Rom 8.28-30
Pause: The Assurance of Providence
(Romans 8.28-30)
Jason Procopio
I grew up in church, and I very clearly remember one time at Sunday School when I was 13 or 14, when someone asked the teacher a theoretical question. They said, imagine a Christian dies in a car accident. And just before the accident, the Christian in the car sees the accident coming, and before he can stop it, says a bad word. He has not had time to ask God to forgive him for this sin. Will he still go to heaven or not?
The Sunday School teacher looked at us for a long while, then very solemnly said, “Well…we don’t really know. So be careful.”
This story illustrates for me one of the biggest problems I had with Christianity growing up: the question of assurance. If everything depends on my ability to obey God (as many Christians believe), I know I’m doomed. So why even try?
This question of assurance is essential—and that’s what we’ll be talking about today.
Last week Eduardo preached from Romans 8.18-30. I want to thank him for doing that; Eduardo’s in training and assessment to be an elder here, and he’s preached a couple times before, last summer, after the training he’d done with Joe. But it’s one thing to preach in the summer, when most people are away on vacation and there are other elders present, and another to preach during the year, with a full room, and no elders there to back you up. It was a hard thing we asked him to do, and he did a great job. So thanks Eduardo—we all had a good vacation thanks to you.
Right now, as you know, we’re preaching through Paul’s letter to the Romans. We started in chapter 1 back in September and we’re just working our way through, slowly but surely. This week we’ll be taking a bit of a break, like we’ve done a few times during this series, to talk about one specific topic that came up last week, that we feel we should spend a little more time on.
In last week’s text, we basically saw that everyone and everything suffers. That’s what it means to live in a world corrupted by man’s rebellion against God. The creation suffers, and we suffer along with it. But, for the child of God, we have help in the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness and prays for us when we don’t know how to pray ourselves—which is awesome, because he’s God, so we know that his prayers will always be answered.
And then we saw that in addition to this help the Holy Spirit gives, God does something else in our lives—namely, he works everything together for our good.
This is a very small snapshot of a very big doctrine called the doctrine of Divine Providence.
When we say a word like "providence,” we need to define it. One of my favorite explanations of this doctrine comes from the Westminster Confession of Faith, which contains an entire chapter on Providence. Chapter 5, article 1 of the Westminster Confession reads:
“God, the great Creator of all things, doth uphold, direct, dispose, and govern all creatures, actions, and things, from the greatest even to the least, by his most wise and holy providence, according to his infallible foreknowledge, and the free and immutable counsel of his own will, to the praise of the glory of his wisdom, power, justice, goodness, and mercy.”
There is so much we could say in response to this definition of the doctrine of Providence—to do it right, we’d have to touch on dozens of possible topics.
But that’s not what we’re going to do today—we don’t have time and that’s not the focus of the text. So I’ll be using the word “providence” kind of loosely today; we’re going to spend most of our time zooming in on one very specific aspect of God’s providence, which we see gloriously described in the text we saw last week, in Romans 8.28:
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
In other words, today we’re going to focus specifically on God’s providence in the lives of his people. I’d like to spend several weeks touching on all the other possible implications of the doctrine of Providence, because frankly, we human beings are already too self-centered as a rule. But it can be a little shocking to see Romans 8.18-30, which is about the greater plan of God for this world, and not slow down at v. 28. We want to say, “Hold on, am I reading that right?” And often, when we do that, we do it wrong.
Here’s a really silly example. There’s a show on Netflix now called Manifest. It’s a really fun show, exactly the kind of science-fiction/thriller I enjoy, about a plane that takes off from Jamaica, disappears, then lands five years later in New York. None of the passengers have aged, and they start seeing weird visions that help them solve mysteries. It sounds stupid, and it kind of is, but it’s a lot of fun.
The thing is, Romans 8.28 is featured heavily in the story of this show. The flight number for the plane the passengers are on is Flight 828. The passengers who return five years later are known as “828ers”. And they frequently discuss Romans 8.28 explicitly, drawing the conclusion that, quite simply, “everything happens for a good reason.”
That’s true, but of course it’s not true in the way they mean it. I admire the show for having the guts to use the Bible in a positive way, but they still overlook what this verse is actually saying.
So what is Paul saying in this verse?
God’s Providence in the Lives of His People (v. 28-30)
Eduardo talked about this last week, and he was right to frame it the way he did: the big question—the question that this text answers—is not whether God is sovereign over the world, or even over our salvation, but whether or not he’s sovereign over the suffering that we experience in our lives as Christians.
