Studying His Word and His Works

Listen to the study here: Romans 8:28-30

Read here: Romans 8

Review

• Calvin on the theme of Romans: “Man’s only righteousness is the mercy of God in Christ, when it is offered by the Gospel and received by faith.” Romans 1:17 and elsewhere.
• IMPORTANT: Paul wrote the letter to the saints (1:7), and the letter is about the gospel, which is a reminder we need to preach the gospel to ourselves daily. 
• Luther: Simul iustus et peccator = At the same time, righteous and a sinner! Romans 3:23-25
• In Ch. 1-3 Paul shows us our unrighteousness, and God’s wrath against that, and the switches to Christ’s righteousness as our covering, the propitiation of our sins (Romans 3:25) as the final sacrifice for sin, fulfilling the promise to Abraham, who had faith before any works
• Faith being “counted” or “credited to our account” as righteousness is mentioned 11 times in Chapter 4! If “none are righteous” as Paul wrote in Romans 3:10, then this saving faith must be a gift from God.
• Ch. 5, We now have peace with God, access to God, and hope, because of what Christ did for us while we were weak(v. 6), sinners (v. 8), and enemies (v. 10). Christ did this “at the right time,” (v. 6), connecting Christ’s work on the cross and God’s plan of redemption to real history (not just a myth or legend).
• Atonement(5:6-11): Jesus satisfying God’s wrath for us through His sacrificial death on the cross.
• Ch. 5 and 6 describe federalism, this idea of one man making a difference, for righteousness (Jesus) or wickedness (Adam). 
• Ch 6 ended with lots of words pointing to the new road we are now on with Christ, the sanctification road.
  • Service is the key word, “slaves” used 8 times
  • “Present yourselves”(5), “Leads to”(5)
• Sproul: “our regeneration, our rebirth was the work of one Person, God. It was not a joint venture; but from the moment we take our first breath of regenerated spiritual life, it  becomes a joint effort.” the work of one Person is what salvation is about. The joint venture is what sanctification is about. Ch.6 ends and we continue into Ch.7 describing what this “sanctification road” looks like to walk down. We were on the sin road that leads to death, but now we are on the grace road that leads to eternal life.
• Chapter 8 is describing our assurance as Christians in eternal life. We are a family, we are His. Although we suffer presently, we have future glory. We have real hope!

Intro

• Key words: God/He/Him (11), those (5), called (3), predestined, justified (2), 
• The last study reminded us how there is lots of groaning going on! Groaning as we wait with patience for the final glory, with not just our souls redeemed but our bodies as well. The original creation was perfect, but Adam fell and brought death into the world and plunged all of creation into the same fate. It is because of-not in spite of-the original sin that we see death, decay, and increasing entropy. Living organisms are devolving, not evolving. Adam’s sin and the subsequent curse on creation is ignored in secular culture as an explanation of the present condition. But God gives us glimpses of future glory, of what Eden must have been like, with the changing of seasons or the fruits of the Spirit flowing out of us, or animals that let us pet them instead of flee. At Christ’s return, God will restore it all. The leopard will lay down with the young goat (Isaiah 11:6). We hope in this, that present sufferings are infinitesimally small in comparison to the future glory of Heaven. It may not seem fair that we inherited Adam’s sin, but it is what it is and Romans 8 and 9 will continue to show us how to trust His sovereign plan of making crooked lines straight(C.S. Lewis quote, see also Acts 13:10). 
