Romans 8:28: Do All Things Really Work Together for Good?

INTRODUCTION:

Have you ever noticed that sincere, earnest Christian believers experience most of the same troubles and tribulations as other people?

Our teeth decay. We get cancer. Our hair falls out. We get arthritis and diabetes and heart disease, at about the same rate as everyone else.

Sometimes our marriages fail.

Christian believers lose their jobs. Sometimes our children die before we do.

We had a nephew who died of cancer. His grandmother wept: “Why couldn’t it have been me? I’ve lived a long time, and he was so young!”

Tragedies happen to us and to those we love—and we wonder.

Why? Why? Why? Why does God let these things happen? It would be so easy for him to make our lives all good by just tweaking it here and there with a few little—very little miracles.

In the early centuries Christian believers had all these problems and the added one of persecution for their faith.

St. Paul warned the believers: “Through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22).

Believers through the ages have taken comfort from Romans 8:28: “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

But is it true? Is it really true? Sometimes when sorrow presses us down, it’s hard to believe that all things work together for good.

I. Often this verse is misunderstood. And when it’s misunderstood, it can really stumble Christians. It can make it hard to believe in the goodness of God.

A. First of all, I want to tell you some things this verse does not mean:

It doesn’t mean that everything that happens is good.

Plenty of things are bad in this world—really evil.

Evil doesn’t come from God.

This world is a battlefield between God and the powers of darkness.

Paul had a painful affliction. He called it “a thorn in his flesh,” but he didn’t say it came from God: he called it “a messenger of Satan to torment me.”

The Bible says: “We know that we are God’s children, and that the whole world lies under the power of the evil one.” (1 John 5:19).

“All things work together for good…” doesn’t mean, as some people say that “everything happens for a reason,” as if God intended every tragedy to happen for some purpose of his own.

Sometimes the “reason” things happen is because of human sin: “He lied to her and broke her heart.”

Sometimes the “reason” something bad happens has to do with the laws of nature. “The car’s brakes failed. It careened into the path of an oncoming truck.”

Another thing Romans 8:28 doesn’t mean is that whatever happens is God’s will.

Lots of things happen that aren’t God’s will.

It’s not God’s will that people sin.

Plagues and tragic accidents aren’t God’s will.

People make stupid mistakes that cause grief and sorrow.

Through no one’s fault babies are born with birth defects.

These things happen because there’s randomness—what we call chance—in nature.

Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus. God weeps with us in our sorrows.

B. Just because we are believers—doesn’t mean that we lead charmed lives.

Imagine a world in which all our prayers were answered in just the way we want.

Imagine if good people never experienced disease, or disappointment, or struggle with work, or relationships, or weakness, or old age.

Imagine if all of us believers lived always tranquil lives—no disappointments, no stresses, no loss or sorrow—and then we would grow very old, still in perfect health, and one night fall asleep and wake up in heaven.

Wouldn’t that be a wonderful world? Or would it?

What would we miss in a world like that?

We would lose our opportunities to gain wisdom.

I walked a mile with pleasure;

She chattered all the way,

But I was none the wiser, for all that she did say.

I walked a mile with sorrow,

And not a word said she,

but, O, the things I learned that day

When sorrow walked with me.

We would miss the opportunity to grow strong in faith through our struggles.

We would lose our opportunity to learn compassion because sorrow is God’s classroom for compassion.

We would miss the opportunity to prove that our faith is real.

C. In a perfect world our lives might even be less joyful.

I once taught in a school with a much older woman who seemed to me to be very wise and good.

Although she was cheerful, she had experienced a great sorrow in her life.

Her name was Goldia.

Goldia had always looked forward to being a grandmother.

But one day her husband and two daughters were killed in an auto accident. She was left alone.

She got great comfort from a poem by Edward Markham, which she told me.

It goes like this:

Defeat may serve as well as victory

To shake the soul and let the glory out.

When the great oak is straining in the wind,

The boughs drink in new beauty, and the trunk

Sends down a deeper root on the windward side.

Only the soul that knows the mighty grief

Can know the might rapture. Sorrows come

To stretch out the spaces in the heart for joy.

D. A woman named Peggy lost her 28-year-old daughter to cancer. As she mourned and suffered she poured her broken heart out to God. She offered herself and her suffering to God just as Jesus did on the cross.

That hasn’t made her suffering any easier, but now everywhere she goes she meets people who have lost adult children to death. Peggy sits next to them on airplanes, meets them in the supermarket, and bumps into them on vacation. She shares their suffering and offers them Christ and his comfort. Her suffering, united with Christ’s suffering has meant salvation for many.

When you are experiencing pain, offer your pain to God. Ask him to use it for the comfort of others.

So often it is people who have known great sorrow or great pain who have great sympathy for others in need and are most useful in the world.

II. So what does it mean that “All things work together for good…”?

A. It means that God in his infinite power and wisdom can somehow fit even disasters into his plans for goodness for the people he loves.

He can weave bad things together to make good outcomes.

There’s a story in the Bible that is often used to illustrate this truth. It is the story of Joseph.

Joseph’s tragedies began while he was still a lad. You know the story.

He was sold into slavery by his jealous brothers.

As a slave in Egypt he was falsely accused of a shameful crime and put into prison—where he languished for several years.

But through a series of improbable events he came into a position of power and authority and was instrumental in saving thousands of lives—both of the Egyptians and of his family.

At the end of the story Joseph’s brothers come to him to beg forgiveness for their terrible deed. Joseph weeps and says, “Fear not for am I in the place of God? As for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:19-20).

Sin is sin. It was not good that my friend Jim was a hard-core, career criminal. It isn’t good that he was a thief and a violent man. It isn’t good that he hurt many people.

But it is good that he found Christ. And as a humble, repentant, Christian believer he can go into prisons and tell the good news of the gospel with special effectiveness—because he has been where his hearers are. God has brought good out of evil—not the good that could have been, but good nevertheless.

Many times people are convinced of the truth of the gospel by watching how believers respond to pain and sorrow.

When we become old and pain and sickness come, and many of the things we used to enjoy are no longer available—now is our chance to show that God is real.

You have strength from God. Let people know. The strongest evidence for the truth of God is the courage and hope he gives his people in the midst of suffering.

B. A pastor tells about a woman in her congregation who became engaged to be married.

She was so excited. She told her pastor, “I’m 60 years old, and I’m getting married for the first time!”

A week later, the woman was hospitalized with complications from a cold.

Then she had a stroke. A few days later she died.

When the pastor visited woman’s mother to plan the funeral, the grief-stricken mother’s first words were: “It just didn’t turn out right.”

Sometimes things “just don’t turn out right.”

You have had this experience. I have had this experience. Sometimes it just doesn’t turn out right—not in our lifetimes. But there is another world beyond this. And we have faith that God is able to make things right in the end.

And that is what Romans 8:28 means. God will make it right in the end.

CONCLUSION

One thing more. Our verse ends with words “…to those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

It’s not automatic.

Part of it depends on us. Sorrow can make us bitter; sorrow can make us give up on God.

A proverb has it: “The same sun sweetens the apples and sours the milk.”

Do we respond to trouble by clinging more closely to God?

Do our sorrows make us more determined to live for God?

Does our sorrow make us more sympathetic to others who suffer—more eager to help?

Do our troubles make heaven more real to us and the things of earth less important?

Our troubles can mold us into Christlikeness.

We can share with Christ the sorrows of the world.

A thousand years from now we will look back and say, “It was good. God made everything work out right.”