It’s an important distinction, because if we were receiving nothing but things we wanted, all the time, we wouldn’t complain so much about the idea of God’s sovereignty. The idea of his sovereignty really bothers us when things don’t go the way we want them to, when you get diagnosed with an illness, or when someone hurts you, or—unfortunately—when someone who calls himself a Christian does something that is unreservedly evil.
That’s the circle we can’t square, and that’s what this text addresses.
So Paul is speaking in the context of the Christian’s suffering and the help the Holy Spirit gives us, and then in v. 28, he says:
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
So here’s the Bible’s answer to the question of God’s providence in our suffering in this broken world: God works all things together for GOOD.
ALL things. ALL things. ALL things. For GOOD.
Now, there are a couple of qualifiers we need to consider, and they’re really important, because when we miss them, we apply this verse the way Manifest does.
Here’s the first qualifier: this promise—that God works all things together for good—does not apply to everyone.
Keep v. 28 in front of your eyes: Paul says that this promise is for:
1. Those who love God—not the idea of God, but God himself, as he presents himself in his Word.
2. Those who are called according to his purpose—that is, those whom God has brought from death to life by the call of the gospel, supernaturally causing us to be born again through the faith the Holy Spirit gives us.
In other words, this “good” that is promised is for the people of God, those who have been saved by new birth, through the faith the Holy Spirit gives us.
That’s the first qualifier.
The second qualifier is that when he says God works all things together for good, the “good” he has in mind is a very specific “good.” The goal of God’s providence in “all things”, the good he works out in all things for his people, is that we become like Christ.
Look at v. 29:
29 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.
Paul goes much further than simply saying God predestines us to salvation: he predestines us to obedience. He predestines us to Christlikeness. He predestines us to faithfully live the Christian life.
In other words, if your idea of God working for your good doesn’t look like obedience to Christ, your idea is wrong. If we read Romans 8.28 and we think, God works in everything to make us healthy and wealthy and happy and comfortable, our thinking is way off the mark.
The “good” God works for us is mainly that we be conformed to the image of his Son.
This Promise Is Good News
Now, I know that a lot of us want this verse to mean something else. We want it to mean that in every suffering, God is working to make us feel better—to take the pain away, to make us happy again. That’s not necessarily untrue—our God is good, and he does comfort us, and he does answer our prayers for relief—but it’s not his primary goal.
That may not sound like great news at first.
But it is. For two main reasons.
1. Because conformity to Christ is a foretaste of heaven.
God predestines us to be conformed to the image of his Son—he works all things together for that good—in order to develop in us a distinct family resemblance.
Whether we like it or not, we’ve all inherited characteristics from the family we grew up in. From my dad, I inherited a decent singing voice, a good amount of emotional openness (we have no problem talking about our feelings), and a love of movies. From my mom, I inherited a good musical ear, a pretty quiet personality…and yes, a love of movies. (So you get it: growing up, there was a lot of music, and a lot of movies.) I inherited these things from my parents, and I’m grateful for them.
But from my dad I also inherited insomnia and a predisposition to anxiety; and from my mom, an aversion to conflict that’s sometimes almost crippling.
All of us are like this: there are things we inherited from our parents that are good, and other things that aren’t so good.
But when it comes to belonging to the family of God, every characteristic that can be qualified as a “family resemblance” is a good one—God predestined us to be conformed to Christ, the firstborn among many brothers.
If we think about it, we already know this is good news. The one thing that almost all non-Christians, across the board, will agree on is that they admire Jesus as he is described in the gospels. Jesus had no patience for hypocrisy. He defended those who couldn’t defend themselves. He welcomed the unlovable. He healed those who were sick. He was kind to his enemies.
During his earthly life, Jesus proved himself to be the kind of person nearly everyone wants to be. And he did it by perfectly obeying his heavenly Father.
So Paul says, if God has saved us, he intends that we become that kind of person. Sometimes the way we’ll get there will be unexpected—God will give us commandments we might not understand, he’ll call sin some things that we find good and normal—but the end result, if we trust him and obey those commands is always the same: we’ll look like our Brother, Jesus Christ, who himself is the perfect image of his Father, and the exact imprint of his nature (Hebrews 1.3).
And that is better than any comfort, any amount of wealth, any earthly pleasure we might gain if we don’t follow him. Being like Christ, and suffering to get there, is better than not being like Christ and living a perfectly pain-free life.
