The Promise That All Things Work Together for Good

One thing we all learn early in life is that nothing works out perfectly 100 percent of the time. Jesus Himself even said, “You will have suffering in this world” (John 16:33). If we did not learn it on our own, He wanted to make sure we knew that struggles were something we would be unable to avoid. Bearing that in mind, reading Romans 8:28 can almost seem like an insult. It says, “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” How can this be true? How can we have a guarantee that we will suffer and that everything will work out for our good?

The first thing we need to keep in mind is that just because a situation may end in a good place it does not mean that it began in a good one. “All things work together for the good” does not equal “all things that happen to you are good.” God’s ability to take terrible situations and bring something good out of them is how He shows Himself to be such a strong redeemer. To “redeem” means “to buy back” or “to get or win back.” Redeeming is how God ensures that nothing that happens to us is wasted. When we are abused, mistreated, or taken advantage of, it’s devastating. But because of God, our great redeemer, we have hope that our character will grow or that we will become more compassionate toward others; pain and destruction do not have to be the only results of our suffering.

We also need to keep in mind that the people this promise is for, those of us “who love God” and are “called according to his purpose,” know that life will extend beyond what we know now. We are looking forward to an eternity with the Lord, and that is ultimately the greatest thing we can ever hope to experience. No matter how bad life is now, nothing will be able to spoil what is to come. And if we keep reading Romans 8 after verse 28, we will see that eternity was on Paul’s mind while writing. Verse 29 says that we are “predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son,” and verse 30 says we will be “glorified.” The work of becoming more like Christ has begun here and now, but we will not see the complete fulfillment of that until we have moved from this life to the new one. Being “conformed to the image of [Jesus]” is the greatest good we could ever know.

Because our greatest good is ahead of us, that can give us hope to keep going in even the bleakest situations. Some of our days, maybe even most of our days, will get very dark, but that darkness does not have the final word; Jesus, who “loved us and gave himself for us”, does (Ephesians 5:2).

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