Love Proven and Refined
Notes
Transcript
This look at Romans 8:28 has certainly brought us on an incredible journey so far!
We’ve realized in the course of looking at this verse, that our culture is constantly training minds to continually draw the wrong conclusions from our present circumstances, to allow the emotions of the moment to rule the day.
From the Fall in Genesis 3 onward, there has been a corruption of our own perceptions. From birth, we not only have the tendency, but on account of our fallen nature will always default to interpreting our present circumstances upon mere appearances. This was brought out and put on display to Samuel when the sons of Jesse were brought before him to anoint a new king and took one look at his firstborn Eliab and thought to himself “surely he’s the one!”
But Yahweh said to Samuel, “Do not look at his appearance or at the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but Yahweh looks at the heart.”
No, we’re not just looking at a tendency here, but a continual condition of man, and that characterizes even how all who are in Adam interpret even the circumstances in which they find themselves. So the prevailing understanding, then, of both prosperity and suffering is bound to come to an essentially inaccurate conclusion.
And, of course, though we who are in Christ Jesus have been transferred out of the kingdom of darkness and into the kingdom of God’s dear Son, there is no automatic re-ordering of our minds. We still have a mortal body which desires to sin - remember, we are admonished in Romans 6:13 “and do not go on presenting your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness to God.”
If you recall our look at those verses, we found there that this talk of “members” there is not speaking of just our physical bodies, but our ability to reason and work out in our minds, our affections, our faculties. Not only must our members be restrained, but they must also be re-trained; even though God has taken out our heart of stone and put in its place a heart of flesh, a heart which loves God and can rightly perceive Him, we still have a mortal body with its lusts and its desires and its misunderstandings and misperceptions of God’s providence.
The weight of our past training by the world, however, and its ongoing, constant barrage, make it rather easy for us to fall back into the world’s sort of thinking, the sort of thinking that Christ died to separate us from, thinking that is contrary to the holiness that God is ever working to bring we who are His into, “You shall be holy, for I am holy” is not just a simple, trite statement God made once upon a time, and then forgot, no!
No, God declares that His purpose is to conform those who are His into the image of His Son – He says so right in the middle of our next verse coming up, “Because those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers;”
This purpose, this conforming us to the image of His dear Son, is precisely the "good" we have been speaking about in verse 28. The good toward which all things are working is not ultimately comfort, ease, prosperity, or earthly success, but Christ-likeness.
Since this is God's purpose, it helps us understand that God is not merely sovereignly ordering circumstances, events, and relationships as ends in themselves, no! Rather, He is using all of those things and more as instruments in His hands to accomplish something far greater! The ultimate object upon which His providence is working is not merely circumstances, but us. He’s not merely changing what happens around us, but what we are.
And note the universality to this in our verse:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
This is not something set aside for only certain people, but rather every person in Christ Jesus, every true Christian, is the subject of this divine ordering of all things. God has determined and decreed that those whom He has redeemed will not remain as they were!
It is often said, and rightly so, that God saves us “just as we are”. But that’s not the real, full story – that is only the first half of the truth, for although God certainly saves us as we are, yet He does not save us in order to leave us as we are, no! Having now united us to Christ, He immediately sets about the lifelong work of conforming us to Christ, progressively teaching us to think as He thinks, love what He loves, hate what He hates, that we would walk in increasing holiness.
The God who justifies, also sanctifies. The God who adopts also disciplines. The God who forgives also transforms.
God is not merely trying to modify our behavior, however. Making a person do something because it’s “the thing to do” has never been the way He operates.
In fact, this isn’t even really a New vs Old Covenant problem, though certainly the point of the Law was to demonstrate once and forever that external conformity alone is insufficient.
Notice the indictment God gives to the people who had received such wondrous mercy, compassion, and benefit from His hand in Isaiah 29:13,
Then the Lord said, “Because this people draw near with their mouth And honor Me with their lips, But they remove their hearts far from Me, And their fear of Me is in the command of men learned by rote,
Do you hear and see the problem here? Does this not echo Paul’s teaching regarding the Law in Romans 7? “I was once alive apart from the Law”, before the commandment came to him with such force, with such vigor, with such conviction?
The issue was never that they lacked religious activities, or even knowledge (although, to be fair, He did declare to Hosea in 4:6 “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge. Because you have rejected knowledge, I also will reject you from ministering as My priest. Since you have forgotten the law of your God, I Myself also will forget your children.” Quite the indictment to the religious leaders!)
Rather, the problem was that without a heart focused on God, even the best of religion turns into mere habit and routine, and worship becomes mere mechanical repetitions.
And it’s remarkably similar to what Paul finds in Romans 7:22-23, where, after realizing that after having done so much else, he was entirely unable to keep his heart from coveting!
For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, but I see a different law in my members, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a captive to the law of sin which is in my members.
The reason for such a disconnect, the heart being far from God in Isaiah 29 and the utter inability to do the good described in the Law in Romans 7 are both the same cause – the heart of man, what he loves and what he hates, his affections, are fundamentally disordered.
And even in Isaiah, God declares that it requires a fundamental change that only He can accomplish which is able to correct the situation,
Therefore behold, I will once again deal marvelously with this people, wondrously marvelous; And the wisdom of their wise men will perish, And the discernment of their discerning men will be hidden.”
What is necessary is not more commands – the Pharisees tried to do that, they held to the traditions that had developed over so long a time, and all of that came to no avail – in fact, not only did they fail to produce holiness, but in fact our Lord was rather pointed in Matthew 23 that they made the situation worse for those who followed them, saying in verse 15 “you travel around on sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves!”
No, God “deals marvelously” with people, wondrously marvelously – He now today fulfills the promise of Deuteronomy 30:6 when He circumcises hearts,
in whom you were also circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, in the removal of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ,
So on the one hand, though men and women of every era are naturally incapable of loving God, now through the marvelous work God performs in them, those who are in Christ Jesus do love Him, their heart of stone has been replaced, they have been removed from the kingdom of darkness, they have been made alive in Christ Jesus, their transgressions forgiven and the certificate of debt has been nailed to the cross.
And now having received such a great benefit as this new heart and forgiveness and all the rest… God is at work conforming us so that we will far different than we once were in the days of our sin – 1 Peter 4 is pretty clear that “the time already past is sufficient” for us to be done with such things as living for lusts, now that we are in Christ Jesus it is time for us to live for the will of God.
And it begins with God re-rooting the central affection of our souls, that which we love, that which we deem to be the greatest good, firmly and solidly in Christ Jesus. When we read
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
…we ought to be realizing by now that these two ideas – love and good, are inseparably linked together in profound ways . What we love is determined by that which we perceive to be good, the higher the good, the greater the love. When we realize that the good God is working all things toward is for us to be transformed, for us to be conformed to the image of Christ Jesus, all of this ought to start clicking into place for us.
In the language of affection, then, God is progressively teaching us to treasure Him ever more, to increasingly recognize that God Himself is the highest and supreme good; not only is He the ultimate good, but He Himself is the source and fountain of all other good.
As this work continues, the things which once captivated our hearts begin to lose their hold – the idols we once cherished, the supports we once held on to, the things we once craved, all such things God is determined to demonstrate to us as being far less than God Himself – less in importance, less in capability, less in duration, less in value, less good in every way imaginable.
Though God uses them together for our good, they are finite, and He is not. They are temporary, and He is not. They are dependent upon Him for their existence, whereas He depends on no other for His own existence.
And God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’”
And God furthermore said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘Yahweh, the God of your fathers, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you.’ This is My name forever, and this is My memorial-name from generation to generation.
God is unlike everything else, because He alone has no beginning and no ending, He alone owes His existence, His allegiance, His sovereignty to no other.
And as such, it is God Himself, God alone, who is infinitely worthy of our highest love.
And He proves it time and again!
For every other support eventually fails us. Every earthly comfort eventually weakens and falters. Every created thing eventually reaches its end.
Wealth cannot carry us through death, health cannot prevent the grave. Friends or family cannot bear our guilt before God. And I am certain we all can attest that no amount of reputation will ever be able to quiet an accusing conscience.
But God? God never reaches the end of His sufficiency, no! Far from it, there is no possible lapse or moment or end to His attributes, His love, His faithfulness, His goodness, His holiness, His lovingkindness –
The lovingkindnesses of Yahweh indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.
And so when God removes a support, He is not taking away a good thing, but teaching us to depend on Him, to trust in Him, to love Him. And to our shame, He is most often revealing that we had begun treating a lesser good as though it were the highest good, as a child who desires the 5 pennies over the silver dollar.
So, do we experience sorrow? Yes! Do we experience grief? Yes! Will we be disappointed when our plans fail? Again, yes!
But in each of these cases, He is there – pleading with us to turn to Him, to trust Him, to love Him not for the gifts, but because He is the Giver and sustainer.
In other words, providence teaches those in Christ Jesus that God is worthy of love.
And there is an amazing example for us that brings great clarity to this, turn over to Job 1 with me.
The stage is set – here Job is, surrounded with blessings from God. Job is, by any sort of reckoning, a wealthy man – thousands of animals, very many servants, his sons all had houses of their own and they and their sisters wouldn’t just get together for an occasional meal, but to feast together – I think we would understand the difference, right? This isn’t describing they got together for hotdogs, but rather imagine feasts like we do at Easter or Thanksgiving!
