Catching up on the James Series

Hey guys!

Here are the last few sermons from Elliot and Amanda in our James series.

Get in ya in a big way.

Suffering, trials and joy. What the...

“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.”

I’m going to have a good hard look here at this particular line in Paul’s letter to the church in Rome, three verses that have brought believers a lot of comfort and assurance of God’s love, but have also brought a heck of a lot of debate and controversy. Because of possible significant repercussions for other theology to be built from, this verse should be treated with care and understood in light of what Paul is saying throughout the letter’s argument to avoid nauseating and never ending conversations about predestination and making God sound like a bit of an idiot.

At the centre of all of Paul’s thought is the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is mentioned 35 times throughout and is undoubtedly the focus of much of Paul’s attention to God’s working in the world. This is particularly important for interpreting the text in hand with 21 of those appearances in chapter 8 alone. So it would probably be sensible to read this passage with this focus in mind as we try to get into Paul’s head on this one!

It is said that a prominent preacher during the first World War was said to have claimed that Romans 8:28 was “the hardest verse in the Bible to believe.” Paul seems confident that  despite evidence that might suggest otherwise, God is in the midst of the world working for its good. But obviously this raises very difficult questions about the nature of God’s work within the world and the issue of ultimate responsibility of suffering.

It would be a mistake to interpret this in two (perhaps understandable) ways that lead to further problems. The first is to read that Paul is saying ‘It will all come right in the end’ in some sort of universal optimism, and that Paul is simply encouraging people to wait until everything is good at some future moment. The second would be to read that Paul is suggesting that all things, although often negative, are working to achieve a positive goal in a cosmic “the end justifies the means” scenario. But this is not a case of the universe working together for ultimate good in some utilitarian sense, like God is manipulating cosmic events to teach us a lesson or something. We have big problems then when we look at actual (not just theoretical) suffering, events like divorce, death, abuse, genocide and rejection. If we want to argue that God is somehow behind all that then we’ve got a bit of a task on our hands!

In context of the chapter so far with a strong emphasis on God in control of working within creation to bring about His redemptive purposes, and acknowledging very real present sufferings, I would probably suggest that the most coherent way of understanding Paul’s argument would be to read this as “God is working in all things, including seriously crap situations, to bring about good for those who love Him.”

It is to say that God is involved within situations working for good, rather than just using an optimistic and very general bumper-sticker phrase to encourage positivity. Present sufferings are very real for Paul and so he is being very careful to focus on God’s goodness. He continues to do this in the following verses, but as we will see, this ‘goodness’ is really talking about God conforming believers into the image of His Son, not a general remark about having good fortune. Working for good is to made more like Jesus – the trials and sufferings are still just as crappy, but God wastes none of it!

After this, Paul embarks on a description of what God has done for the believer in Christ, reminding us that we lack nothing, we have every spiritual blessing now. Pretty amazing stuff.

I would also suggest that Romans 8:28-30 also helps us to reframe our ideas around suffering. Paul makes it clear in all his letters that real suffering is inevitable, but goes on to explain that although suffering is a very real and serious reality, it is not a hopeless reality. In fact it would seem that it is central to imaging God and being ‘conformed to the image of His Son.’ It is in connection with an acknowledgement of suffering that Paul writes these verses and there it is within suffering that the Holy Spirit is working within these things “for the good of those who love Him.”

Totsengard says it this way: “That is the journey on which the sovereign God is taking us, a cruciform journey for Christ’s sake and in Christ’s image, where the itinerary is by no means only on the heights, but rather in the everyday depths near which we always find ourselves.”

God doesn’t leave us. God turns the crud into gold. We’re made more like Jesus in our sufferings when we allow the Spirit to guide us through it.

Mean.

If anyone wants the full essay hit me up. Here's Sunday's talk on this in engaging with James 1: