“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
Why has God gone to all this trouble to rescue and restore us troublesome humans? Why didn’t He just blot us all out and start again?
God isn’t like that. He always finishes what He starts. Even more than that…in His amazing sovereignty, He can take the worst mess we make in His world and work it into His plan with such precision that it it fits perfectly into the process towards His predetermined end.
“But God knew what would happen, and his prearranged plan was carried out when Jesus was betrayed. With the help of lawless Gentiles, you nailed him to a cross and killed him. But God released him from the horrors of death and raised him back to life, for death could not keep him in its grip.”
Acts of the Apostles 2:23-24 NLT
Since God is omniscient, and outside of time He sees everything perfectly and at the same time. All of history…and all the lives of every person who has ever lived…is/are before Him in panoramic view. He sees the end result before it happens in time.
So…
“And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
Romans 8:28-30 NIV
From God’s perspective, it’s already done.
Paul discovered, in the course of his turbulent life, that everything that happened to him…God’s son and servant…whether he caused it through his own foolishness or whether it happened to him because he was a human in a fallen world…God used it for his good.
Really? Even the worst tragedies…the most painful experiences?
Yes! “In all things”…not just some things…or the good things, the pleasant things, the happy things. ALL THINGS! That’s quite a bitter pill to swallow! Why doesn’t God shield His children from the bad things? How, then, can we know that God really does work for our good in our lives as well?
Paul had already tested this conviction in his own experience. He didn’t just say, “Perhaps,” or “It might be”. He said “We know!” Emphatic…tested…it’s a proven truth. What did he know?
Paul knew that God is always moving everything towards His predetermined goal… for the universe and for the people in it. He will not permit interruptions or intrusions to derail His plan. What is His plan?
“…For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
Now, would you look at that! The Father wants a family of sons and daughters…exact replicas of Jesus, His perfect son. So, He takes imperfect, sinful, rough diamonds…puts them in the tumbler…life’s turbulent, messy circumstances…and knocks off all the rough edges through the “all things”. All the good, all the bad that happens in our lives, works on two things that are most important to God and to His divine purpose…our faith and our flesh, the pull of our old nature towards sin.
First, our faith is our only link with God.
“And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.”
Hebrews 11:6 NIV
He wants our faith to be pure…unmixed with impurities like doubt, fear, insecurity, instability, compromise, disloyalty, etc. Pure means sterling…like precious metal purified in the fire… all the dross burnt out by hardships,
trouble, testing, and suffering.
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These (the fiery trials) have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.”
1 Peter 1:6-7 NIV
Our faith is like gold purified in the fire and, through our faith in a perfect Father…unmixed with impurities…we begin to see the glory of God (the character of God in all His perfection), emerging in our own lives…and He is admired for who He is.
Second, the thing that hinders our faith most is our flesh…the old nature that is determined to interfere with our love for and obedience to the Lord. There is a war going on between the Spirit in us who is in control of us and our flesh that wants to control us.
“So I say, let the Holy Spirit guide your lives. Then you won’t be doing what your sinful nature craves. The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.”
Galatians 5:16-18 NLT
So, what do trials and suffering do…the “all things” that God uses for our good? Peter gives us a clue.
“So then, since Christ suffered physical pain, you must arm yourselves with the same attitude he had, and be ready to suffer, too. For if you have suffered physically for Christ, you have finished with sin.”
1 Peter 4:1 NLT
Unfortunately, “physical pain” is a translation of “sarx”, the Greek word that mostly means “flesh”…the sinful nature…that completely misses the point. Peter was meaning that suffering and hardships help us to deal with the pull of our flesh. Who has the desire to indulge the flesh when there are difficulties to face?
For the mature believer in Jesus, the flesh isn’t about the really big or obvious sins like murder or adultery. The flesh is more about the inward things…the thoughts and attitudes that only God sees…like anger, bitterness, jealousy, covetousness, resentment, or fear, anxiety, doubt, discontent, etc. These thoughts are just as much sin in God’s eyes as lying or stealing. They are sinful reactions that come out of our old nature.
Trials, hardships, difficulties, suffering, bring these attitudes and reactions to the surface. So, God allows us to experience what exposes what our sinful nature still wants to do so that, through the Holy Sprit, we can learn to put them to death.
Remember Peter! He was so cocksure of himself until he was tested…then he fell hard! “I will never deny you!” he said…and then he did.
“As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children. Who ever heard of a child who is never disciplined by its father?… For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.”
Hebrews 12:7, 10 NLT
Can you now see that the “all things” we go through have two purposes…to purify our faith in God and to kill the desires and reactions of our flesh because unbelief and sin are our two worst enemies. Even the good things that come our way are dangerous to us if they result in pride and independence.
Every time a bad thing happens to us…and we lean our weight on Jesus instead of collapsing in a heap of misery or trying to get through it on our own,…God does amazing things. When we look back, from the point of trusting God in the darkness, we eventually realise that God was there, all the time, exposing the defects in our faith and helping us to follow the Spirit instead of reacting like sinners in the flesh.
Go back to the discussion about retaliation. Revenge, in one way or another, is not Gods’s way. Trust in God is! That’s what Jesus did. ”He entrusted Himself to Him who judges justly “… and God wants us to be like Jesus, to lean on Him and to let Him work it out for us.
So, God allows good things and bad things to happen to us so that He can work in them to purify our confidence in Him and to expose and get to rid of our sinful attitudes and reactions. He wants us to rely on Him instead of following what our flesh demands…and sinning in the process.
There is a prize at the end of all this struggle…a prize so valuable that there is nothing we experience on this earth, no matter how bad or how painful, that can stop us from winning it except sin or unbelief…and God works tirelessly and relentlessly with us so that we don’t miss the prize.
“For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son, so that his Son would be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters.”
Romans 8:29 NLT
Now, who would not want to win a prize like that? Not Paul, anyway!
“I don’t mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection. But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. No, dear brothers and sisters, I have not achieved it, but I focus on this one thing: Forgetting the past and looking forward to what lies ahead, I press on to reach the end of the race and receive the heavenly prize for which God, through Christ Jesus, is calling us.”
Philippians 3:12-14 NLT
God wants us to value the prize at the end of our journey so much that we will strive, like Paul did, to win it, no matter the cost.
To be continued