In fact… in our haste to get to the “good” part of the story, we often skip that little phrase in verse 3, where it says that Job “was the greatest of all the sons of the east.”
And we need to be clear – Job was in such a position on account of God’s providence, in that God intervened and ordered the course of events so that Job would have this time of great blessing, in fact Satan was pretty clear when the scene shifted to heaven,
“Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
Now… notice, what was Job’s response to God’s providential blessing at this point? We see the key, right in the first verse…
There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and that man was blameless, upright, fearing God, and turning away from evil.
In fact, he was so concerned with God, that whenever his children had one of their many feasts, Job offered sacrifices for each of his children, saying “perhaps my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts.”
Notice… if Job was concerned about his children cursing God in their hearts, much less out loud with their mouths, do you think that his own heart was set upon God? Do you think that He saw God as his greatest good? Do you think that his affections were turned and directed toward God?
The truth is, long before the first disaster, long before Satan stood before God and God asked “Have you set your heart upon My servant Job”, long before this story began, Job already had an unusually God-centered life. He wasn’t merely morally respectable, although in this description, and in the chapters that follow you can see that in how others interacted with him, he certainly is that, too.
No, you can see it right in this first verse, right where the story is picked up in the life of Job: blameless, upright, fearing God, turning away from evil. Job’s affections from the start are demonstrated as being centered on where they belong, namely on God.
Of course… Satan had observed Job’s behavior, too, and being the Accuser he is,
And Satan answered Yahweh and said, “Does Job fear God without cause? “Have You not made a hedge about him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. “But send forth Your hand now and touch all that he has; he will surely curse You to Your face.”
Although we see in the unfolding story something different, there is a reason why Satan uses this particular line of attack against Job. Far from being absurd, he has a rather perceptive view of man, and a view that is identical to that which we see in the natural man yet still under the dominion of sin: human beings don’t naturally love God because He is God, but because they love themselves most of all their supposed love of God is really nothing more than a love for the benefits and comforts he might bring to them.
And what Satan is claiming, here, is that if you strip those things away, their religion collapses in on itself and shows itself to be devoid of anything lasting – this has been the thrust of what our study in Romans 8:28 has revealed through Romans 1 and 3, John 3, and elsewhere.
It’s important that we realize Satan’s argument is not based in a defective view of man – rather it is a very accurate view of the natural man, far more than we would like to admit!
But, this is not the case for Job , who for some reason God has decided should be blameless, so that in a very real sense, Job serves as a model for we who are in Christ Jesus to see what it means to love God Himself as opposed to merely His gifts.
And so, God allows Satan to test Job, and Job was tested enormously. His wealth was destroyed, his family brought to ruin – and his response was amazing in verse 21, “Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away; blessed be the name of Yahweh.” No sin, no offense against God, just worship.
And so Satan went back to God, this time getting permission to hurt Job himself, and did end up afflicting him so terribly he scraped himself with a potsherd seeking relief, and his wife turned on him and told him to curse God so he could die. Job’s so-called “friends” came to him, and went from being good friends just being with him to heaping even more affliction onto him with their supposed “wisdom”.
But with all of these afflictions, with all of his suffering, rather than shaking his faith and trust in God, the true character and tenor of that faith was revealed.
“Though He slay me, I will hope in Him. Nevertheless I will argue my ways before Him.
Even though Job desires to plead his case before God, even that is overshadowed by the fact that Job’s bedrock foundation was not and idol or self-reliance or immature faith that may be revealed through suffering, but rather that suffering revealed that his hope was in God Himself – it was God who was the greatest love of Job’s heart.
But there is something else, something entirely pertinent to our new understanding that for those who love God, His providential working for our good produces an even greater love, and it comes nearly at the end when Job has emerged with a far greater view of God.
“I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; But now my eye sees You;
Do you see what happened here? Job didn’t emerge from this suffering loving God less, but loving Him more. The God he had trusted from the start, the God he worshipped from the start, the God he hoped in, was now the God he had seen with far greater clarity. The God he had worshiped in prosperity was now even more precious to him in affliction, filling him with admiration and wonder!
This is precisely what Romans 8:28 has been teaching us all along. God was not merely altering Job's circumstances, but used those circumstances to reveal Himself more fully to Job.
And in seeing God more clearly, Job loved God more deeply.
Through every sorrow, every disappointment, every question, every tear, God was at work pulling Job to Himself, teaching him to treasure Him more, trust Him more, and love Him more.
This truly is, as Paul had written in 1 Corinthians 10, an example for us, written for our instruction regarding the manner of God's providence toward all who are in Christ Jesus.
For those who love God, all things work together for good—not merely because circumstances eventually improve, but because through every circumstance God is teaching us that He Himself is our greatest good.
