The Extent of the Believer's Security
Romans 8:28
We continue tonight in our study of Romans chapter 8. And this, tonight, is one of the great passages, one of the familiar passages to every Christian, Romans 8:28. We've been working our way through this chapter with much blessing and we come now to what in many ways is the summarization of the whole chapter, verse 28 and including, I guess, verse 29 and 30 if you wanted the full summary. Let me read those three verses for you, Romans 8 starting in verse 28, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren; and whom He predestined these He also called, and whom He called these He also justified and whom He justified, these He also glorified."
One of the early church fathers once said that if the whole of Scripture was a feast for the soul, Romans 8 was the main dish. And I think there's some truth in that. And this main dish, Romans chapter 8, is summarized in those three verses which really is, I think, the heart preparation for the benediction that begins in verse 31. Starting in verse 31 and going to the end of the chapter is one long paean of praise and it comes immediately after this summary in verses 28 through 30.
Backing you up a little bit, remember that Paul in the epistle to the Romans is discussing the doctrine of justification by grace through faith, that is the truth by which we are saved. And he's discussing it in all of its features. He talks about man's condition in sin in the first three chapters, and starting toward the end of chapter 3 and all the way through chapter 7 he talks about justification and its fruits, or its effects. Then in chapter 8 he gives to us the great reality that justification is eternal, that whoever the Lord justifies He glorifies, that anyone that is saved in the beginning will be saved in the end. In other words, that we are eternally secure and will persevere in faith to the end. That great truth of chapter 8 is summarized in those three verses that I just read to you. They sum up the whole doctrine of eternal security. "Whoever the Lord foreknew He predestined, whoever He predestined He called, whoever He called He justified, and whoever He justified He glorified." And nobody is lost in the process and that is because "God causes all things to work together for their good." That is the sum of this wonderful text. Justification is eternal.
And as we've been learning in chapter 8, justification and its eternal character is secured to the believer by the marvelous ministry of the Holy Spirit whose work is outlined throughout this chapter. It is the Spirit who secures us in a no-condemnation status. We will never be condemned, we are secured eternally as justified in a no-condemnation status because of the work of the Holy Spirit. We saw back in verses 2 and 3 that it is the Holy Spirit who frees us from sin and death. In verse 4 it is the Holy Spirit who grants to us the fulfillment of the law by giving us the righteousness of Christ. It is the Holy Spirit in verses 5 to 11 that changes our nature. It is the Holy Spirit in verses 12 and 13 who empowers us for victory over sin. It is the Holy Spirit in verses 14 to 16 who confirms our adoption as children of God. And then in verses 17 to 27, it is the Holy Spirit who guarantees our eternal glory. And we saw last time that ultimately the Holy Spirit guarantees our glory by what it says in verse 27, He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. It is the ongoing intercessory work of the Holy Spirit that secures our eternal glory. That is the great truth that we looked at last time.
So, the Holy Spirit does this securing work, keeping us in a no-condemnation status. He does it in all the ways that we have gone through up to verse 27. Now in verses 28 to 30 is a summary, it is a summary. And you have in this summary a great promise in verse 28, and that's where we want to start our look. Verse 28, very familiar to Christians, is perhaps the most highly regarded of all promises that believers enjoy because it is so comprehensive. It says that He causes, God causes, all things to work together for good to those that love Him. And it is the "all things" there that is so comforting. This great text needs our close and careful attention because of its richness. And we're going to give it our close attention for a few weeks. We won't be able to do it next Lord's Day because we'll have the concert, but we're going to do it for a few Sunday nights coming along because the truth of this verse is rich and far reaching.
Now if you just take verse 28, which, as I say, is part of this summary of the security of the believer. We could divide it into four sections. Verse 28 talks about the extent of our security, it talks about the recipients of security, the source of security and the certainty of security comes in verses 29 and 30. The extent of security, it covers all things. The recipients of this security, those who love God. The source of their security, they are called. The certainty of their security, that whoever He foreknew and whoever He predestined and whoever He called and whoever He justified He glorified. So we see the extent, the recipients, the source and the certainty of security. If anybody ever asks you where in the Bible it tells them about being eternally secure, this is where you go first and foremost.
