Rev. Luke C. Werre Peace, Sun Prairie February 8, 2015 Epiphany 5 Romans 8:28-30 ALL THINGS ARE WORKING TOGETHER FOR GOOD. WHAT GOOD? Today’s reading from Romans 8 contains perhaps one of the best known, and maybe also best liked, promises among all Christians. In times of trouble we love reminding each other of God promise that, All things work together for good. We mean well. But do we really understand what we’re saying? Maybe it’s a just a cultural thing for us. But it seems we insist that all our problems must play a part in some larger purpose, that some greater good will ultimately result from it. Suffering for its own sake we find altogether intolerable. So we say to each other, “All things work together for good.” Fellow believers, we must be careful. Even unbelievers can try to console themselves with the thought that their problems and failures will ultimately serve for a better outcome. Or they might say you just have to believe it’s all going to work out in the end.

God really gives us no such earthly promise. There are problems that mystify even believers and make them ask, how can this serve any good? To understand God’s promise in Romans 8, all things work together for good for those who love God, we have to ask, what good? What is the good that all things are working together for? The answer is given in the very next verse following that promise: For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. Put more simply: God allows, even puts, deep sorrows in the path of a believer to make you more like Jesus. That’s the good. That’s what God causes all things to work together for in the life of a believer. God is working to conform you to the likeness of His Son. That’s the purpose He predestined you to. In this way Jesus is the prototype, the ideal, the initial model, the first sample of many more to come just like Him. Or as it says in Romans 8: He is the firstborn among many brothers. God has in mind to make all believers more and more like Jesus. If we are going to become more like Jesus, that means first that we will have to follow Him through suffering. Jesus was sinless. So He willingly set aside His own self will, what He wanted, and instead did or endured whatever His Father wanted. More than once Jesus said, I did not come to do my

will, but my Father’s will. The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve. And remember what He said in the Garden of Gethsemane when He was desperately praying, begging His Father to have things go some other way and His sweat was like great drops of blood? He said, Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. But you and I aren’t naturally like that. Setting aside my will, what I want, and having that replaced or overruled by what someone else wants or being hobbled by something bad that happens to me that keeps me from doing the things I want to do -it’s unnatural for me to accept such situations. It’s not only annoying, it’s painful. It brings anguish. But if God’s purpose for me is that I be conformed to the likeness of His Son, then He must allow and even send me suffering to break and stymy my will so that I don’t get what I want. The only alternative would be for me to remain my own lord and god in defiance of God. But instead in my desperation or sorrow as I turn to Him for help and see what kind of comfort, help and salvation He sends me, then out of relief and gratitude I become a willing servant like Christ. I loved God before, that is, I recognized my need for Him. Now I love Him even more. In this part of Romans 8 the Apostle Paul was writing about the kinds of problems that are so complicated or so bad that when you pray about them, you don’t even know what to say. The best you can do is groan. You may not see or have

any idea how God could possibly use all the intertwined issues you’re dealing with as a blessing for anyone else. But even if your troubles would serve no other purpose whatsoever, you do have this clear promise from God, your suffering is serving to make you more like Christ by causing you to give up your own will and wait for His salvation, just like Jesus did. In this way Christ is the firstborn of many brothers -and you are one of those brothers. That’s the path God has set you on. That’s the good all things are working together for. But suffering is not the end of the story. If God has set you on the path to become more like Christ, then you will follow Christ not only in the way of suffering, but also in the realization of His glory. Listen to Romans 8: And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified. To say this sequence another way: God set you on the path to heaven, so He brought you to faith in Jesus, He forgave and washed away all your sin, and then He gave you all of Christ’s glory. You and I need to know this as we follow Christ. We need to be told this ahead of time. We need it because even as God shapes us through suffering to be more like Christ, even as we recognize what God is doing, and that He is doing it because He loves us like a Father, and even though we have evidence enough in our daily lives that He has not left us, that He is still caring for us and providing for us, even

though we know His purpose is to keep us with Christ on the path to heaven, nevertheless we have not been noble or brave or gracious in our suffering. We panic shamefully, we lose our temper, we get abusive to those around us, we use foul language, we turn to internet or drinking or some other fix for our relief or our way out, we fail to trust Him, we despair, we get resentful, paranoid, we argue. That is not to say our pain is not real or that our problems are not truly serious. But in our heart of hearts we know we react sinfully and only make the situation worse. This is where Christ’s sufferings matter all the more. You see, our suffering, necessary as it is for us on the path to heaven, does not save us. But Christ’s sufferings do. Christ suffered perfectly, willingly, selflessly and all the while never failed to love perfectly. Christ suffered in our place. He suffered and died on the cross to atone for our sins to God for us, to take away from us the blame for our inability to suffer willingly. By Christ’s sufferings and death you and I are forgiven by God. Washed clean. God gives us Christ, with all His perfection, with all His mercy and forgiveness, Christ with His atoning sacrifice -God gives us Christ with His saving grace through His Word and through Baptism and through the Lord’s Supper. We hear our pastor, we receive Baptism, we taste the Lord’s Supper and we receive Christ and His forgiveness. And if we receive Christ with His forgiveness, we also receive Christ

with His glory. For after Christ died He also rose from the dead and now has ascended into heaven and rules in glory. He doesn’t rule or have that glory only for Himself. He shares it with you. It is yours even now, even though you may not look or feel very glorious, even though your earthly circumstances are anything but glorious. The Bible says, Your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. God wants you to know that you already have Christ’s glory, that as far as He is concerned you are already shining as brightly as the brightest angel of heaven so that you do not lose heart and become despondent while you suffer so long and so many large things here on earth. You love Christ. You want to be close to Christ. He is your Savior, but more than that He is also your brother. You are drawn closer to Him and even become more like Him here on earth as you suffer. And the glory that He owns, though we can’t see it yet, already belongs to you because He is your brother. This, this closeness to Christ, being conformed to His likeness in suffering and then in glory, this is the good Romans 8 is talking about when it promises, We know that all things work together for good to those who love God, who have been called according to His purpose.