• IMPORTANT NOTE: We are about to cover some topics that are very controversial in some Protestant circles, and that is the two camps of Calvinism vs. Arminianism. Calvinism emphasizes God’s sovereignty, Arminianism emphasizes man’s free will. I would say Calvinism is more biblically accurate, and one simple reason is that, at the cross, even Jesus humbled himself and said to the Father, “not my will, but yours be done.”(Luke 22:42).  More importantly, I think we need to remember Paul’s words in I Corinthians 3:1-5, where he basically calls out the Corinthian church as immature Christians because they are breaking into camps of Paul vs. Apollos. Believer, there is only one we need to have any allegiance to at all, and that is Christ alone. Go back to the start of this letter, how does Paul describe himself? As a servant of Christ. That’s all we need to do, too. That’s the big picture view. First and foremost we are servants of Christ, set apart for the gospel of God. As you learn more about God through this study, run from the evil of pride and use your knowledge to serve. Knowledge can fill us with pride, but love builds others up in Christ (I Corinthians 8:1).
• Verse 28a
  • And we know– Paul says this with confidence, like “and we know 2+2=4” kind of confidence. 
  • All things work together for good, but for who, everyone? No, all things work together for
    • Those who love God
    • Those who are called according to His purpose.
    • These are one in the same. If you are called, you love God. If you love God, you know you are called. Some versions say “the called” not “called”, to distinguish the saved from unsaved, righteous from wicked, etc.
      • 2 Tim 1:9 says God called us to a holy calling, not because of our works, but because of his own purpose and grace. God is leading this, not us. This connects to the “Spirit helps us in our weakness” of verse 26, of this idea that we don’t help God, He helps us, He intercedes for us (verse 27), He calls us (verse 28).
    • You are either working towards good, or evil, towards righteousness or wickedness. Sproul describes four types of good/evil actions:
      • Good/good-done by Christ and the saints in Heaven. On earth we can never reach this level, because there is always some sinful flesh mixed in, but sanctification is about becoming more like that.
      • bad/good-civic virtue, like obeying the speed limit, paying your vehicle registration, etc. It is a good for selfish motives. 
      • bad/bad, no interest in doing good at all, done by Satan and his demons.
      • good/bad, God can bring good out of evil actions, like Henry Obookiah, whose parents were murdered and baby brother speared right off of his back, and then Henry later gets saved and he is the catalyst to bring the gospel to Hawaii.
        • Sproul says the best biblical example of this is Joseph in Genesis, who suffered greatly at the hands of his jealous brothers. Sold into slavery, falsely accused, thrown into prison, but in the end becomes prime minister of Egypt, forgives his brothers, and in Genesis 50:20 says “you mean evil against me, but God meant it for good.” We often use the word providence to describe these situations. Yes, God is in charge, but he also doesn’t go around annihilating all human free will to act righteously or wickedly. 
        • Another example is Job. Satan meant evil against Job, but God’s righteous plan always triumphs. 
        • Paul himself is a great example, too. It’s everywhere in the Bible!
        • Providence is basically seeing that God ordains all situations for His good, which will come to pass even through human failures. If God is the first cause and humans and their actions are secondary causes, God is not running around snuffing out all the secondary causes in order to make sure His will is done. He lets LOTS of evil things continue on, so much so that, if we follow stories like Joseph or Job or Henry O, we may focus on the injustice of it all rather than on seeing that God doesn’t create puppets! We are not robots programmed to His will. He calls, He predestines, but also He lets human free will run, and often what we see as “injustice” is just us getting upset about free will. 
        • God’s sovereignty doesn’t cancel our free will, but it does put limits on it. We can’t choose whatever we want and still expect to go to heaven. We can’t submit to a false god or to our selfish motives and expect that to be righteous. We can’t change truth and call evil, “good.” God has designed us with free will, but he has put limits on that.
          • One of my favorite examples is from Exodus(30:35), where God gives a recipe to make a perfume, but there is liberty in which exact spices are used and how much salt is added, “according to the art of the perfumer.” There is great artistic freedom there, infinite really, but within limits of the ingredients listed. Same with life, there is infinite freedom on what we CAN do, but what we can do has limits, and since none are righteous, that freedom ends one day unless we repent and believe (Mark 1:15). 