Now let's take that first point tonight and let's just talk about the extent of our security. How really secure are we? Well, here is the extent of our security in one simple statement, "And we know that God causes all things to work together for good." That is the extent of our security. That is a tremendously comforting and reassuring statement. There could not be a more reassuring statement than that. No statement made to a believer could contribute more hope, more happiness, more freedom and more joy in the heart than that statement because what it says is that no matter what pain, no matter what problems, no matter what failures, no matter what difficulties, no matter what disasters, no matter what sin, no matter what suffering, no matter what temptation, all things work together for good. The extent is emphasized in the word panta in the Greek, meaning all things. It is a comprehensive promise. And the context has no limits, the context puts no limits on it. There's nothing that qualifies the "all things," nothing. It means absolutely what it says, all things work together for good. God takes anything and everything that occurs in a believer's life and rather than it potentiating the believer's loss of salvation, rather than it potentiating the believer's condemnation, God makes it work together for the believer's ultimate good. This is the greatest promise that we can have in this life. There are absolutely no limits on this statement in this context. It is limitless.
Verse 32 I think again reiterates the limitless nature of this security when it says, "If God didn't spare His own Son," if God would give His greatest gift, His Son, "for us while we were yet sinners, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things." In other words, if God would give us the best gift which is His Son to save us when we were sinners, won't God do whatever is necessary to keep us now that we're His? That's the point. He will freely, without constraint give us all things, whatever the extent, whatever the amount, whatever the intensity, whatever the overwhelming character and nature of our trouble, it all is woven together by God for our good.
Look back at the verse again. The verse starts with this confidence, "And we know..." This isn't something that is ambiguous, this isn't something that is a possibility, this isn't something that is a potential, this is something that is reality and we know that God causes all things to work together. Take that verb "work together," it's the Greek verb sunerge from which we get synergism which means "to work together." Everything is synergistic, everything blends together, everything operates cooperatively.
In the Psalms you have a similar statement in Psalm 25:10 where it says, "All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep His covenant." That really is an Old Testament parallel promise, to those that are His who keep His covenant, who believe in Him, who follow Him, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth.
Now, all things then are synergized by God, woven together, brought together in order to produce good. Listen carefully. All things are not necessarily good in themselves, right? But God takes all things and weaves them into what is good. The word "good" here needs our attention, it's agathon from which we get that old name that your old aunt had or your grandma, Agatha. And agathon means "good in the purest and truest sense," what is morally good, what is practically good. There's another word for good in the New Testament, kalos, and it means "what is beautiful, or what looks good, outward goodness, outward beauty." But this is the inherent goodness. And God is taking everything that happens in the believer's life, no matter what it is, and effecting out of it ultimate good, moral good, practical good, real good. Kalos appeals to the eyes, agathos appeals to the soul. Kalos appeals to the eyes, agathos appeals to the moral sense. This is true goodness. No matter what happens in your life it will turn out good. And that is the reason you could never lose your salvation because no matter what happens it turns out...what?...good. That is a gilt-edge promise that nothing can happen in the life of a believer that can end up in ultimate bad. It's another way of saying "Nothing can separate you from the love of Christ," down in verse 35. It's another way of saying what is in verse 31, "If God is for us, who is against us?" It's another way of saying what is in verse 34, "Who is going to condemn us?" If everything works together for good, then nothing could possibly cause us to lose our salvation. That's his point. It is an absolutely potent argument. God calls, justifies and glorifies and nobody falls through the cracks, everything is causing ultimately their eternal good.
In Deuteronomy 8:16 in the wilderness it says, "He fed you manna which your fathers didn't know that He might humble you and that He might test you to do good for you in the end." You know, that is really consistent with God's nature. We read that in Psalm 145 that God expresses Himself in great goodness. God is good, the Bible says. Jeremiah the prophet extolled the goodness of God in Jeremiah chapter 24, "Thus says the Lord God of Israel," verse 5, "Like these good figs, so I will regard as good the captives of Judah whom I have sent out of this place and into the land of the Chaldeans, I'll set My eyes on them for good, I'll bring them again to this land and build them up and not overthrow them and plant them and not pluck them up, I'll give them a heart to know Me for I am the Lord and they will be My people and I will be their God, for they will return to Me with their whole heart," and He's talking about the Israelites taken into captivity who will come back and He says in spite of their sin, in spite of having to be taken away, I will do good to them. It is the character, it is the nature of God to express Himself in goodness toward those upon whom He sets His love. He is a God of goodness.
