And We Know
Notes
Transcript
This morning, as we continue our study of Romans chapter 8, we need to take a step back and bring the whole of this great promise we have been considering into view together.
For several months now – in fact, since mid-May – we have been looking carefully at the words of verse 28. It is altogether right and fitting that we do so, but before we move forward, we need to remember where this promise stands within Paul’s argument, and what he intends us to understand through it.
This chapter began with that wonderful declaration
Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.
…and everything we have considered since has been deepening our understanding of the truth of this statement, providing assurance to those who are in Christ Jesus on account of the fullness and finality of salvation by faith in Him.
We have considered the indwelling Spirit, our adoption as sons, our inheritance with Christ, and the glory still awaiting us. Along this path, we’ve also seen that we presently live in weakness, that we groan as we await the redemption of our bodies, and that the Spirit Himself helps us when we do not even know how to pray as we should.
But our lives are not made up of weakness and suffering alone. We also receive kindnesses, enjoy friendships, find refreshment, experience answered prayer, and have opportunities to serve. And much of life unfolds in ordinary responsibilities – working, caring for our families, speaking with our neighbors, and doing the things that need to be done from one day to the next or one season to the next.
It is into this seeming “mixed bag” of reality that Paul writes at the beginning of this latest argument supporting our uncondemned status through our union with Christ Jesus,
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.
Over the last 14 sessions, we’ve spent considerable time examining the expressions within this one sentence, for familiar words can conceal depths we may have never stopped to consider. It is on account of this that we’ve taken far longer than I originally anticipated to work through this verse, but now that we have done so, I am certain that all of us have benefitted greatly from this deep, careful explication of the verse.
But now, we need to bring those truths together, to hear afresh the promise as a whole, so that we can rightly resume our progress through Romans 8.
We need to reassemble in our minds a cohesive understanding of this promise: who these people are who love God, what He is accomplishing through His providence for their good, and how His calling of them according to His purpose holds the whole statement together.
As we move into verses 29 and 30, Paul will trace God’s saving work from foreknowledge and predestination, through calling and justification, all the way to glorification. He will show us why the promise before us is so certain, and what God has appointed His people to become.
Before we launch into that, I would like to in a sense gather up what we have learned here in verse 28, so that we carry the whole promise forward with us, rather than just this latest look at God’s purpose.
And it all begins with “And we know.”
Those words are easy to pass over, but they establish the utter certainty of everything that follows, and cast that against the not knowing of things like how to pray as we should – in the midst of uncertainties and events which may seek to buffet us about like a ship in a hurricane, Paul is reminding us that there are certainties to be had and to be rejoiced in. He writes, “we know” certain things.
But we do need to be careful here, because in this life we may not know the immediate reason why every circumstance has come into our lives. He doesn’t suggest here that we can trace every connection, explain every disappointment, or identify precisely what God intends to accomplish through each particular event. Our understanding is limited, even though we who are in Christ Jesus are indwelt by the Holy Spirit, guided by Him, there are things regarding our present circumstances that we do not know, even while there is at the same time a purpose God has in those circumstances that we most certainly can know, because God Himself has revealed it.
And the foremost thing that we do know, is that for those who love God, all things work together for good.
And let’s remember, Paul is not writing this to us as a sort of retrospective – this is an inherently present-tense truth, a truth we can rest upon now, even when the good which God is accomplishing remains beyond our sight. So although God occasionally does allow us to recognize what He has accomplished through a particular season, we don’t have to wait until long after things happen for us to know the way that Paul is writing here.
Yes, from time to time we can see how He humbled us, provided for us, exposed some false confidence, or taught us to depend upon Him more fully, but the trustworthiness of this statement does not rely on such things, no! Instead, the certainty rests upon the God who has spoken, whose wisdom does not fail and whose purpose cannot be overturned.
But this promise isn’t for everyone, it’s not indiscriminate, he’s rather explicit, “And we know that for those who love God…” these things are true.
And we do need to be careful when considering what it actually means to love God, because it is quite possible for a person to claim that he or she does love Him, while in reality their love is for something very different from the God who has revealed Himself in His Word.
