All Things Work Together for Good

Do you see it yet? Like children waiting on tiptoes for the first glimpse of a parade coming around the corner, we wait eagerly for what God has planned for the future.

Someday we’ll trade in this old universe for a new one and our old bodies for new ones. God calls our bodies collapsing tents (see 2 Corinthians 5:1-5), and we can’t wait for the day when we trade it in for the real thing, our true home, our resurrection bodies. That will happen at the Rapture (Philippians 3:20-21; 1 Corinthians 15:44) with the judgment seat of Christ to follow when we will receive more of our glorious inheritance (1 Peter 1:3-4). We can believe God for this and hope for the day when we experience what He has promised.

If Romans is the greatest book of the Bible, and chapter 8 is the high-water mark, then Romans 8:28 is the mountain’s peak. We rest in our confidence in God, believing He is in control and works all things together for our eventual good.

This promise is “for … those who love God.” Love is our birthmark (Galatians 5:6; 1 John 4:10-16). This is the only place in Romans where Paul tells us of the believer’s love for God—other times, we read only of God’s love for us.

If you have trouble believing God loves you, you will have difficulty loving God (1John 4:19; 1 Peter 1:8). Believe God, and your sincere love for Him will bring joy and brightness into your life.

Romans 8:28 also assures us that it doesn’t make any difference what comes to you—good things, bad things, dark things, bright things, mean things, easy or hard—because whatever comes, God will see that it works for good in your life. Hold on to that truth. There are no accidents. As God’s called ones, we will look back over our lives someday and say, “All of this worked out for good.” (Like Job 13:15 and Genesis 50:20.)

Not only that, but God says that during all of this, “When I called you, I knew I could carry you through to the end. It wouldn’t depend on your performance but mine.”

There is no place for human pride in this process. It is God’s work, wisdom, and purpose being carried out. Predestination means that when God saves you, He will see you through. “If God is for us, who can be against us?” (v.31). God is on your side today. He’s given you Jesus, and, with Him, He is freely giving you everything necessary for this life and in the life to come.

You have to wonder, “Could anything backfire here?” No, nothing can separate us from Jesus Christ’s love. “What about trouble—can that put us outside God’s reach?” No, Jesus won’t let it. “Distress or anguish?” You may think God has let you down, but He hasn’t. “Persecution?” Will someone’s campaign against you separate you from God’s love? Never. “Or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?” From Paul’s own experience, he knows these can’t stand in the way of Christ’s love.

This is God’s glorious salvation. “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (v. 37)—we win because someone wins for us. Our victorious life is not our life. It is His life.

We can know this for sure. Death can’t separate us, nor can life, as hard as it is. Nothing about today or tomorrow can separate us, either.

At its heart, salvation is a love story. We love Him because He first loved us. Nothing can separate us from that. We entered Romans 8 with “no condemnation;” we end it here with “no separation,” and in between, all things work together for good.

Next: Paul wishes his family knew Jesus …. What’s God doing with the Jews?