Romans 8.28–30
A sermon preached at Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 5th September 2021
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 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. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
Romans 8:28-30
Each year in September I used to take a group from my church in Perth, north to where the water was warmer. A group of thirty kids from Hollywood High School was with us one year, so we took a fifty-five seater bus, as well as a number of cars. Parents came to see us off and wished us luck. I told the kids in the bus we didn’t believe in luck, because God was in control of everything. We prayed for a safe holiday.
A few days later one of the girls limped into Monkey Mia to say there had been an accident. I leaped into the bus and headed up the road. When I got to the scene and saw the van lying on its side, smashed beyond repair, people wandering around still in a daze, my wife, Lorraine, lying in the red bulldust on the roadside, next to her the broken bassinette of my baby daughter—thankfully gurgling in her normal way; she was the happiest person there that day—one of the many thoughts that flashed through my mind was, “What do I tell the kids now?”
When we got home to Perth, people reacted in two ways: Some said, “What terrible luck!” Others: “How lucky you were that no one was badly hurt.” I realized how tricky this luck thing is, and how much our lives are surrounded by it.
There are many who have managed to get out of Afghanistan in the past days who are thinking how lucky they are. Others who have been left behind are grieving their bad luck. Some of us have thought how lucky we are to have been born in the lucky country. Surely I could just as well have been born in Afghanistan, or Gaza.
Down through the ages people have struggled with the reality of good and bad luck. You can plan your life to a degree, but there are forces beyond your control which can derail you, and switch you to a line you don’t wish to be on. Some of Thomas Harding’s novels are explorations of the power of bad luck: the shepherd in Far from the Madding Crowd who has begun to make a life for himself and now has a flock of his own, but one night the new dog rounds up all the sheep and forces them over a cliff. His life is suddenly switched onto another, harder track. The Greeks saw good and bad luck as ultimate forces above even the gods. They erected statues to the luck of their city.
I wonder what sort of a role luck has played in your life? How have you reacted to it? John Chapman wrote a book called, “A Fresh Start.” He received a letter from a woman in Sydney. She and her husband won a big prize in the lottery. Not long afterwards they won another. She got frightened. She sat up in bed one night and said, “Our luck can’t last; I’m going to church.” There was a girl manning a bookstall at the back of the church she attended. She asked her if there was a book for someone who wanted to make a fresh start. Yes, there was this little book called A Fresh Start. I reckon she hit the jackpot for the third time!
Good luck is one thing; bad luck is something else. The Stoics taught grim determination in the face of fate. Our New Atheists feel the same way: there is no freedom, natural law rules the universe, you just have to be brave and take whatever comes. That’s easier when you live in a society that has a safety net to stop you falling too far. I remember the fear of my Indian students who failed their exams and were faced with returning to the teaming masses where there was no hope.
Epictetus was a Greek who lived about the same time as Jesus. He traced the problem back to desire. It’s missing out on the things you desire which causes all the heartache, so kill your desires. Buddhism has the same philosophy: tread a middle path, neither loving anything too much, or hating too much. Bad luck will lose its power to hurt you. It’s a pessimistic way of life: suffering is normal and so is bad luck, so don’t get your hopes up.
Australians are different. They have a saying: “She’ll be right!” or “It’ll all work out for the best!” Where did this come from? It’s not true, of course: just wishful thinking trying to be brave in the face of a bad situation. But it actually comes from the Bible—from the text we are looking at today: “All things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” You can see straightaway that the Aussie version is counterfeit; it has left out an all-important condition. There is no principle of life that says everything works out for the best for everyone. It doesn’t. This is a special promise for those who love God—because the way things turn out is not determined by some power of luck or fate, but by the will of the sovereign God.
The Bible is clear that God is in absolute control; he never relaxes his control. Nothing is outside his control. “He works all things according to his will”: that’s Ephesians 1.11. He creates wellbeing and calamity, says Isaiah 45.7. “Not a sparrow falls to the ground without your Father,” says Jesus. So, if you love God and he loves you, you are in a wonderful position—though it may be painful; the passage we are looking at is about suffering. There is going to be plenty, but “ for those who love God, all things work together for good.”
This is possible, because God is working everything according to his plan, and his plan includes even the bad things. When our lives go pear-shaped—or in places like Afghanistan—we think that God has lost control, but he hasn’t. When Jesus was arrested, when he was condemned in a show-trial, when soldiers made him an object of fun before they nailed him up, his disciples thought God had lost control, but he hadn’t; he was there every moment. A couple of months later when Peter and John were ordered to bex flogged, they rejoiced that God was in control. When Paul spent two years in prison in Caesarea, he knew that God had put him there. And God sent him to Rome and kept him under arrest for another two years. Things are never out of God’s control; in everything he is working according to his plan, and his ultimate plan for those who love him is good.
In verse 29 Paul explains this:
For those he [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Before you were born—Paul is speaking to Christians—God knew you. That doesn’t mean that he foresaw you; he foresaw everyone. It means he loved you. He knew you like you were his friend—before your parents even thought of you. He was thinking about you and making plans for you even before he created the world. You are why he created the world—not just you, but yes, you too. That is what “foreknow” means.
