “to them who are the called according to his purpose.” Here we have two things: God’s call and God’s purpose. It’s important to see how they are connected. God does not calibrate his purpose according to our response to his call. His call is the effect of his purpose. His call, which as we shall see, is an effectual call to faith in Christ, is made sure and secure by the unchanging and sovereign purpose of God. It means that we love God because he first loved us, that we love him because he has called us to himself in faith and love and obedience. So it’s not our love to God that makes this promise go, it’s God’s sovereign initiative in salvation that makes this promise work. The unshakable will of God is at the bottom of this promise, not the fickle will of man! For that we can and should be truly thankful.
However, that leads to the question: what does it mean to be called by God? There is what theologians describe as a general call of the gospel. That is, the gospel calls all men to faith and repentance. This is a divine summons: “God commands all men everywhere to repent,” said Paul to a bunch of pagan philosophers (Acts 17:30). We are commanded to preach the gospel to every creature (Mk. 16:15-16). But not everyone responds to the gospel call to repent and believe. “Many are called” in this sense, “but few are chosen,” said our Lord (Mt. 20:16). But that is not what Paul is talking about here, though it is not disconnected from it. What Paul is talking about here is a divine summons that creates the response it calls for. We’re talking about a summons by God to the sinner that results in the sinner repenting of sin and coming to Christ in true faith. Instead of just hearing the gospel with the ears, the one called hears it with the heart as well. We know this because the called here are precisely those for whom all things work together for good. Not everything works for the good of everyone; only those who are finally saved, only those who have eternal salvation. So this is not about someone who hears the gospel but rejects it and dies in unbelief. This is about those who receive God’s effectual call and are drawn by sovereign grace to faith and repentance.
Paul describes this call in his description of the way the Thessalonians received the gospel: “Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost” (1 Thess. 1:4-6). This is what Paul was talking about in 1 Corinthians 1. He writes, “For the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness; but unto us which are saved it is the power of God. For it is written, I will destroy the wisdom of the wise, and will bring to nothing the understanding of the prudent. Where is the wise? where is the scribe? where is the disputer of this world? hath not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the Greeks seek after wisdom: but we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; but unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (1 Cor. 1:18-24). The called are those who are called by God. What are they called to? They are called to faith in Christ, they are called by God to embrace Jesus as the power of God and the wisdom of God. And this call is an effectual call, that is, it secures the response of faith, because Paul says, “unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.” He doesn’t say that some of the called believe, but that they all do. As Paul will say in Rom. 8:29, whom he called, them he justified.
Now the effectual call of God is connected to the gospel call becaues it is effected by the work of the Holy Spirit through the hearing of the gospel. The summons to faith in Christ is a gospel summons. But it is not just a gospel summons. It is the summons that effects the response called for through the powerful working of the Holy Spirit in the heart. It must be this way, because the fact of the matter is that no one would attend to the summons unless God opened our ears and hearts to receive it. This is the point of the passage in 1 Corinthians. As Paul will go on to say, it must be this way, because “the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolihness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14; cf. Rom. 8:7-8). But those who are called in this special sense, in this effectual sense, they do respond in faith and repentance.
We see this illustrated again in Paul’s words to the Thessalonians in his second epistle. He is contrasting end-times apostasy with the present faith of the Thessalonian Christians. Listen to how he puts it: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: that they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness. But we are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:11-14). Note the following things here: God is the one who calls. He calls his elect. He calls them to the belief of the truth. He calls them to this belief by the gospel.
Once again we see that it is not the will of man but the power of God changing the will that makes the call to come to Christ effectual. In other words, we respond to the call in true conversion because God does a work of regeneration in our hearts. He changes us. He gives us new life. We see the kingdom of God and enter it because we are born again. But neither must we separate what God has joined together. The call of God includes both regeneration and conversion. No man can say he has been regenerated who has not come to Christ by faith. God opens our hearts in regeneration that we will attend to the things spoken to us in the gospel. The purpose of regeneration is conversion and where you see one you will see the other.
So the called are those who have not only heard the gospel, but who have responded to it in faith and repentance, and who have responded to it because God has drawn them effectually to embrace Christ as Lord and Savior.
Are you one of the called? Have you embraced Christ by faith and repentance? What you need to understand is that you cannot embrace this promise that all things work for your good if you have not trusted in Christ. But if you trust in Christ, no matter what your past was or your present is, this promise is yours in all its fulness, not because you deserve it, but because God in his grace gives it to you because of what Christ has done. You are called to faith in Christ to receive what we do not have: we do not have a righteousness that is acceptable to God, but we can have a perfect righteousness in Christ. In his life and death, he fully satisfied all the demands of God’s holy and just law on the behalf of all who put their trust in him. And know that if you trust in him, it is not just that you have taken hold of Christ, but that Christ has taken hold of you! And so I earnestly entreat you, as an ambassador of Christ, be reconciled to God through Christ!
Underneath it all is the purpose of God. As Paul put it to Timothy, “Who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Saviour Jesus Christ, who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (2 Tim. 1:9-10). Thank God for his purpose! Do you know why I say that? I say that because God’s purpose is not like our purpose. Thousands of my purposes have fallen to the ground. My purposes are often nothing more than good intentions that lack the backing of solid wisdom or the ability to bring them to fruition. But God’s purpose and plan is wholly different. Listen to the way the prophet Isaiah describes it: “Remember the former things of old: for I am God, and there is none else; I am God, and there is none like me, declaring the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done, saying, My counsel shall stand, and I will do all my pleasure” (Isa. 46:9-10). God’s counsel shall stand! He will do all his pleasure, not just some of it! As the Psalmist put it, “For I know that the Lord is great, and that our Lord is above all gods. Whatsoever the Lord pleased, that did he in heaven, and in earth, in the seas, and all deep places” (Ps. 135:5-6).
Even a pagan king was led to understand this truth: God is the one “whose dominion is an everlasting dominion, and his kingdom is from generation to generation: and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing: and he doeth according to his will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay his hand, or say unto him, What doest thou?” (Dan. 4:34-35).
Why can we trust in God? Why can we know that all things will work for our good? We can know it because God is sovereign in salvation and he is sovereign in salvation because he is sovereign over all things. It’s not our purpose or will that comes first or is ultimate. It’s God’s good and gracious and loving and effectual and unfailing and never-changing purpose that is first and last. That doesn’t mean that bad things won’t happen to us. The Scripture never promises that! The author of Hebrews describes the faithful through the centuries: “others were tortured, not accepting deliverance; that they might obtain a better resurrection: And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts, and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth” (Heb. 11:35-38). And yet, God worked all things for their good and they knew it. It is one reason why they persevered to the end. They would have agreed with Paul when he said, “And we know.” What do we know? God works all things for our good. As William Cowper put it,
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