All things for good.
All things for good.
Horatius Bonar on how God works out all things for our good and his glory.
If I’m honest with you, there have been more than a few moments when Romans 8:28 and the pithy promise that “all things work together for good” felt less than real. In fact, that’s often high on the list of things I’d rather not hear when enduring a season of suffering and heartache. Very often, that verse feels more like a lie, like a “half-remembered dream.” In the heat of hardship, with pain and grief pressing in unrelentingly, things don’t often feel as though they’re going to work out, let alone “work together for good.” The proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” is often perceived as a train barreling towards you, hauling nothing but more agony. But that’s where faith comes in — the Word of the Father, as revealed in the Son, assures us that because of his self-sacrificial surrender to the agonies of the cross, all agonies will be mended in him. As the Lord promises his apostles, so does his promise us, that our “sorrow will turn into joy” (John 16:20). Such, I think, is what Rev. Horatius Bonar is getting at in the following passage:
Out of all evil comes good to the saints; out of all darkness comes light; out of all sorrow comes joy. Each pang, sharp or slight, is doing its work, — the very work which God designs, the very work which we could not do without. The bed of sorrow is not only like Solomon’s chariot, all “paved with love”; but, like it, moves on with mighty swiftness, bearing us most blessedly onwards to the inheritance of the undefiled . . .
For affliction not only profits us much just now, but it will serve us much in eternity. Then we shall discover how much we owe to it. All that is doing for us we know not now, but we shall know hereafter. It is preparing for us a more “abundant entrance,” a weightier crown, a whiter robe, a sweeter rest, a home made doubly precious by a long exile and many sufferings here below.
Of these results we have only the foretaste now. The full brightness is in reserve, and we know that all that is possible or conceivable of what is good and fair and blessed shall one day be real and visible. Out of all evil there comes the good; out of sin comes holiness; out of darkness, light; out of death, life eternal; out of weakness, strength; out of the fading, the blooming; out of a quenched planet, a sun for the universe; out of rottenness and ruin, comeliness and majesty; out of the curse, the blessing; and resurrection shall prove the wondrous truth, that it is the grave — the place of bones and dust — that is the womb of the incorruptible, the immortal, the glorious, the undefined. (194–95, 213–14)
As hard as those words might be to believe right now, the great faithfulness of the Lord assures us that they’re true. We might not taste or see or perceive the “working together for good” in the here-and-now, but we are assured that all things will one day be reconciled (Col. 1:20) — and that we know is true because of the cross. The reconciliatory death and resurrection of Christ assures us that those things which seem irreconcilable now will be reconciled hereafter.
Though we may not understand it yet, eventually we will be in glory and we’ll be part of the assembly whom St. John was told, “These are the ones coming out of the great tribulation. They have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb” (Rev. 7:14). The “great tribulation” will have nothing on the pristine garments we’ll don because of Jesus. Hold on, Christian, even in these faithless and fickle hours. For there is One holding onto you, and who is, even now, working all things out according to the word of his power.
Grace and peace to you.
Works cited:
Horatius Bonar, The Night of Weeping; or, Words for the Suffering Family of God (London: James Nisbet & Co., 1846).
Those are the hardest words to hear when you are suffering aren't they? So many, good hearted, kind people have stuck that knife in thoughtlessly, and yet we can have hope even faith that even our poorly thought out Christianity will work together for good. I will say though, that in my experience with suffering people, it is important to acknowledge that fact that we can't explain and are so discomfitted to find in our Jesus, that He likes to paint with the color black, that He finds something beautiful and compelling in tragedies. I've never found a way to acknowledge the Creator's Sovereignty without acknowledging this fact that didn't feel 'weaselly' to me, and experience tells me that we are comforted by the knowledge that our pain comes from One who loves us, as paradoxical as that sounds.
Thats nice. Thank you for that.
I've spent a fair bit of time looking at Job. I guess one of the biggest realizations for me is that I agree with Job's friends. If I was there I would probably justify the four of them and condemn Job. The things that seem righteous to me God's Word shows to be sin, and the things that He declares righteous, Job or a Messiah who eats with sinners and forgives sins for free don't square with any idea of justice that I can see.
God's intentions in causing suffering are a great deep, I think is the way Job puts it. And often every appearance suggests that He does do so out of hostility or as punishment. I can point to around 100 Psalms where David under inspiration says something to that effect.
Fundamentally, life leaves us with a God we can't understand, and it is certainly the experience of the saints that they suffer both justly and unjustly at the hands of God. I can only reply that though the Lord bruises you, even seems sometimes to enjoy it, He has not forgotten you has not cast you off. Everywhere I look I see proof that God is against me, but everything He does to me that convinces me He is against me He....also did to the Beloved Son with whom He is well pleased.(dunh dunh dunh that's dramatic music) So as our friend Mr Forde would tell us, God hides Himself in darkness, in Luther's words He covers Himself with a mask. He does not intend to be known by us in a Romans 1 General Revelation kind of way. By that way, is a knowledge of Sin and Wrath. Looking to my life and the world around me can NEVER show me that God loves and accepts me. They testify in the loudest voice to the opposite. But, He treated the Beloved Son in the same way, the One who is proven to be Beloved by the Glorious Resurrection. Thw great glory of Christ's suffering is not that it takes away our suffering but that it makes our suffering like His. And Job ends with a whirlwind of mysteries but I think if he were here to comment on his own story his answer would be that he is content to endure the deepest sorrow for this makes at least one point of resemblance with the Man of Sorrows. This to me is the mystery of the Gospel, not that we suffer less because we don't, but that suffering becomes in a Mystery acceptable because He suffered. It is better to go to the House of Mourning than the House of Joy for we know which one the Man of Sorrows inhabits. A good friend likes to ask the question, 'Would you want to go to Heaven if Jesus wasn't there?' And it is a pointed enough question, let's flip it around just a little though and ask, 'Would you want to weep if Christ was weeping? Would you want to lose a friend because He lost a friend? Would you want to be betrayed because He was betrayed?' That at least is the only answer I have been able to come up with for Job.