God Works for Good
W. Carl Ketcherside
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I hold that Jesus is Lord over life. I mean the whole life--all of it. I do not go for the kind of fragmented personality which "saves Sunday out" to serve God. One does not turn the grace of God on and off like a faucet in the kitchen sink. God is interested in everything that I do. He wants me to mow the lawn, trim the shrubs, and roast wieners in his name and to his glory. Certainly he wants me to sit down with the saints at the Lord's table, but when Nell and I bow our heads and thank him for our food, the kitchen table also becomes the Lord's table.
God does not just smile when everything is going along happily for me, and turn his head when it isn't. He sees me when I bruise my arm falling off the bicycle I'm learning to ride. He also knows when I carelessly take my eyes off the road and hit the bridge railing. He even knows to what hospital I am taken, and the number of my room. He knows my temperature before the nurse reads the thermometer. It is destructive of his role as a father to think that he is only interested in the "big things" that I do. Often character is revealed more by some of the little things which are done thoughtlessly than by those which demand a good deal of study and rationalization.
And the greatest thing about his being Lord of all is that the Spirit can so order and arrange everything that it will work out for ultimate good. Even my foolish mistakes and asinine blunders can be fitted into a pattern of life. Sorrow and suffering can be woven into the warp and woof until they actually enhance instead of wrecking the design. This does not mean we ought to deliberately do a lot of silly things so there will be more depth and shadow in the picture called life. As humans caught up in the earthly predicament we will furnish enough hazy background without daubing more in on purpose.
My God is Lord of suffering! He knows how to place my physical agony and mental travail into proper perspective. Since I believe this with all of my heart I do not have to worry or fret about the future. I do not have to be anxious about tomorrow. He is the God of tomorrow as well as of today. I can glorify him by the way I endure hardship as well as by clapping my hands and singing when I feel exuberant over what we call "good fortune." There is no such thing! It is not fortune, but faith!
Everything is going to work out to his praise. Everything! If you are one of the sad skeptics who want to go around pricking balloons of faith, don't bother with me. I am not flying a balloon filled with hot air. I'm not blowing bubbles. My faith is substantial. That word means "to stand under." It is as firm as concrete. You can no more puncture it than a bumblebee can drill a
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"We know that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28).
I consider this rendering superior to that of the Authorized Version. The apostle asserts it as a certainty that God works with us for good, and does so in everything. "We know" is positive. It lifts the matter out of the realm of wishful thinking and speculation. And it excludes no area of life from God's direction or cognizance. I am personally convinced that God is concerned with every thought and action of my life.
Shakespeare wrote, "There's a divinity that shapes our lives, rough hew them how we will." Henry Ward Beecher said, "Everything that happens in the world is part of a great plan of God running through all time." Thomas Carlyle said, "In the huge mass of evil as it rolls and swells, there is ever some good working toward deliverance and triumph."
Jesus buoys up my spirit by drawing lessons from the whole panoply of nature. He does it so casually that one might think that God had in mind my own reassurance when he made things as they are. "Look at the birds...your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?" "If God clothes the grass of the field...will he not much more clothe you?" "If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?"
My part is to love him. This is the way I show that I am "called according to his purpose." Love is my response to the divine call. It is God's purpose in calling us to arouse and engender within us that love which will provide harmony between ourselves and him.
There is a purpose behind this universe, and purpose implies design, intent and determination. Actually it is quite close to the word propose, and what God purposes in mind he proposes to accomplish in fact. He has called me. I heard that call and I have answered it. And I know that in Him all things will fall into place for my good. That is why I intend to honor him by life or by death. I have no time to stand around and argue about how and when God works in my life or accomplishes his purpose. I shall just do my part and trust Him. He will not fail! My little universe is not as great as the one He made.
It makes a great deal of difference to me when I realize that I do not go it alone. Life is not lived in a spiritual vacuum, devoid of real meaning or purpose. If God is working in everything to produce order and good for those who love him, I can look for his hand in anything that happens. Thus, life takes on new dimensions as I work to achieve his purpose and he works to the same end. And sometimes what appear at first to be perplexing detours turn out to be highways to success and happiness.
"For whom he foreknew, he also predetermined to be of a form like the form of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren" (Romans 8:29).
It seems a little incredible that this verse and the following one have been made the ground for the most bitter theological conflict in the Christian realm. Little did the apostle realize when he wrote this brief section what would occur as the result of it. Moses E. Lard wrote, "It has been the theme of the most voluminous and conflicting criticism. It forms the creed of the Calvinist and the puzzle of the Arminian; and hot and long has been the battle they have waged over it. It would not be true to say that no good has come of this strife; but I must think that the good has been fearfully disproportionate to the evil."
Obviously the passage is inserted merely to demonstrate the truth that
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To foreknow is to know beforehand, and it must relate to some period of time, either real or assumed. Whatever date or time is accepted, foreknowledge precedes it. The Bible locates the time as the beginning of the world as we know it, the inception of the universe of mankind. Before the foundation of the world the infinite mind conceived the idea that men would respond to a divine call, and by their own choice be motivated to share in a fellowship with him, a koinonia of eternal life, the life of God.
