Romans 8:28-30 "Secure in the Purpose of God"

Introduction

We have been going through Romans chapter 8 verse by verse. And there has been an emphasis on the work of the Holy Spirit and how He works to bring about the will of God into the life and experience of the Christian.

The Holy Spirit is not only the power basis by which God works in us but He also intercedes for us according to the will of God.

We saw this last Sunday and He intercedes at a level and at a depth that is beyond our ability to understand and even to communicate.

So then if it is beyond us why in the world does Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit even tell us about this?

I mean couldn’t we all just function fine as believers without knowing this?

Well the purpose of it is not to plunge so deep in our understanding to erase the mysterious elements of God’s providential mysteries. No Christian that must remain in tact.

The purpose of it is to a-line our faith with the nature and character of God in light of His purposes coming to pass in the world.

This is why Paul lays down a providential principle in verse 28 that challenges the Christian process everything through the catalyst of God’s sovereignty. Look back at your text to verse 28:

I. The Providential Principle (28).

When Paul says, “And we know” he is obviously derives such knowledge from the involvement of the Holy Spirit’s operation in accordance with the will of God.

And the identity of those that he refers to as “those who love God” are the very ones that are “called according to His purpose.”

Such people could only love God due to the initiating work of grace worked in them by the Holy Spirit. We get all of this from the context of Romans 8. We are not free to just lift this verse out of context and make it say whatever we want it to say.

It is God’s initiating work of redemption through Christ by the Spirit that helps us understand what is meant by the term “good” for us.

The “good” that comes to pass for those who love God and are called according to His purpose is determined by God’s perception and not our own.

The “good” according to God is anything that contributes to the glorification of Christ and our sanctification and eternal hope of our final redemption.

We are not free to define or understand “good” to mean any old thing we want to characterize as good. The conflicts of life are being used to accomplish our spiritual and eternal good not necessarily a good categorized as material and temporal good.

Christian this providential principle challenges us to see our lives and the events of our lives as opportunities for our spiritual growth and our eternal good.

Without applying this principle in this way I find it impossible to have any sense of joy in the midst of trials.

This is why attempts at humanistic optimism are no alternative to living by faith in light of the sovereign God’s covenant fidelity.

Our human tendency to embrace human autonomy is a naive perception. Human autonomy is the notion of self-rule. I refer to it often as the sovereignty of the self.

We see this first in the Scripture where the serpent tells Eve that God knows that you will be like Him knowing good from evil.

This is why human autonomy is a naive perception because it fails to take into consideration that man is bound to his nature and influenced and controlled by his fallen depravity. Every motive instigating choice is being influenced by his fallen nature.

Fallen man hears of the doctrine of the sovereignty of God and he imagines that God must be a puppet master who operates over fallen man through attached strings for Him to pull in order to move man against His will.

But such ideas are ignoring the satanic control of a fallen nature. That is where the real bondage to the will is. And there are not merely strings attached but there are chains that bind fallen man to his depraved nature. Liberty doesn’t come until Jesus Christ sets you free.

Even in God’s natural order, Man is a dependent being he didn’t will himself into existence nor can he will himself out of existence. He is dependent on God in both cases. All men will live forever. Man cannot even live in the physical without breathing God’s air and drinking God’s water and eating the food created by God.

Christian, man is not autonomous in the absolute sense. But God works in His providential will to bring about man’s good through His plan of redemption. Look as Paul describes the providential order of God’s work in verses 29-30:

II. The Providential Order (29-30).

This providential order serves as the foundational basis of the principle of verse 28.

Notice that it is God who is the subject at work carrying out the action of the all the main verbs.

God foreknew which means that He knew who were His before they were His (29a).

And those He foreknew, God predestined which literally means that He predetermined select people to be conformed to the image of His Son (29b).

And God did this in order to glorify the Son through redeeming sinners and transforming them to reflect the glory of Christ and emphasizing Christ as the firstborn among the children of God.

This is the whole basis of our being heirs with Christ and beneficiaries of an inheritance with Him (8:12-17).

And those He predestined, God called which means He made it effectual with an internal call through the word by the power of the Spirit (30a).

This is the equivalent to being born again. You must be born again or you can’t see or enter the kingdom. This is what broke the chains off of the will.

This is the spiritual version of Lazarus come forth. The Spirit quickened the dead and the sinner was liberated from the chains and enabled to believe the gospel freely.

And those He called, God justified which means once man is liberated and man is free to believe by faith in Christ and His work on the Cross. And by that faith sinful man is declared righteous by God.

We are justified by God by our faith in His provision of grace to us through Christ.

And those He justified, God glorified which means that not only is Christ glory manifest in our sanctification but even more in our final redemption when we are glorified at the final trumpet, in the twinkling of an eye we shall be changed.

These doctrines help keep our perception and understanding of God and our relation to Him in a healthy, biblical perspective. As R.C. Sproul points out, “Some say that God’s sovereignty is limited by human freedom. If that is the case, then man is sovereign, not God. The Reformed faith teaches that human freedom is real but limited by God’s sovereignty. We cannot overrule the sovereign decisions of God with our freedom, because God’s freedom is greater than ours.”

God’s freedom to be God and to rule over the affairs of man is at stake. God is not reactive as if He is surprised by the actions of men. Such a God would not be all knowing but would have to be informed of the future because He wouldn’t know it.

The doctrines of grace tell us He not only knew it but that He actually planned it and then initiated it for His glory.

These doctrines fortify our hearts from the constant onslaught of our humanistic tendencies to take comfort in our human ability.

They keep us looking to God through Christ for our eternal hope and by cultivating the weeds of self confidence out of the garden of His sovereign grace to us in Christ.

It calls us to rest in Christ and to find our identity in Him. It is an identity that has been given to us by God Himself. It has been initiated into our lives by sovereign grace.

When we do this it is impossible to miss that we are loved greatly by God as we are beneficiaries of His grace.

When I used to push hard against these doctrines of grace I thought it would cause me to loose an understanding of human freedom. What I failed to see is who the Son sets free is free indeed.

Today this informs my evangelism. All we are is ministers of the word and God does the work by the Holy Spirit through the word. That is why we gladly preach and minister the word as the people of God.

But as we will see Lord willing next Sunday these doctrines of grace brings faith, hope and love together in a cohesive bond that will sustain us in any trial that we will ever face in this world.

Christian this table points us to Christ and to the provision of God’s grace in Christ.

Conclusion:

Unbeliever you need this gospel to be applied to your life. Perhaps today is the day that God is at work bringing about the liberation of your chains that you may believe the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Believer: Warning of self examination in light of our need for God’s grace. Confess and receive Let’s examine ourselves in preparation.

Let’s Pray! No Closed everyone together.