Remember, love in this sense reaches far deeper than a passing emotion. What we love, we prize. What we love, we regard as good, we pursue it, we delight in it, and we defend it when something threatens it. And not only do we perceive what we love to be good itself, that which we love profoundly shapes what else we consider to be good.
So when Paul describes these people as “those who love God,” the object of their love matters enormously.
Do we love God Himself, or do we merely love the benefits we hope to receive from Him?
Consider how the crowds pursued Jesus after He fed them, but when He brought them face to face with the truth about Himself, many grumbled and turned away. They were eager to receive His bread, but unwilling to receive what He revealed about Himself. Their pursuit of His gifts had concealed their rejection of the Giver.
And there is a clarion call for us to seriously examine our own hearts on account of this. If what I ultimately want is comfort, security, recognition, or control, I will warmly welcome with open arms the idea of a God who helps me obtain those things, while rejecting a God who interrupts the plans I had for Him.
You see, the question is really whether or not I love the God who is, in His holiness, in His authority, in His wisdom, in His goodness, in His sovereignty.
When God Himself becomes precious to us, our relationship to His gifts changes. Oh, we still enjoy friendship, provision, refreshment, and answered prayer – we look at these things with genuine thankfulness! But our enjoyment reaches beyond the gift to the Giver, where every gift becomes a pathway leading our hearts back to Him!
His provision reminds us of His faithfulness, His kindness draws forth our gratitude, the opportunity to serve becomes an occasion to honor the One who supplied both the opportunity and the strength.
We desire to please Him in and through our work, our speech, the way we care for those entrusted to us – our love for Him gives significance to faithfulness in such things, not because others may notice it, but because He is precious to us.
And, when circumstances become painful, that same love draws us toward Him as our refuge. We may not understand His dealings, but we increasingly recognize that God Himself remains our greatest good.
This is the essence of an experimental religion, as the Puritans called it, truth experienced in the soul. This is that great distinction between knowing that honey is sweet, and fondly recalling the sweetness of it on our lips! We are asking whether God has become precious to us in the lived experience of our hearts!
Of course, as we increase our love for God, we are increasingly confronted with rival affections within us – in fact, the closer we get to Him, the greater these rivals often seem to us.
We still become too attached to comfort, too concerned about reputation, too determined to have our own way… These types of things must be exposed, opposed, and increasingly put to death as we learned up in verses 12 and 13, where we read…
Romans 8:12–13
“So then, brothers, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die, but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the practices of the body, you will live.”
The grief we experience when we recognize that we have offended Him matters, and as God works within us toward His own will and good pleasure the resulting desire to turn from sin and return to a fuller fellowship with Him matters as well!
This grief over offending God, this desire to turn from sin and return to Him on account of disappointing Him, are evidences of His gracious work within us.
These things are indications that He is at work within us, helping us work out our salvation with fear and trembling by removing the scree from a purer, clearer, fuller enjoyment of the precious communion with God through a heart bent toward Him.
And so, the question we ask ourselves isn’t “am I perfect”, but rather “Is He the One to whom my heart continually returns?” When we answer in the affirmative, we can know with assurance that God has created a real love for Himself within us, even while He continues to deepen, purify, and strengthen that same love.
No, this question about those who love God identifies the people to whom the promise belongs, it is not the listed purchase price for the benefits, this is no love that we can work up within ourselves and have to occasionally rev up the engine so that we can stay in the “in” group, no!
The people who love God are the very people in whose lives He is at work teaching them to love Him more. He opens their eyes increasingly to His worth, exposes the insufficiency of rival loves, and teaches them to treasure Christ above all else.
And we need this correction in every kind of circumstance – “for those who love God all things work together for good”, the apostle writes.
And there are two critical observations we have to make here – first, those things do not simply arrange themselves for our benefit, and second, this is no “God can still make something good after someone made a mess of things” adjustment.
No, there is a certainty here that rests upon God Himself as He actively governs all things according to His wisdom and purpose, what the Puritans referred to as the providence of God.
God is not merely watching our lives unfold, waiting to see whether He will need to intervene! No, His care reaches into our relationships, our responsibilities, our opportunities, and our limitations to accomplish His purpose. Nothing is too ordinary to fall beneath His attention, and nothing is so great that it exceeds His authority.
Everything works together, not on account of happenstance or on their own, but because God causes it to be. Even circumstances which seem opposed to one another remain under the govern-ment of the same God, serving the purpose He has appointed, much like the workings of a watch or clock whose gears move in opposing directions, yet their movements serve one coordinated, designed result.
That does not mean that everything God governs is itself good. Sin remains sin, cruelty remains cruelty, and those who commit evil remain responsible for the evil they do. God neither approves their wickedness nor becomes sinful through His government of it.
Recall Joseph’s brothers: their intention was evil, they purposed evil in their hearts towards Joseph, yet God intended good through the very circumstances their wickedness brought about.
We see this most profoundly at the cross, where lawless men crucified our Lord, even as God accomplished His predetermined saving purpose through His Son.
No, evil cannot overturn God’s purpose, try as it might. Even that which opposes Him, He causes to serve the good He has determined from before the foundation of the world.
But in this idea, we need to ensure our own perception of good is corrected.
We naturally tend to measure circumstances by whether they preserve our comfort, fulfill our plans, or strengthen our sense of control. But that is not what God deems to be good – God is declaring throughout Scripture that the highest good is Himself. “The chief end of man is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever”, the catechism proclaims, for good reason. We will read Paul’s exultant cry a few chapters from now,
Romans 11:36
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
So though such things as comfort and successful plans may be enjoyable to us humanly, God is actively stripping away every support upon which we rest our confidence apart from Him!
Sometimes He exposes its inadequacy; sometimes He takes away the very thing we thought we could not do without, even gifts He had given us previously. His gifts remain good, but what He will not allow is for even these good gifts to take His place!
He is teaching us, through both what He gives and what He removes, that our ultimate dependence must rest upon Himself alone.
So, His gifts teach us to recognize His kindness and receive His provision with thanksgiving. Our ordinary responsibilities give us occasions to practice the love, patience, and faithfulness He commands. Through hardship, He teaches us to trust Him by demonstrating those other supports cannot sustain us.
Through all of these things, God is correcting how we see and reordering what we love. He is teaching us to interpret temporary realities in light of eternal ones, increasingly conforming us to the image of His Son.
Through Job’s ordeal, God brought Job to a clearer knowledge of Himself. And in seeing God more clearly, Job loved God more deeply.
Such a good reaches beyond whether our circumstances eventually improve, rather it is God at work teaching His people that He Himself is their greatest good.
And that changes how we interpret the whole of our lives.
When life is painful, we don’t conclude God has abandoned us; when life is pleasant, we don’t conclude He approves of all that we do; and when life seems ordinary, we don’t imagine that His providence has somehow become inactive.
For we’ve now realized that God’s providence in affliction serves to steady us, His providence in prosperity serves to humble us, and His providence in the ordinary serves to train us in faithfulness.
He desires us to direct our attention toward Him: we who are in Christ Jesus are to reject the rebellious notion of “independence” from Him, but rather to relish our dependence upon Him always, whether confronted with weakness or strength, times good or times bad, to always and in every way view Him as the greatest and most constant necessity of our souls – to “enjoy Him forever”.
This is far richer than some simple platitude that “everything happens for a reason”.
Paul is reminding us that the whole of our lives is governed by the wise and personal purpose of God, and that for the people he describes here, that purpose unfailingly serves their good.
How did sinners who once loved darkness come to love God?
Paul takes us beneath the love we experience to the divine action that produced it in the last phrase, “for those who are called according to His purpose.”
Paul isn’t talking about two separate groups here, but two separate viewpoints of the same people. Those who love God are those whom God has called. The first description tells us something true of their hearts; the second explains how that became true.
For recall that we were brought forth in iniquity, and in sin our mothers conceived us, we were constituted sinners therefore we sinned yet more, and our minds had been blinded to the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God.
Our minds were darkened, our affections disordered, and our wills enslaved to sin. We did not naturally treasure the God revealed in Scripture, but hate Him. Something had to happen within us that we could never produce for ourselves.