Accordingly, God not only foreknew this, but destined in advance that such persons would become like the image of his Son. This did not obligate any individual to obey God. In the matter of obedience all were left free. It is not that I share in God's grace because it was destined that I obey, but because I obey it was destined that I share in His grace. And sharing in his grace makes it possible for me to be made after the likeness of his Son!
The reference is to the resurrection. God ordained that Jesus be made in the image of man to share our suffering before his resurrection, and he determined that we be made in the image of Christ, to share his glory after our resurrection. The resurrection completes our adoption. The redemption of the body removes the last obstacle to becoming like Jesus. "He will transform the body belonging to our humble state, and give it a form like that of his own resplendent body, by the very power which enables him to make all things subject to himself" (Phil. 3:21).
I do not know what I shall be like, because I am not sure what form he now has. "Here and now, dear friends, we are God's children; what we shall be has not yet been disclosed, but we know when it is discovered we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is" (1 John 3:2). I am convinced that it will be a glorious experience, a tremendous spiritual adventure. Jesus is the firstborn from the dead to die no more. He must have the pre-eminence in all things. But he does not share his glorified state in isolation. He is the firstborn among many brethren. We shall be like him. We will receive the form of his glorious body. As Moses E. Lard wrote, "His body is the type, and all the bodies of the redeemed will take shape after it."
"And whom he predetermined, them he also called; and whom he called, them he also justified, and whom he justified, them he also glorified" (Romans 8:30).
William Barclay writes, "This is a passage which has been very seriously misused. If we are ever to understand this passage we must grasp the basic fact that Paul never meant it to be an expression of theology or philosophy; he meant it to be the almost lyrical expression of Christian experience. If we take this as a philosophy and theology and if we apply standards of cold logic to it, it must mean that God chose some and did not choose others, that there is a strange and terrible selectiveness in the love of God. But that is not what the passage means."
When Dr. Barclay penned those words he did so as a Presbyterian scholar and a professor in the aged and respected Glasgow University. His words show how remarkably the creed of Calvinism is being rejected in our times. They also demonstrate how the concept of a loving God permeates our consciousness and gives us a thrilling hope.
As an "expression of Christian experience" the foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification and glorification of the saints is a wonderful thing. It meets the needs of my soul-hunger and confirms my own inner feeling. I am ever conscious of my own inability to devise a means of my own salvation, and of the futility of trying to attain to glory by my own power. I must be lifted out of myself by one from outside. I cannot lift
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What Paul writes, therefore, is not a cold exposition of theology, but a warm reassurance of a divine purpose which includes me. And it is not something devised or dreamed up as an emergency measure to rescue me at the last moment. It has always been a part of God's plan, from before the foundation of the universe, and it is now available to me through the Spirit. All I need to do is to plug in. The power is there. It has always been there since the Spirit came.
1. This fact provides me with strength when I realize that God knows no failures. He launches no ships which are lost at sea, no capsules which disappear into untrackable space. Even before we were made he saw us safely in the eternal harbor, floodlighted by the beams of eternal love. I can trust the purpose of God. I need no life-preserver of my own construction, no boat drill to abandon ship in mid-ocean.
2. This fact provides me with a sense of confidence, because I know I am involved in a purpose which has unvaryingly kept its course despite all the vagaries of human history and the plots of demonic invention. "In him is no variableness, not even a shadow cast as by turning or veering." As the song puts it, "In Jesus I'm safe evermore!"
3. This fact provides me with incentive to meet the trials and temptations of each day. I can ride out the storm because I know that tomorrow the winds will have subsided. Although tempests rage and roar "there will be peace in the valley for me."
I have been called of God. All of the divine mercy, kindness and grace which makes up God has been involved in that call. And I have heard it, responded to it and embraced it. Now all I am and all I have is in his hands. As Frances E. Gardner says in God is Fabulous, "And it's a peculiar thing, it doesn't really make any difference what he shows me now that I'm waiting on him, because since I asked Christ to live his life through me, what I do is inconsequential, but I am really eager to see what he is going to do."
I have been justified by God. It would be the height of arrogance and boasting to claim that one was justified if it was assumed to be an attainment of his own. But one cannot achieve justification. He must be declared guiltless. This is the work of God whose majesty is offended by every sin. All sin is rooted in the displacement of the will of God by the will of man. Only God can forgive the thoughtless attitudes which cause men to seek to usurp divine prerogatives.
I will be glorified. When glory is used to describe our future, beyond this period of existence in time, it refers to that state of blessedness in which we will share all of the majestic life of God. Of course it is unknowable and indescribable here and now. It is the eternal heritage which awaits at the end of the road, the splendor for which the King has destined his children. So precious is the thought of participating in that dazzling brightness that it overshadows all of the suffering and pain which our present state entails.
I eagerly urge you not to give up or grow weary. Do not faint under criticism. Do not allow any root of bitterness to spring up and defile you. Do not be beguiled by devious doctrines nor stumble because of the shortcomings of others. Wait for the dawn. The sun will rise when the Son descends!