The Certainty of God’s Saving Purpose | Romans 8:28-30
Brian Hedges | September 11, 2016
Good morning! It’s great to see all of you here this morning.
This morning we’re going to be in the book of Romans; Romans chapter eight. If you have a Bible you want to turn there in your Bibles. If you don’t have a Bible there should be a Bible in one of the chairs in front of you, and we’re going to be on page 944 in those pew Bibles, page 944.
While you’re turning there, let me just begin with this comment: I think one of the highest priorities for the Christian church in our day is to make clear the difference between religion and the Gospel. To make clear the difference between religion, which tells us how to live and what to do, and the Gospel, which actually proclaims not so much what we are to do but what God has already done for us in Jesus Christ.
Someone has put it well in this saying, “Religion gives us good advice; the Gospel gives us good news.” Or if you were to summarize it all in just one word for each, religion says, “Do,” but the Gospel says, “Done.”
At Fulkerson Park, what we’re really about here is proclaiming the Gospel, that is, the good news of what God has done for us in and through Jesus Christ His Son and through the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
We’re looking at the Gospel in the book of Romans. The book of Romans has been called by the reformer Martin Luther the “clearest gospel of all,” and it really is one of those passages that dives into the realities of the Gospel, telling us about what God has done, how He has done it, and why what He has done is sufficient.
That’s especially true this morning in our passage, Romans 8:28-30. We’re just a little over midway through a short series of messages on Romans eight, which is perhaps the pinnacle chapter in this whole book of Romans.
This morning we come to just three verses—I’m slowing down here; just three verses—because they are so dense, they are so complete and comprehensive, as Paul describes for us the certainty of God’s saving purpose. So we’re just going to focus on these three verses this morning, in Romans eight, verses 28 through 30. So again, page 944 if you’re using a pew Bible. Let me read the passage to us.
And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom He predestined He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified.
This is God’s Word.
Now, as I’ve already said, this is a densely-packed series of verses, with a lot of theological words, and we’re going to take our time to try to understand just what Paul is saying in this passage. But we have to set it in its context.
So these verses are a continuation of Paul’s argument for the unshakable security of the believer; that is, of every single person who is joined to Jesus Christ through faith and through the power of God’s indwelling Spirit.
Romans eight begins with the declaration that “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus—” no condemnation! No one can condemn you if you’re in Christ. And Romans eight ends with the declaration that “nothing can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
So as John Stott puts it, it begins with no condemnation; it ends with no separation. And everything in between those two bookends of this chapter is meant to show us why God’s purposes are sure, why we are secure in the grace of God, the saving purpose of God. And these verses in particular are a bridge.
Verses 28 through 30—they’re a bridge, a bridge between Paul’s extended meditation on suffering and the hope of glory which outweighs all of our suffering in verses 17 through 27, which we looked at last week. It’s a bridge between that and what follows, the exultant, we might even say, the poetic conclusion of the chapter in verses 31 through 39.
So the verses are closely related to both what has gone before and to what comes after. So it’s important for us to grasp the logic of Paul’s words here, and to understand how he is defending this central argument, the central theme, of God’s unfailing purposes in salvation.
So here’s how I want to approach that this morning. I want to just ask three questions:
First, what is this purpose?
Secondly, who is this purpose for?
And then thirdly, why is the purpose sure?
What is this purpose, who is it for, why is it sure? Why can we have confidence that if we are joined with Christ we can never be lost, that God’s purposes in salvation are absolutely certain? That’s what we’re looking at this morning.
I. What is this purpose?
So, question number one: what is this purpose? What is the saving purpose of God? And I want to give you several answers from the passage.
Now keep in mind, there’s really only one purpose, but Paul describes it in several different ways, okay? So I’m going to give you two ways that Paul describes, defines, what this purpose is, and you’ll see as we unpack this, it relates to both our circumstances in the here and now, and it relates to our future, eternal destiny in Christ. Okay?
So two answers to this question, “What is this purpose?”
(1) First of all, God’s purpose is to work all things together for our good. You see that in verse 28: “And we know,” Paul says (there’s the certainty; we know this) “and we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.”
Now, this is, of course, one of the best known, most loved, most often quoted verses in all of Scripture. This is a verse that’s brought comfort to countless believers as they’re going through the valley of the shadow of death, going through really difficult circumstances. This is a verse that brings hope that God works all things together for our good. So, it’s really important for us to understand this verse, but it’s also important for us to clarify what it actually means and what it doesn’t meant.