History has illustrated this repeatedly – neither inherited religion, nor outward conformity, nor religious excitement can create a heart that loves God. No, only God Himself is able to create light out of darkness, or replace a heart of stone with a heart of flesh.
And this is why we distinguished the general call of the gospel from God’s effectual call.
The general call goes out to every hearer: repent and believe upon the Lord Jesus Christ. That command is sincere, and we proclaim Christ freely to all.
But separately, God also performs a distinct, inward work which only He can accomplish; when He effectually calls a person, He opens blind eyes, renews the heart, and brings the sinner willingly and believingly to Christ. This effectual call does not arise from or await the sinner’s response, no! Rather, it opens the eyes of the heart to perceive and embrace the truth of that general call, and it always accomplishes the saving result God intends!
Saving faith isn’t an alien response forced upon an unwilling person, but the fitting and willing response of a person whose blindness has been removed and replaced with sight.
The Christ we once rejected is now the Christ we wholeheartedly embrace. Our repentance is real, our faith is real, and our willingness is real, but we must always understand that the willingness is the fruit of God’s gracious action, not its cause.
This leaves us no ground for boasting over anyone who remains in unbelief – we would still be blind ourselves apart from His mercy!
And to bring it around to where we began, the promise does not hang upon the fluctuating strength of our love, no! Instead, Paul traces that love back to God’s effectual call, and then traces the call itself back to something deeper still: We are called “according to His purpose.”
Our love for God, then, is real, but the certainty of this promise does not rest upon its fluctuating strength. It rests upon the God who called us into fellowship with His Son. And that call was itself the outworking of a purpose which already stood before we ever heard the gospel, before we believed, before we even existed!
Paul’s final words take us back to the reason God acted to bring us to Himself; we are called “according to His purpose.”
That purpose is not something God formed in response to what He discovered within us, nor did He look ahead through history, find people who would make themselves worthy of salvation, and then shape His purpose around their wisdom, willingness, works, or potential.
No, as Paul writes in 2 Timothy that God…
2 Timothy 1:9
“[who] has saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works, but according to His own purpose and grace which was given to us in Christ Jesus from all eternity,”
God’s saving purpose was already established in Christ before we had done anything – whether good or evil—indeed, before there was a created world in which we could do anything at all, even in Adam.
And so, if I tell the story of my salvation merely by saying, “I decided to accept Christ so that I would not go to hell,” then I have begun that story too late, centered it upon the wrong person, and brought it to an end too soon.
Salvation does not begin with us, it is not governed by us, and it does not finally end with us.
Even that transformation God works in us to remove us from the realm of darkness, and place us into the kingdom of the Son of His Love, does not find its ultimate end in us, no! Romans 11 made that clear to us,
Romans 11:36
“For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.”
Everything is from God, everything is accomplished through God, and everything moves ultimately to God.
He has ordered the whole of salvation to display the glory of His grace in Christ and to form a redeemed people who live to the praise of His glory.
And so now, 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 can now understand that the people who love God are the people He has effectually called; that He sovereignly governs all things according to His purpose; and that through them He is teaching His people to rejoice in their greatest good, namely God Himself.
There has never been a moment outside of that plan and purpose, and there never will be – it originated in Him, it rests on Him for its accomplishment, and it will move all things ultimately toward the praise of His glory.
Looking forward, Paul is not going to leave this promise unsupported. In the next verses, he is going to show us why it is so certain, how far back God’s saving purpose reaches, the appointed destination toward which it moves, and why no one included within that purpose can finally be lost along the way.
And we, for our part, will be far better prepared to understand the fullness of those verses, on account of understanding the promise here in verse 28.
Whatever comes into the life of a person who has been called according to God’s purpose – whether affliction, prosperity, or the ordinary course of daily life – everything remains under the wise and personal government of God, God who is teaching His people to love Him, conforming them to His Son, and bringing His saving purpose unfailingly to glory.
And that gives us firm ground for assurance and perseverance, even when we cannot yet see with our eyes the good God is accomplishing.
Let us pray!
