The Story: For Our Good | Romans 8:28–30

I love a good story.

In the story of life...

God is the Author of Our Story

For the Bible, this life is a story. But to understand a good story, we need to understand some things about the story.

Often stories are broken up into 5 parts:

The Characters

The Setting

The Plot

The Conflict and the Resolution

The first few are pretty easy. In Romans 8, we find these things laid out.

First:

The CHARACTERS: For those who Love Him

If we’re going to piece together the story of life, we must first know who the characters are. In Romans 8:28, Paul begins with “For we know that for those who love God...”

The phrase for those who love God set up the main characters of the story.

First we have God. God is significant, because he is not only the main character, but he is the author. You can call life God’s autobiography.

Psalm 19:1–2 ESV

The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech, and night to night reveals knowledge.

So life is a revelation of God.

But we also see the second character of this story revealed: Those who love God.

We cannot miss this. This promise, this story isn’t focused on everyone. Sure there are antagonists in the story, those who cause the conflict, but in this story the protagonists are God and those who love Him.

This is significant, because it tells us two things:

For those who love God. For those who love God all things work together. But it also tells us something else

This is not true for those who do not love God.

In fact, the opposite is true: For those who do not love God, all things work together for their destruction: Even the good they experience in life, but that’s for another sermon.

So who are those who love God?

Well, we’ll see that in a bit.

The SETTING of the Promise: All Things

Next, we come to the setting. The where. The where is important because it helps us understand the scope of the work. Is it a small setting like in the nursery rhyme Jack and Jill. In that story, the whole setting is the hill they go tumbling down.

Or it may be as big as the Star Wars Saga where the setting goes from one planet to another in a galaxy far far away.

The setting of Romans 8: 28 is simple, and yet not so simple. Paul states that “all things” work.

The word for all things is panta. It means the whole of something. From it we get the word for the single “super continent” Pangea that biblical scholars say existed before the flood and scientists see in the archaeological data.

So what is the scope of this promise to “those who love God”? It’s all things.

Now we may be tempted to take this verse out of its context and misunderstand what is meant by this. Does God work all things together in the universe for my good. In a cosmic sense, yes and no. You see, Paul is not making a claim about the universality of the goodness of a supernova in the farthest reaches of space, but rather in context, Paul is speaking about the things that proceeded this statement. He is speaking about the suffering, and the privations of those who love God.

Paul is saying in context that all the things that we suffer do something. And that’s where we get to our plot:

The PLOT: Work Together for Good

Paul notes that God works all things dodo something, and that somethings is that they work together.

The Greek here is just two simple words panta synergei.

All things - panta

Work Together - the word synergei. Means to collaborate, to help, to work together.

Paul is saying that sufferings that “are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” work together.

The word for work together is the word we use for synergy. For the collaborating of many things. God is saying that all the things that occur to us. All the privations, all the suffering, all the ridicule, all the death, all the sorrow, all of these things do something and that somethings is that all things in our lives work together for our good. And all things means all things. There is nothing that happens to us, or has happened to us, or will happen to us that the sovereign God does not work together for our good.

Like piecing a puzzle together, God knits our life together into a tapestry of glory.

So the question is “What works together for my Good?”

And the answer is this: ALL THINGS

Now this leads us into the conflict

The CONFLICT: All things work together for good...

I say this again because the plot is also the conflict, because how can all things work together for our good?

You see, we all recognize that life is hard. That life doesn’t seem to work together. It’s easy to say that our sufferings are light and momentary, but when we’re stuck in the midst of cancer treatments, or mourning at the casket of a loved one it’s hard to see how that is working together for our good.

In fact, in that moment life seems pretty hopeless. The problem is you and I are living in the midst of the middle movie.

In a great trilogy, whether its a movie or a series of books, the rule stands that the middle story is always the darkest. The reason for this is simple. The first sets up the story. It helps us understand the characters and the themes. The final chapter ends the story with the victory of the main characters. But the middle story always is the darkest because it keeps you drawn in to the story so you will come back for the finale. It’s the place where the evil appears to have won, where the heroes seem to have lost.

It’s the story that sees Harry Potter on the run from Voldemort, or Samwise desperately lost with Frodo dead from the bite of the Spider Queen.

And it’s the story you and I are living.

We’re in the middle story. We’re in the midst of the conflict. And that conflict is this: We live in a fallen world where pain, suffering and sorrow rules.

The conflict is that just like in the greatest stories we’ve ever read we live in the midst of the trilogy and we know only the promise of the final saga.

But in this passage, we find that resolution and that resolution is the author.

The RESOLUTION: For those who are called according to his purpose...

There’s a promise in this passage. There’s a truth that we dare not miss. And it’s this: The Author of the Story is the main character of the story.

We tend to see the story of life as our story, but here’s a secret we must understand: As long as I am the main character of this story, then it will end in sorrow and not victory.

You and I aren’t the heroes of the story. We’re not Frodo, nor Samwise, nor Luke Skywalker or Han Solo, nor Gus nor Lori Darlin’. No, we’re not the main character of the story, God is.

Listen to the truth of this passage: For those who love God, for those who are called according to his purposes. For those who are foreknown by God. For those predestined by God. For those whom he justified there is this truth: God will work all things together for your good and your ultimate GLORIFICATION.

Hebrews 2:10 ESV

For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.

God is working today in your life to glorify you one day. But even that isn’t about you.

Look at v. 29.

Romans 8:29 ESV

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.

You see, even your suffering and yes your good, and yes your glorification is about one person: Jesus.

Today, what God is saying is this: The story of your life is about one thing, and that one thing is Jesus. And for those who love him, he is working all things together for your good so that you may be one of his brothers and sisters in glory and God will work all things, whether death, or sorrow, or pain, or suffering together for your good and the glory of His son, and on that you can rest and you can have confidence.

The author of the story, the one who spoke the story into being when he said, “Let there be light” is writing your story today. And while you aren’t the main character, he is none-the-less writing it for your good, and you can be assured that in the end it will lead to your justification and your glorification if you love him.