It doesn’t say, for example, that all things are good. Right? This verse does not say that all things are good. The Apostle Paul is not living in denial.
Scripture does not deny the existence of moral or natural evil, and to say that an evil thing is really a good thing is a gross misunderstanding of this passage and a denial of the whole moral perspective of Scripture.
Let’s just be really clear on this: there are things in the world that are evil. Rape and murder are evil. The Holocaust was evil. The events that transpired exactly 15 years ago today, on September 11th, 2001, were evil. They were not good, and passages like this do not say that they were good.
There’s no denial of the reality of evil, and there’s no calling evil good here.
This passage also doesn’t say that everything will turn out alright in this life—either in general for everyone, or even for believers. There’s no naive optimism in Paul here, and we need to be careful that we don’t import that in the Scripture as if this kind of a “power of positive thinking” kind of text.
This passage does not mean that your current trials are going to go away if you just have enough faith, or that your current problems are going to bring about some mysterious good result in the here and now. That’s not necessarily the case.
This passage does not mean there is some kind of one-to-one relationship between every single bad event that happens in your life and some good outcome later on. That’s not at all what Paul is teaching here.
What the passage is saying is that God’s ultimate purpose cannot be thwarted. God’s ultimate purpose will not fail, and in fact, everything is working together to bring about that purpose. “All things work together for good,” as Paul says.
Now the “good” that he has in mind is defined by what’s gone before and by what comes after. So this “good” is the hope of glory. As we saw last week, it’s the hope of the freedom of the glory of the children of God. It’s the hope of redemption; it’s the hope of a world that’s going to be made new, a creation that’s going to be renewed and recreated, and human beings who will someday be resurrected from the dead.
It’s the good of glory that follows suffering, glory that belongs to every child of God, who is an heir of God and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ.
And Paul says that “all things” work together to bring about this good. Now the “all things” really does mean all things. All right? When Paul says “all things” he has in mind particularly the sufferings that he’s just described, and that means something really profound. That means that even the bad things that happen to us, even the evil that befalls us, while they are not good—while they are evil; they’re not good—but even those things are working together in the plan of God to bring about God’s ultimate saving purposes in our lives.
It means that even when we face tribulation, and distress, and persecution, and famine, and nakedness, and danger, and sword, to take Paul’s list from verse 34, even when we face those things, they can’t ultimately hurt us. Not ultimately. They can hurt us in the short-term, but they can’t ultimately hurt us in the long-term. They cannot thwart God’s saving purpose.
Now, believing is an act of faith. But when you believe that, when you hold onto that by faith, it will sustain you through the deepest, darkest suffering that you’ll ever go through.
One of the most relevant testimonies of trust in this truth in our own time comes from Lisa Beamer, who was the widow of Todd Beamer, one of the passengers who was killed on Flight 93, exactly fifteen years ago today.
In Lisa Beamer’s book Let’s Roll, and in many interviews, she says some really amazing things about her trust in God and how this trust in God helped her through the events of 9/11. I want you to listen to her perspective. She said,
"The reason I’ve chosen to live in hope is because of the heavenly, eternal perspective God has given me. That tells me that fear comes from feeling out of control, and if September 11 has taught me anything, it is that we are never really in control. Todd and I were two people who planned for the future; type A’s who had all our ducks in a row. And yet we were not in control on September 11. But hope comes from knowing who is in control. Hope comes from knowing that we have a sovereign, loving God who is in control of every event of our lives . . .
"God’s sovereignty has been made clear to me. When I am tempted to become angry and ask 'What if?' and, 'Why us?' God says, 'I knew on September 10, and I could have stopped it, but I have a plan for greater good than you can ever imagine.' I don’t know God’s plan, [Lisa says] and honestly, right now I don’t like it very much. But I trust that He is true to His promise in Romans 8:28: 'We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.' My only responsibility is to love God. He’ll work out the rest.”
Now that’s not me talking. That’s not John Calvin or some Puritan or Reformed theologian who’s been dead for 300 years. This is a widow with three children who no doubt today is reliving the pain of those events on September 11th. But because of her faith in Jesus Christ, and because of her trust in His promise, she’s able to live in hope that even the worst events in our lives somehow work together for this ultimate good, for God’s saving purpose. God’s purposes are not thwarted.
That’s the first way that Paul defines this purpose: “All things work together for good for those who love God and are called according to His purpose.”
(2) The second way that Paul expresses this purpose is seen verse 29. This defines it even further. This puts a finer point on it, as Paul says that God’s purpose is to conform us to the image of His Son Jesus Christ.