    • Here is one false conclusion about “God working things towards good.” Sproul says some people think God needed the Fall to bring about his plan of redemption. But, God doesn’t need anything. Indeed God is sovereign and omniscient, and therefore knew Adam and Eve would fall. He of course had the power to intervene and crush Satan, never giving him a chance to tempt them, but He didn’t, and He didn’t force Adam and Eve to sin. If God didn’t stop them from sinning, in a sense he ordained they not be stopped. In other words, he ordained that they would sin. 
    • It is good to point out here that reading just 3 verses, 8:28-30, can cause us to take things out of context. It is good to read ALL of Romans 8, and 9, and maybe especially the part in Romans 9:15, that “I will have mercy on whom I choose to have mercy.” We don’t need to know all His ways and purposes, we simply need to trust Him, and trust Him that what He is doing (or not doing) is good!
    • AND, things are working together for good for those who love God, so this is not for everybody. This is a message for Christians. Remember verse 15, we don’t have a spirit of slavery and fear. The Holy Spirit in us is a Spirit of adoption as sons. We are on His team, in His family, His righteousness imputed to us, our sins imputed to him, this can only be good!
• Verse 28b
  • Called according to His purpose.
  • This part of the verse, and verse 29-30, are often overlooked. Ignored by many pastors. But why? Well, this is the part I warned you about earlier! We are getting deeper into election and predestination, and it runs through Chapter 9 as well. Predestination and election get debated quite a bit, but it really is not a hugely problematic statement. It’s saying people who love God are the ones who are the called, and it is God’s purpose in calling them. I John 4:19 is another way of saying this, “we love because he FIRST loved us.” It is God doing the calling and purposing that is necessary and sufficient for our salvation. 
  • Before continuing, let’s define some terms, affect versus effect.
    • Affect: A verb that means to produce an effect on.
    • Effect: a noun that means to produce a result or consequence. 
    • Affect is an action, effect is a noun and so would start with “the”, like “the dog” or “the taco,” or “the effect.”
  • “The called” is often described as an “effectual calling,” a calling that produces a result. Sproul says it is connected to God’s word, like God speaking creation into existence was an effectual calling. He spoke and the result was creation. Here in verse 28, it refers to His grace in salvation, the free gift that we do not earn, but the effectual calling that we cannot resist and that resulted in our salvation.
    • Paul started Romans by saying he was called (1:1), and not just called but set apart for the Gospel. He is using the same language here in 8:28 as he did in 1:1. God doesn’t call everyone, he doesn’t set everyone apart for the Gospel. Our response, if we are truly saved, is humble gratitude, a Galatians 5:22-23 fruits of the Spirit and I Cor. 13 love of neighbors working out of us.
      • This calling here is not external but internal. Salvation is a work of the Holy Spirit, not a human choice in answering a call, of God “looking down the corridors of time to see who will choose him,” but of an inward call from the Holy Spirit. That is what is meant by “effectual call.” Sproul talks about this more in this video.
• If we ignore that God is sovereign and He is the one doing the calling, we can come up with some weird conclusions, like that God is in heaven, wringing His hands and just hoping that someone, somewhere will take Christ’s sacrifice seriously and accept His offer of salvation. We hear this in our “Christianese” language sometimes, in phrases like “I accepted Jesus into my heart,” “I placed my faith in Jesus”, “I surrendered,”etc., all self-centered and works-focused and therefore improper ways of describing salvation. All ways that lift us up as the decision maker in the process and make light of God’s sovereignty.  Not that people who say this are not Christians; after all, it is God who saves, not us and our perfectly-worded descriptions of salvation. But, it could lead to false converts, or false conclusions like thinking God “accepts everyone” because it is up to us to choose rather than up to God to call us, or not.
  • Sproul says we are believers today “not because we made God’s call effectual in our lives; it is because God did.” That’s what verse 28 is saying, we were called according to HIS purpose, not ours. And what is a purpose?  It’s a plan, a desired end. God has a goal in mind with calling us. I Thessalonians 4:3 says the goal is your sanctification.