This is the bottom line; this is the reason we were created. Being like Christ is how we will be forever, in heaven. If that’s not something you want, then you don’t want to be there. If it is, if you belong to Christ and want to be like him, then you have the promise that God will do it. (What’s the benediction I give four out of five times? 1 Thessalonians 5.23-24: Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it. We obey, because God is faithful to bring us to obedience.)
That’s the first reason this is good news: conformity to the image of Christ is a wonderful gift. It is a foretaste of heaven on earth.
2. Because the end of suffering is coming.
The second reason this is good news is because God does indeed promise that we will be healthy and comfortable and happy, forever—once Christ returns and renews the world. That’s the hope Paul was describing in v. 18-25, and which he alludes to explicitly in v. 30:
30 And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
That “glorification” he’s talking about is our glorification—the day when our bodies will be resurrected and renewed to resemble Christ’s. And he’s already told us it’s bigger than just us: his goal isn’t just to save individuals, but to save a family of brothers and sisters, with God as our Father and Christ as our Brother.
This is the ultimate promise of the entire Bible—the story of the Bible culminates in this day when (Revelation 21.3-4):
He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.
This is health, this is peace, this is comfort, this is joy, forever. And it’s all these things, not just on an individual scale, but on a cosmic, universal scale: God will renew the earth and make it the dwelling place for his people, the tabernacle where his presence dwells among them. The promise of that day isn’t just good news; it’s the best news.
But that day’s not here yet. God is already our God, and has already given us his Spirit to apply his promises to our lives…but he hasn’t yet returned to make all things new. For now, we live in the middle—between “already” and “not yet”. And living in the middle means understanding how God is still working while we wait for that day to come.
So Paul describes what God is doing, and how he is doing it. V. 28 again:
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
It would be easy to hedge on this, and basically reduce it down to an empty platitude: the biblical equivalent of “Don’t worry, I’m sure everything’s going to be okay.” (By the way: if you ever say that to someone, you’d better have some serious evidence to back it up, because otherwise it’s utterly useless.) That’s what most people do with this verse, because to take Paul literally means giving up our ideas of how in control we are of our own lives.
The thing is…I don’t know how you can be a happy Christian if you don’t take Paul literally. I know these people exist, but I don’t understand them. Because if you don’t take what Paul says seriously, you have no other foundation on which to base your hope that God will be faithful to his promises. If God is faithful to his promises, that will necessarily mean denying you some things that you want, because some of those things are bad for you, and he promised you good. It will necessarily mean allowing you to go through some things you don’t want to go through, because he promised that we are heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him (as we saw two weeks ago in v. 17).
For those who have been brought from death to life, called by God, saved by his Holy Spirit, a radical transition of circumstance has taken place. We can now have the certainty that—yes—literally everything that happens to us in our lives are being worked out by God for our good.
This promise ranges from the most banal situations to the most extreme.
You catch a cold, and you have to go to work anyway. That sucks. It’s not fun. But if Paul is telling the truth, then God is working in that hard day for your good, to make you more like Christ.
My friend Aaron’s eight-year-old daughter has cancer, and despite three years of treatment, it keeps on advancing. I can’t even imagine that kind of pain. But Aaron, and his wife Sarah, and their daughter, all know and love Jesus Christ. So even though they don’t know why this is happening, they know God has not let them go—that he is working in it, that he is working for them, that being like Christ is worth even the most horrendous pain.
This applies to sickness; it applies to tragedy; and as we’ll see in a few weeks, it applies to sin as well. If you’re a Christian who’s been wounded by someone else who has sinned against you, then you can rest on this promise: this person meant it for evil, but God is working in it for your good. Just like he did with Joseph and his brothers, just like he did with the Pharaoh in Egypt, just like he did with the crowds who cried for the crucifixion of Christ.
All things. All things. All things. For the good of his people, that we might be conformed to the image of Christ, our Brother.
Our only assurance, our Wonderful Assurance
Loanne and I, a long time ago, were living in Normandy, and going to a church in which the pastor disagreed with me on this issue. We had had a discussion together about this particular passage, and a couple weeks later he surprised me by preaching on the end of Romans 8, v. 31-39, which we’ll see next week.
I’ve got to say, it was a great sermon. He exposed the text faithfully, he did it with great passion, and it was fantastic. And we could see it. We knew the people in the church, of course, many of whom struggled with problems of doubt, and as he spoke we could see them visibly lifting up in their seats, like the pastor was pumping air into them.