Genesis 50:20, that wonderful statement, "You meant it for evil, but God meant it for...what?...for good...for good." God makes things turn out good. It's not automatic, it is by the working of the Holy Spirit that it happens. In verse 26, we don't know how to pray so the Spirit intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. We don't know how to hold on to our salvation, we don't know how to do that. We don't know how to hold on to our faith. We don't know how to...how to confront the issues of life and how to battle the kingdom of darkness and how to avoid the temptations that would absolutely overwhelm us. So the Spirit of God is there constantly interceding for us in this groaning before the throne of God, and God who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is because He intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. So the Holy Spirit is always interceding for us, always praying for us, always coming before the throne of God in perfect harmony with God's will. And what is God's will? That we go all the way from being predestined, called, justified, to being glorified, that's God's will, that nobody get lost in the process.
That's the will of Jesus as well. He said He wanted to keep all that the Father gave Him. And so the Spirit is the one who works out that will of God and that desire of Christ by holding on to us, interceding for us incessantly as the great priest who dwells within us. The yearning of the Holy Spirit, the groaning, remember, is that we would come to final glory. Remember that we saw the whole creation is groaning for final glory and believers are groaning for final glory, and then in verses 26 and 27, the Holy Spirit is groaning that we might come to final glory. He is interceding always with these inexpressible communions between the trinity that we might be brought to glory. It is because of that that verse 28 is true, all things are working together for good because the Holy Spirit is interceding for us, because the Son at the right hand of God is interceding for us as our lawyer of defense and our Advocate against any who would come to condemn us and because the purposes of God are being carried out.
Well this all ties together. This is really a monumental important passage. We are secure, we're secure forever in a no-condemnation status because of the intercessory work of the Holy Spirit and because of that intercessory work of the Holy Spirit and because of the ongoing intercessory work of Christ at the right hand of God and because it is the plan of God and the whole of the trinity is in harmony that all who have been predestined before the foundation of the world will be brought to glory, that plan is unfolding. Not just because it was said, because it was said and it is being done. And again I say to you, there are no restrictions in verse 28 at all, absolutely no restrictions. Due to the consummate cooperative work of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, everyone who truly comes to faith in Christ will be brought to glory. That's why John says, "They went out from us," when somebody departs from the faith, denies Christ and leaves, "they went out from us because they were not...what?...of us. If they had been of us, they would have continued with us." Why? Because that's the Father's plan, that's the Father's will, that's the Son intercessory goal and that's the Spirit's intercessory goal...to sustain us in a non-condemnation status to bring us to glory.
Now what we have then in verse 28 is the fact that everything due to this plan of God, due to the will of God and due to the intercessory work of the Holy Spirit, particularly in verse 26 and 27, He can actually say in verse 28 that everything that happens in your life will work out for good. And the good here, let me say it to you clearly, the good here is eternal glory. Okay? The good here is eternal glory. Now that doesn't mean the only good is going to be realized in eternity, the good here is going to sustain you into eternity. It involves your eternal glory and it involves getting you to that.
You say, "Well, what do you mean by 'all things' here?" Well, there are no limits so let's talk about it. Let's see how far we can go with this thing. First of all, and I'll give you two points cause there are only two points to make here. There are only two kinds of things that can happen to you here. What are they? Good things and bad things. Pretty simple, isn't it? Didn't take me long to figure out the outline here. The only things that can happen to you are good things or bad things and in either case they work together for what? For good.
Well, let's talk about the good things that work together for good. That's obvious, but maybe so obvious if I asked you what are the good things that work together for good, you might not...you might not know what to say. What good things work together for good? Well, let's start with God's nature, that's the best thing in existence in the universe cause God is perfect and perfectly holy. He is pure goodness and His nature works for our good.
What do you mean by that? Well, let's take some of His attributes. His great power works for our good. How does it do that? Well His great power supports us, doesn't it, in trouble? Isn't it Deuteronomy 33:27 that says, "Underneath are the everlasting arms?" Remember Daniel? Jonah? The three Hebrews in the fire in Babylon, all supported by God's great power. Second Corinthians 12:9, "My strength is made perfect in weakness." It is God's power that provides all that we need. It is God's power that conquers our great enemy Satan and all other enemies. It is God's power that carries us to victory. It is God's power by which we overcome the flesh and sin. It is the goodness of God's power then that works for our good.