So, when you were only an idea in his mind to one day create, he set his love on you and determined your destiny. And the important thing to note is that he takes you from there, right to your final destination: that you should be conformed to the image of his Son. From the beginning he has associated you with Jesus. Jesus comes first. God’s first thought, if you like, is that his eternal Son will become a human being—a human being as human beings are meant to be—and then you will be made like him—not created like him, because you will be all messed up when he gets to you, but remade to be like him—restored like one of those old cars you find in wrecker’s yards: taken to the workshop, every part carefully cleaned, machined, sprayed, polished, until it’s a shining new car. That’s your ultimate destiny, and the make and model is the human Jesus. And you will not be alone; there will be a world of restored humans, all brothers of the Lord Jesus their King. Which doesn’t mean everyone will be the same. No, just as everyone in this creation is an individual, so will it be in the new creation. No assembly line manufacturing identical goods, but everyone separately created, with an individual story of failure, redeemed by a Saviour who loves each one personally and draws each one to himself in a different way. Everyone will be an individual, different, yet having the family likeness: like Jesus in love, courage, wisdom, patience, truthfulness, compassion, and a thousand other ways. You want to know the meaning of life? There you have it, and you can be a part of it.
It is possible for God to plan out your destiny, not just because he foresees the future—that is not what it means when it speaks of those whom God foreknew—but, as I have already said, because he makes the future. Paul goes on to explain this:
Those whom he foreknew he also predestined … and those he predestined he also called, and those he called he also justified, and those be justified he also glorified.
Everything here is something God does; the whole process is in his hands. He puts his love on you before there was ever a world—when you were just a thought in his mind to create—then he predetermined the way in which he would bring you to himself as a Jesus-like son or daughter. Then, in time, at a particular point in your life, maybe when you were a road-wreck, he called you by his gospel and drew you irresistible to himself. He did it, or is doing it, or will do it, so he knows it from the beginning. And having called you, he justified you. That means he clears away all your debts and makes you acceptable for his kingdom and his presence. There are two parts to that: first he sends his Son as a human being to live and die, and in his dying to bear your guilt, and to rise again to leadership of a new race of men and women and children, including you. That all happened two thousand years ago. Remember that you were always in his mind, and you were included in that great class action. But now, in the twentieth- or twenty-first century when you are finally alive, he calls you personally, and you are drawn by the gospel and the power of the Holy Spirit to believe and trust in him. We sometimes speak of “redemption, accomplished and applied”. It was accomplished at the cross; it is applied when you respond to the gospel and believe. But notice again, it is God’s work, so he can be sure it will happen.
Next, he glorifies you. He hasn’t done that yet. There is a lot of water that flows under the bridge between “justified” and “glorified”: a lot of living, a lot of suffering, a lot of being conformed to the image of his Son—what the Bible calls “sanctification”. But God is in control of it all, and there are no mistakes in the steel links of his plan: “Those whom he foreknew he also glorified.” If you are chosen you are glorified, and everything that happens in between works together for this good end.
But wonderful as this sounds—and it is wonderful—it raises a frightening thought. Think of the woman—I am thinking of someone real here—who had a beautiful farm. Her husband died and her farm was stolen away from her. A terrible bitterness enters into her soul. When I visited her, she said straight out, “I can never be a Christian, because I cannot forgive the person who cheated me out of my farm.” She doesn’t blame God, she blames that person, though from time to time when her mind wanders to the possibility of God, she wonders whether he could have prevented it. And then imagine she discovers not only that God could have prevented it, but that he planned it. That’s when you hear the primal scream. That’s when someone either hates God—forever, or breaks and begins to trust him. If what Paul is saying is true, then this is the situation of the person whose home is destroyed in a bushfire, or whose first child dies after two days, or the man who loses a leg in car accident, or the woman who as a child was sexually abused by her father and carries the scar into adulthood, or the Christian standing at the gates of Kabul Airport wondering what comes next. You may have suffered something terrible, something that will not go away, something that dogs your thoughts and spoils your life many years later. It is not just a matter of saying, “Oh well, all things work together for good for those who love God.” This can be the greatest faith crisis of your life.
Paul is talking about suffering here—real suffering and how you think of it. “All things work together for good” doesn’t mean life is easy. It means that for the child of God the country and time you are born in was planned by God. Easy for me to say—an Australian in modern Australia—not so easy for an impoverished Indian. Also, your parents were chosen by God: not easy for someone whose parents were cruel, or whose parents died young. Whether you were to be rich or poor, who you would marry, whether your marriage will turn out well, the success or failure of your job or business, your health or sickness—these and a thousand other things are covered by “all things work together for good for those who love God.” These are all part of what it means for your life to be predestined.
The test of whether you believe this is whether you live it. In your thinking are you still in the grip of the impersonal forces of good and bad luck, or do you know that everything that comes your way, however distressing it may be, is part of what is decreed for you by a Father who has set his love upon you and is preparing you for a place in his kingdom? This is a truth that will transform your life if you live by it.
From the outsider’s point of view it will still look like good and bad luck are as much a part of your life as theirs. But the Christian knows`—you can know—it is not the heartless dealings of blind fate in a cold universe, but the wise and purposeful provision of a loving Father.