Look at verse 29. “For those whom He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
Now Paul’s language here suggests a couple of different things. It suggests ideas of creation and new creation. You remember that when God created human beings—those first human beings, the man and the woman in the garden—He created them in His image. In His image. But through sin we’ve lost that image in great measure. The image is marred; it’s distorted, it’s blotched. The image is deformed in some way.
And now God’s purpose is the restoration of that image. God’s purpose in the world is to restore what was lost in the Fall to bring about a new creation, and He does that through Jesus Christ, who is the new and better Adam, Jesus Christ who is the Head of a new humanity, who is the new and true human being.
We can follow the Dutch theologian Herman Bavinck and sketch the whole story of the world with these “formed” words. We could say that we were formed in the image of God in creation, we were deformed in sin; now we are transformed by God’s grace and someday we will be conformed to the image of Christ, the image of His Son, in glory.
That’s the whole story of the world, folks. We move from creation all the way to new creation. And what Paul is saying here is that God’s purpose of new creation will not fail, for all who are in Christ, they will be conformed to the image of Christ; they will be made like Christ. They will be restored to their humanity. They will be made new.
When you put verses 28 and 29 together, what’s very clear here is that even our sufferings in the present time are bringing about this purpose to conform us to the image of Christ.
So now I will quote a theologian from 300 years ago name Thomas Watson. Thomas Watson, who wrote a whole book on Romans 8:28, said, “Afflictions work for good, as they conform us to Christ. God’s rod is a pencil to draw Christ’s image more lively upon us.”
What Watson means is that when you and I suffer, if we are in Christ, God uses the suffering in our lives to make us more like Him. That’s part of His purpose. That’s the end game. The end goal is to conform us to the image of Christ. That will happen in perfection in the final resurrection, but it happens in measure now as we grow more and more like Christ.
Now, another thing that I think Paul has in mind here you can see in the family-related language in this verse. Paul calls Christ the Son, he calls him “the firstborn among many brothers.” Right? God’s purpose is to conform us to the image of Christ, so that He will be the firstborn among many brothers.
This continues with language that Paul’s been using throughout this chapter. So if you’ve been here with us, you’ll remember that in verse 14 Paul tells us that all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God.
In verses 15 and 16 he expounds on the role of the Holy Spirit in bearing witness to our spirits that we are children of God. In verse 17 he says that if we’re children then we’re also heirs. We’re heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.
And then in verses 19 through 23, he talks about how both the creation itself and also we ourselves are groaning in the pains of childbirth, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, waiting for the revelation of the freedom of the glory of the children of God, and waiting for our adoption as sons, which he defines as the redemption of our bodies.
So all of this language here is family language. Paul’s holding out before us our inheritance if we belong to Jesus. If you belong to Jesus you’re going to inherit something. What are you going to inherit? You’re going to inherit a world made new, you’re going to inherit conformity to the image of Christ—you’re going to be made like Christ. You’re going to receive all of the blessings and benefits of salvation and eternal life—you’re going to live forever! Right? That’s what he’s saying.
And he’s holding this out as part of our inheritance, and he’s reminding us here that this all comes in the Son, who is the firstborn among many brothers. He’s the firstborn.
“He was the firstborn from the dead.” You know what that means? He was the first one to rise again. But if he’s the firstborn, and we are related to him, he’s our brother, he’s our elder brother; we’re going to follow him in this resurrection. What Christ has received we will also receive; what God has done for Christ he will also do for us.
You see, the Gospel’s not just that God forgives us for our sins. That’s wonderful, and he does, but it’s not just that. The Gospel tells us not only that God forgives us of our sins, but that God gives us everything that He gives Jesus. He treats us as one with Jesus. That’s what Paul’s talking about here.
One of the most important applications we can make of this is to adjust our expectations and change our perspective regarding what God is up to in the circumstances of our lives.
I don’t know about you, but sometimes it’s really hard to trust God. I’m just being honest here. Sometimes it’s hard to trust God. When I see the declining health of a parent, which I’ve seen up close and personal; when I encounter trials in my personal life, it can be really difficult to trust God.
One reason why it’s hard to trust God when we suffer and when we’re going through trials is because we have the wrong perspective and we have the wrong expectations. From our perspective, our lives would be much better if we were just healthy, wealthy, basically prosperous all the time. Right? Healthy, wealthy, and wise—that sounds like a perfect life to me.
So from my perspective, if all my troubles would just go away, life would be great! But that’s not God’s perspective at all, because God is not trying to give me the most comfortable life now, He’s preparing me for future glory. He’s conforming me to the image of Christ.