We could secondly say His great wisdom works for our good because it is our wisdom that instructs us. "I will guide you with My eye," it says in Psalm 32:8. And He has given us the guidance through His Word, "Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path." The wisdom of God is revealed on the pages of Scripture. And as we expose ourselves to the truth of God, that great wisdom instructs us and leads us in a path of obedience and therefore leads us in the path of blessing and the path of joy. "Happy is the man who hears My Word and does it," Jesus said.
So, the goodness of God's very nature leads to goodness for us...His power, His wisdom. It is His power ultimately that will do the victory...will do the victorious work over Satan. It is His power that ultimately holds us. It is His wisdom that gave us the gospel. It is His wisdom that provided the path of righteousness for us. It is His wisdom that devised the saving plan in Christ. So those good things about God's good nature work for our good.
And His kindness, His great kindness leads us to repentance, it says in Romans chapter 2. God is kind and His kindness works for our good. We could also say beyond God's nature, and we could go on with that endlessly. Everything in God's nature works for our goodness...His grace, His mercy, His compassion, even His law which calls us to the obedience that produces blessing. But let's take, secondly, God's promises. Not only God's nature but just talk for a minute about God's promises. God's promises work for our good. The precious promises of God are the supply for the troubled soul which guilt comes and we read in the Scripture that He keeps mercy for thousands. He promises to be gracious to the humble, James 4. When disobedience is our experience and when we disobey His Word and disobey His law, we have the promise of Hosea 14:4, "I will heal their backslidings." The promise of Micah 7:18, "Who is a pardoning God like Thee?" There is grace with Him. There is mercy with Him. There is forgiveness with Him. There is pardon with Him.
When trouble comes we have the promise of Psalm 91:15, "I will be with him in trouble." Psalm 37:39, "I will give him strength in the time of trouble." When deprivation comes and we're out of human resources, Philippians 4:19 says, "My God shall supply all your needs." Psalm 37:25 says, "I have not seen the righteous forsaken, nor His seed begging bread." Jacob said, "Lord, Thou hast said Thou wilt do me good," Genesis 32:12. God's promises secure the goodness of God to us.
So, God's nature is good and brings us goodness. God's promises are good and produce for us goodness. And I just need to add not only does the very character of God, the very nature of God, the very promises of God work for our good, but all of Scripture works for our good. I have to add that because I don't want to just leave it with the promises...all of Scripture works for our good.
It says in the twentieth chapter of Acts and verse 32, "The Word of His grace is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all them that are sanctified." And everything that the Word calls for produces good...everything. Worship, obedience to all the commands of Scripture, all of the means of grace that are there applied, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs and making melody in your heart to the Lord, submitting, obeying all the Scripture works for good. Those are the good things...the character of God, the promises of God, the Word of God.
And let me add, fourthly, prayer works for our good. This is a means of grace that single out...prayer works for our good. It is really the key that unlocks the treasury of God's mercy. Prayer keeps the heart open to God and shut to sin. Prayer mitigates the intemperate hearts and the swellings of lust. It was Luther's counsel long ago to a friend when he perceived a temptation began to arise to immediately go to prayer. It is the dispeller of sorrow because it vents the grief, it eases the heart. It says in 1 Samuel 1 that when Hannah had prayed in her sorrow, she went away and was no more sad. These are good things. All that the Bible calls for prayer, worship, the Lord's table, any form of obedience, any form of submission to the fruit of the Spirit, love, joy, peace, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, self-control, anything in the Scripture, anything that it calls for, any means of grace becomes a source of good.
