Everyone loves Romans 8:28 that promises all things will work together or God causes all things to work together for GOOD for those who love God and are called according to His purpose. But it is probably one of the most misrepresented promises in Christendom as well…

People have been told, taught, bought and sold this line…”give your life to Jesus and you’ll have no more disaster, no more pain, no more suffering, disease or trouble.” Totally wrong. We’d all like to think that we could just say “up shields” and like in Star Trek, have our defense shields go up and protect us from anything bad.

But the scripture says “all things” – good and bad. I did extensive study on the word ALL in Hebrew and Greek and even Latin, and it means… “all.” You can’t break it down. It’s a brittle word. It means everything.

And generally all things boil down to two things – good things and bad things, light things or dark things. And Paul is saying that all things, even bad things will be worked together by God for our ultimate good. That’s an awesome promise!

Ultimately, we know that even bad things cannot separate us from God but it doesn’t mean they don’t happen.. Can bad things bring us out of a no-condemnation status into a condemnation status? No. Can bad things cause Christ not to love us anymore? No. Can bad things cause God to remove our salvation? No. But bad things do happen – in fact, all God’s promises are ‘yes and amen’ in Jesus. One of those promises came from the mouth of Jesus – in this world you will have trouble, tribulation, suffering.. affliction, you will have trouble, I promise it.

But all the matters of life, whatever they are…good, bad, all are…being worked together by God. Good things like God’s nature, God’s promises, and the Word and prayer and angels and believers are working for your good. Bad things like suffering and struggling and sin work for your good by teaching you to hate sin, teaching you to see your fallenness, to be humiliated before God and desire God, to conform to Christ, to pray, to be penitent, repentant, long for God’s grace, be grateful for forgiveness. But beyond all of those things which are here and now things, all that can happen to you in this life good and bad will ultimately be used by God to bring you to eternal glory. That is the monumental truth here.

Perhaps more than any other promise in the Bible this verse has helped people trust God through experiences that seemed utterly pointless and painful and evil. People have held fast to the “all things” and believed the word of God – that this too, this terrible thing, this seemingly pointless thing you are going through, will turn out for your good.

Ultimately, the question has always been – even from the Book of Genesis – the question has been DO YOU TRUST ME?

Do you trust Me with your future?

With Adam and Eve, do you trust me? With Moses, Samson, David, the underlying question has always been “do you trust me?” Do you trust me to work even this circumstance out for your ultimate good?

So what does that mean? Our ultimate good?

What kind of good is Paul speaking of? It is important to think about because I think Paul’s desire in writing this section and so the point of this verse is for it to be a sustaining power for God’s people, allowing them to endure and persevere through trial and difficulty. If we miss then “the good” that Paul is talking about, we may make mistaken judgements about God’s character and then not endure and not persevere.

How we view what is ultimately good, or the good that God is working towards really effects the way this verse is going to effect us. There are lots of folks today who believe that tolerance is ultimately what we all should be going after, that everybody has a right to do what they want regardless of others, and if we could just have a truly tolerant society we could eliminate much of the wrong. When this is taught as an individual relates to himself (as opposed to others) it is be true to yourself. If this is the good that God is working towards, where everybody is free to express themselves as they desire, where ultimate self-expression is the good we’re after, the hope that our life rests on is significantly changed.

Ultimately no one really believes in ultimate self-expression; this is why we have things like detention, courts, prison, wars, protests, etc. The idea of tolerance can only work within a community where there is an agreed standard of conduct of what is right and wrong. Community is based on shared values that go beyond ultimate independence. Imagine 100 Mile without a shared system of values, where everyone could do or take what they wanted when they wanted, and that is fine. Is that a community that we want would want to live in? Probably not, that’s why we have things like houses, ideas like privacy, options to block certain people on our facebook account. Tolerance can only function as the fruit of a good that runs deeper and touches the human soul, and unless it touches every human soul we’ll still have the option to block people on our facebook account.

In trying to understand this ultimate good, it is helpful to notice two ideas that go hand in hand in this section; suffering and glory. The section opens by saying in verse 17 that those who have been adopted by God are heirs with Christ, which means that when Christ comes into his glory, we’ll be there glorified with him; but that the road to glory is through suffering and there is no other road. If you don’t travel that road you don’t arrive at the road’s destination, glory with Jesus.

In verse 21, Paul says that the bondage and suffering of creation is going to end in freedom and glory. Verse 26 begins by talking about our weakness and ends with the glorification of God’s people in verse 30.

The good that Paul is talking about in verse 28, the good of His people for which God is working all things, is the glorification of Jesus and His people, of Christ and the children of God. This is still kind of vague and so we need to look to other places in the Bible to wrap our teeth around this.

As we look at other Scriptures, we find the same things, that suffering is the road to glory, that it is Christ’s return to earth that is the time Christ and his people will be glorified, and this in itself results in other things.

Matthew 16:124-28 – Talks about the fact one must lose his life in order to find it, a.k.a. suffering- Glory here is associated with Christ’s triumphant return and final judgement.

Colossians 3:1-4 – Again glory associated with Christ’s return and we are glorified with Him.

1 Peter 4:13 – Glory is to be revealed in His return.

Why should we rejoice in Christ’s return and our glorification with Him as a comfort in suffering?

The most vivid portrayal of what Christ’s return is going to look like and what it results in is found in Revelation 19:11 – 22. In this passage we see that he good that God is working towards, the glorification of Christ and the saints results in:

The End of Satan’s seducing influence over humanity – Woo Hoo!

Judgement of the wicked – God will repay injustice with justice, those who afflicted unjustly will be justly afflicted

No more death.

No more disease.

No more pain.

No sickness.

No more mourning, crying, or tears

No more sin, temptation, or moral weakness – awesome!

God and man will dwell together

When we think of how much beauty, joy, happiness, and satisfaction we experience now in an imperfect and often painful world, imagine what it will be like when we will live face to face with the source of all beauty, joy, happiness, and satisfaction. There is no other place that we want to be.

“The preceding were notes from a sermon at CCLF Sunday July 18 where Pastor Rick and his son Dustin tag-teamed the sermon.”