Then he got to the very end of chapter 8, and he read the end of the chapter, saying that “neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, nothing nothing nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Then he said: “Well… Maybe one thing… You. Your sin. Your choices. Your decisions.”
And just like that, we saw the whole room deflate again.
We left the church in tears that day, because he had taken God’s loving control over our lives, and put it back in our hands—which is terrible news, because if it’s up to us to make sure this thing works, it won’t work.
The reason why this sermon was so tragic is because it went against the root of Paul’s assurance that nothing will separate us from God’s love in Christ, and that root is this: those whom he foreknew, he also predestined, those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.
And that is why God works all things together for our good—because what God wills is good, and he will allow no evil to get in the way of his good will. No sickness, no relational heartache, no sin, not even death.
If this is not true, we have no assurance that any of God’s promises will come true, because they’ll always depend on us. This is the only assurance we have, and it is the best assurance we could imagine.
The Stability of Assurance
Now there are a lot of reasons why people resist these truths, and we’ll talk about them more in the coming weeks. People say that they don’t want to be robots, they want to maintain control of their lives. So do I, but the hard-yet-vital truth is that we don’t get to decide that. We’re not robots, and we are responsible for our choices, but our choices do not give us absolute control. Our lives—this entire universe and everything in it—are being directed by the sovereign and providential hand of a wise God. That means that every day, we’ll be confronted with unexpected things—things we didn’t plan for, pain we didn’t anticipate.
We’re going to suffer, and most of our suffering will be unexpected. So how does God call us to do that? How do we suffer well?
In this text, God gives us two essential truths—two things we know now from our text, that allow us to deal with the unexpected suffering that comes up in our lives.
First, we know what is coming. God warns us that we will suffer, because we live in a broken world. It’s amazing that we’re still surprised when suffering comes. The creation is groaning, Paul said, and so are we—we are weak, and subject to pain, and waiting for the day when we’ll be freed from our weakness. God tells us that life in this broken world will be hard, life with other broken people will be hard, and we shouldn’t be surprised when we’re confronted with hardship.
But at the same time, we know what is promised. The Spirit helps us in our weaknesses, Paul says; he intercedes for us when we don’t know how to pray. And God’s sovereign hand is working all things together for our good—not despite our suffering, but in our suffering, through our suffering. He’s working in it to make us like Christ, which is the glorious promise of heaven for us.
Think of how freeing it would be to live every moment with these two truths anchored firmly in our minds. We’ll never be surprised when we’re confronted with suffering or sin in ourselves or in others, so we won’t be caught off guard by it. When we get angry, our anger won’t be defensive, but rather measured and appropriate; even our anger will be gracious, seasoned with salt (as Paul says in Colossians 4), so we’ll know how to answer each person.
And at the same time, we’ll remember we’re never without the precise help we need at any given moment. We might not feel like it, but the Spirit is there, helping us in our weaknesses. He’s working to make even this contribute to our good, to make us like Christ.
How steady would we be in the face of the unexpected, if we knew this? We’re not there yet…but that is what we are growing toward—not boats tossed around by the waves, but firmly anchored to the seafloor, stable and sure. This is the good that God is working out in us, in all things.
Let me just say one last thing. There may be some people here who are listening to all this and who think it sounds pretty great—you might be thinking, I want to have that kind of assurance too.
Can I be honest with you? That’s not the best reason to come to Christ. The best reason to come to Christ, we find it earlier in this book, in chapter 3: no one is righteous, all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus (Romans 3.23-24). That is why you should come to Christ: because you’ve sinned against God and need his Son to be the sacrifice for your sin.
But you know, I don’t believe that God is against accepting and using other reasons to come to him; in fact, if you read the Bible, you’ll see God giving us all sorts of reasons to come to Christ.
Christ invites us to come to him if we’re tired and we want rest.
He invites us to come to him if we feel dead and we want life.
He invites us to come to him if we desire abundant joy, and eternal pleasures.
He does not just give us one reason to come to him.
So if you desire to know Christ, then come to him. Don’t worry about not knowing how to do it exactly right. We’ll give you the opportunity to do it, and we’ll explain how to do it, in just a minute. And when you do, you can know that if you place your faith in him, he will forgive you of your sins, and work all things in your life to make you more like Christ. He’ll work on your motivations; your job is to respond in faith.