  • Think about Phil Robertson’s life, depicted in the movie, The Blind. This man was an enemy of God, the last person you would think could be born again. His younger sister though reached out to a pastor to go talk to Phil. She believed many would be saved through him if he would repent. He was living out in the swamp by himself, away from his wife and children, a drunk adulterer. This pastor basically just went out and sat with him, didn’t say a lot. Phil knew what he needed to do, and he repented and got baptized and from that day on was a new man. At his eulogy in late 2025, his son Jace said his dad died that day. The day he repented was his real death, because after that he was born again. After that, he went on to found a successful duck hunting business, and after that the very popular Duck Dynasty series, through which many people heard the gospel, and many more through Phil’s daily interactions with people. Do you think that was just chance, or was God purposing something the whole time, using Phil’s family, his forgiving wife, his sister’s prophetic words about Phil as a Christian? How did Phil survive long enough to even have a chance to repent and not just die an enemy of God? 
  • Look at Henry Obookiah’s life. His parents were murdered and his little brother speared to death off his back while fleeing the conquering chief’s warriors. One day, an American ship anchored offshore and Henry swims to it. The captain was a Christian, as were many of the crew. They took him in and started to teach him to read (there was no written language in Hawaii at the time). He ends up in New Haven, CT, about the same time as some young men were planning and praying to do foreign missions. Henry became friends with many of them, became a Christian himself, started creating a written Hawaiian language, and was the star student at a newly formed foreign missions school. He longed to return to Hawaii and share the gospel. He was planning to go with Samuel Mills, but both of them died of illnesses in 1818. But the momentum for a Hawaiian mission was established, and Henry’s death proved to be the catalyst that moved it forward. Again, think about all the possible situations that could have happened for Henry in his life. Like the fact that the American ship captain had almost been poisoned by some Hawaiians, but wasn’t, so the trip to American almost didn’t happen. Or all the other people in America Henry could have ended up with, but instead was befriended by Bible-believing Christians eager to share the gospel with others. Was that just chance or God purposing something? God using Henry indirectly to bring the gospel to Hawaii? 
  • Last, think about the Exodus. Sproul says “God planned the bondage of Israel. He planned the exodus from Egypt just as much as He planned the betrayal of Joseph and his imprisonment to demonstrate that all Joseph’s afflictions and sufferings were working together not only for Joseph’s good but for Israel’s good and the good of all saints of every age.” 
  • Look back at your life. How did you get to this place right here, right now, doing this Bible study? Think about all the good and bad situations, all the twists and turns in your life up to now, yet you are here. Just happened to find it or is this Providence? 100% it’s Providence!
• Verses 29-30
  • The “Golden Chain”
  • Sproul describes these “golden links” in a chain of God’s foreknowledge, predestination, calling, justification, and glorification. As Christians, we have been heading towards glorification since before we were born (Jeremiah 1:5). 
  • It’s interesting that sanctification isn’t in the golden chain, like between justify and glorify. Maybe that is because the golden chain describes what God alone does, and the sanctification is the joint venture, the team effort, so it is different. The big theme of Romans 8 is Paul reminding us that we are “marked safe from Hell.” The golden chain is another reminder that we’re marked safe because of Him, not because of us. 
  • Verse 28 reminds us there will be tragedy in our lives, but to trust God anyways, love Him anyways, it’s gonna be okay! Ultimately though, there are no tragedies for the Christian. Tragedy is temporary and for this world. It is not permanent. 
  • But this also means that, for the unbeliever, all things, including the good things, are working for his damnation. Remember how we started Chapter 8? Verse 1 says there is no damnation for Christians, which means there IS damnation for unbelievers. Romans 2:5-6 says the only thing unbelievers are treasuring up for themselves is God’s wrath.
  • We will repeat these verses in the next study and dive deeper in the “golden chain” and this topic of God’s sovereignty.
• Up next, Romans 8:29-31.