28And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
—Romans 8:28
I was at a chapel service a few weeks ago and later at a Sunday service where they played the song, ‘Your Love Never Fails.’ It’s a good song. The chorus, or bridge (can’t remember which), repeatedly says, ‘You make all things work together for my good,’ immediately conjuring the above verse from Paul’s epistle to the church in Rome. You’ve probably heard/read it before—it’s a Christian classic.
What makes it so? Well, it’s a likeable verse. It involves God’s orchestration of our lives, it references ‘good,’ which is nice, and it appears to give us hope that God will ensure even the harshest of life’s perils somehow become the source of its greatest bliss. What’s not to like? Our good in this life is appealing. Perhaps in part that’s why voices get louder at this juncture of the song—it’s hard not to get excited about the prospects of our prosperity.
But there’s a slight problem here, one that could diminish our unabashed appreciation of the song, and the verse for that matter. It lies in Paul’s definition of ‘good.’ The best way to put it is to put it bluntly: Paul is not referring to our good in the way we would naturally think of it. We read about our ‘good’ and immediately picture getting a raise at work, birthing a healthy child, being applauded for our contribution, finding out the tumor is benign, or maybe just catching a lucky break amidst otherwise dire circumstances. By default we think safety, health, happiness, comfort. We think of the tangible, the material, the temporary. Paul, however, had his mind more appropriately aligned. He was thinking of weightier things. For him, eternity was in full view. If we read verse 28 in the broader context of chapter 8, this is plain. Check out verse 18 and 35—sobering bookends to the oft-quoted and misinterpreted ‘classic.’
18For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
35Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36As it is written,
"For your sake we are being killed all the day long;
we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered."
Suffering? Distress? Danger? Sheep to the slaughter? Hardly what we’d define as acceptable, let alone good. One may argue neither would Paul. But are we sure about that? The Apostle, remember, lived a very different life than most. In some ways, like Jesus, he was well acquainted with grief. And for him, the grander purpose of faith refinement through life’s harshest blows easily trumped their momentary pain. Again, what we generally see as undesirable, to be avoided at all costs, Paul embraced as opportunity. The shipwrecks and scourgings, then, were 'good'—even calls for praise that he was considered worthy of suffering for the gospel.
Was Paul crazy? Or are we? (Let that one marinate!)
There’s no doubt in my mind God makes all things work together for our good. None whatsoever. But ‘good’ just means something a little (a lot?!) different. God is intent on working out our spiritual kinks. As its Author, He desires to perfect our faith, to prepare us for eternal glory and to perfectly place even the pointiest thorns in our side for His. Make no mistake, He uses life on this side of heaven, with all its evils and discomforts and despairs to bolster our belief while glorifying His Name.
My point in touching on this is not to say, ‘Suck it up—the pain you feel shouldn’t hurt.’ Not at all. Life on the anvil does hurt. Sometimes a great deal. No, my point is to call us to a Pauline perspective, where suffering is seen in the context in which God Himself sees it…where He is working all things together for our truest good.
It can be difficult to grasp: Perceive pain and peril as a means to a greater and worthier end, even to the point of questioning the true goodness of what we immediately deem as ‘good.’ But God loves us more deeply than we can comprehend, necessarily in ways we can’t (and won’t) fully understand.
And that, my friends, is a truly good thing. Even great.
Grace to you, to embrace the good of the working together of all things, painful as it can be,
Voice of another