Well, let's go beyond that. Let's go beyond the character, the nature of God, the promises of God, the Scripture and all its fullness and all that it calls for, let's talk about angels. Angels are good, good angels, holy angels. And do you know they work for our good? They work for our good. Hebrews 1:14, it says, "Angels are ministering spirits set out to render service for the sake of those who will inherit salvation." We don't even know what's going on, folks, but it is all the time, angels are assisting in bringing us to glory. They're sent out to render service to us so that we will inherit our salvation. They protect us from those things that would destroy us. Matthew 18 verse 10, one of the really remarkable statements of Jesus, He said this, "See that you do not despise one of these little ones," talking about believers, these little ones who believe in Me, meaning believers who are childlike, which we all are, "don't look down or think little on these little ones for I say to you, that their angels in heaven continually behold the face of My Father who is in heaven." And the picture here is, God's in heaven and God is watching His children and if you despise them or belittle any believer, it shows up as concern to God and the angels are always watching God's face, as it were, to pick up that concern to be dispatched by Him to the aid of those believers. Tremendous concept.
God in His nature works for our good, God in His promises works for our good. God in His Word has produced all kinds of means spiritually to produce our good. And God has even given to holy angels the assignment of working for our good. And they're always beholding His face so that they're in ready contact with Him to be dispatched to the aid of those for whom He shows concern.
And then I would add another category, there's only one left, and that's people. Other believers work for our good, that's true...other believers work for our good. I think there would be a lot of places where you could see this, none better than 2 Corinthians 1:24, Paul says, "We are workers with you for your joy...we are workers with you for your joy."
You know, the Lord has distributed through the entire body of Christ spiritual gifts. I have the gifts in the area of teaching and preaching, you have gifts in various areas, and those gifts are to be used for the strengthening of believers. And I would hope that the expression of my gift and the expression of my life and the expression of my ministry works for your good, for your spiritual edification, for your greater knowledge of Scripture, your greater love for Christ, your greater love for God, your greater service to the Lord, your greater grasp of truth so that you can honor Him in His Word. Hebrews 10:24 says, "When you come together, stimulate one another to love and good works." So we come together to worship with the purpose of stimulating each other to goodness. So saints work together to produce good in each other's lives, that's what such an atrocity when a believer leads another believer into sin and that's why Jesus said in Matthew 18 also that if you lead another believer into sin you'd be better off to be drown with a millstone around your neck and thrown in the deep sea. You never want to lead another believer into sin, you always want to do good to them.]
James 5 talks about the spiritually strong helping the spiritually weak in praying for them. So good can be brought about by good things. Our good God is doing good for us constantly as an expression of the goodness of His character and His nature. Our good God has made to us great and precious promises. Our God has given us His good Word which ministers good to us as we learn it and apply it and obey it. God has called the good and holy angels to our aid to do good for us. And God has designed that saints within the church minister mutually goodness to each other. These are the good things.
Well, all of that is important and all of that is true, but frankly, that is not really the important element of the passage. Go back to the passage for a minute. What the passage is really trying to say to us here that it's not just good things that work for our good, but it's bad things that work for our good. If everything went exactly the way we would want it to go, we wouldn't even ask the question whether our salvation would be sustained. Wouldn't be asking the question...can we lose our salvation...if all there was was good. But in spite of all that God does, in spite of all that He has promised and pledged to us, in spite of all that's in His Word, in spite of all the paths of obedience we can walk and thereby be blessed, in spite of the work of holy angels, in spite of the mutual stimulation and goodness of believers around us, in spite of all of that our lives are still filled with bad things, aren't they? Man is born of the trouble as the sparks fly upward. Jesus said, "In the world you're going to have trouble, tribulation." And we have bad things in our lives and those become the real issue.
Can bad things separate us from God? Can bad things bring us out of a no-condemnation status into a condemnation status? Can bad things cause Christ not to love us anymore? Can bad things cause God to remove our salvation?
Well, let's ask the question and let's answer it. There are three categories of bad things that I want you to see...three categories of bad things. Category number one, we'll just call suffering...suffering. Suffering is bad. I mean, it's reflective of the curse. Adam and Eve didn't suffer in the garden before the Fall. There wasn't any pain. There wasn't any sorrow. There weren't any tears. There wasn't even any death. But the first area of bad things that we have to deal with is suffering. Life is just full of it...full of it. It starts out at the beginning and stays there and maximizes itself at the end in the horrors of death. It's just...life is just full of bad things.
Yesterday I was at the hospital praying with a dear couple in our church who have a little baby who is three-and-a-half weeks old and can't breathe and has a very serious genetic disease. That's a heart-wrenching, crushing thing when your first little one is in that condition and is only kept alive by machinery. As I prayed with the mother and the father