So that means I need a different perspective; it means I need a different set of expectations. I should not be surprised when I suffer. I should not be surprised when I go through trials. When the trials come, what I should do is come to my Bible and open it up and say, “Okay, God’s up to something here; what is He up to? Oh; He’s using this to work out my eternal good and to make me more like Jesus.” We have to adopt this divine perspective and adjust our expectations accordingly.
One of the best illustrations of this I’ve ever seen is from C.S. Lewis. Some of you have heard me use this before, but I’m going to use it again. C.S. Lewis. This is from his book Mere Christianity. He said,
"Imagine yourself as a living house. God comes in to rebuild that house. At first, perhaps, you can understand what He is doing. He is getting the drains right and stopping the leaks in the roof and so on: you knew that those jobs needed doing and so you are not surprised. But presently he starts knocking the house about in a way that hurts abominably and does not seem to make sense. What on earth is he up to? The explanation is that he is building quite a different house from the one you thought of—throwing out a new wing here, putting on an extra floor there, running up towers, making courtyards. You thought you were going to be made into a decent little cottage: but he is building a palace. He intends to come and live in it himself."
You see, God is up to more than you realize, more than you recognize in your life—even in your trials; even in your sufferings. He wants to make you like Jesus. And that purpose will be fulfilled and he will use everything in our lives to bring that about.
So that’s the purpose: to work all things together for our good and to conform us to the image of Christ.
II. Who is this purpose for?
Now, the second question. This one will be fast. Who is this purpose for? Who is this purpose for? In other words, how can we take these promises to heart, knowing that they are for us? And that’s important to ask, because the passage does not say that God works all things together for good for everybody. It doesn’t say that. So who is it for? And Paul gives two answers.
(1) First of all, in verse 28, he describes them as “those who love God.” “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good.” I think by “love for God” Paul has in mind the whole, total response of our beings, of our persons, to the love of God. God has loved us, and we love him in return.
So our whole response to God in love, in worship, in faith, is included here.
Now, it’s interesting: Paul doesn’t say very much in his letters about loving God. There are a few scattered references here and there, but most of the time when Paul talks about love, he’s talking about God’s love for us.
So for example in Romans chapter five he tells us that the reason hope does not put us to shame is because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit whom he’s given to us.
So usually Paul’s focus is on God’s love for us. But here he says that it’s for those who love God that this purpose of God to work all things together for good applies. So to be a Christian (this is just a description of a Christian) to be a Christian is to be a person who loves God.
This doesn’t mean you should be overly introspective and try to figure out the degree to which you love God; you either love God or you don’t, and all of us need to grow in that love. But if you are oriented towards God, “God is the object of my faith, He’s the object of my trust, I love Him, I want to please Him, I want to serve Him,” then the promise is for you. That’s the first thing Paul said: it’s for those who love God.
(2) Then the second way he describes us is also in verse 28, “those who are called according to His purpose.” “Those who are called according to His purpose.”
Now that word “call” is a very important word for Paul. It’s a really powerful word in Paul’s writings, and it does not mean simply an invitation. The call is an effective summons into a relationship with Jesus Christ. It’s God’s effective call through the Gospel by His Spirit that brings us into the faith.
To use a simple illustration: don’t think of this call as an invitation to a birthday party, that you can just ignore. It’s more like jury duty, except it’s positive and not negative. Right? But it’s a summons. It comes with authority. You have to obey! You have to show up! Right? And that’s what this call is like. It’s a court order; it’s a summons. It’s God doing something, calling us to Himself, and doing it in such a way that it secures the effect that it demands, that secures the response that it needs.
Now, you put these together, this two-fold description, and what you have is both the human and the divine side of salvation. From the human side, anyone who’s saved can be described as someone who loves God. Now we’re not saved by our love for God; we’re saved by God’s love for us. But the evidence of our salvation is that we love God. That’s the fruit.
You might think of it like this: love is the family trait. Love is the family likeness, or even the DNA that proves that we belong to the Father. You know, sometimes people see my children—especially people who live in Texas, where I’m from—and they’ll see a picture of one of my kids on Facebook, and sometimes they’ll comment, “He looks just like you did when you were his age.” “They look just like you.”
Or they’ll do the same thing with our daughters and Holly; they’ll say, “Well, she looks just like you when you were a little girl,” something like that. Because they bear the family image.
What Paul is saying when he describes us as those who love God is that we bear the family likeness. God is a God of love, and if you’re a Christian, your life is also going to be characterized by love.
So Paul would have agreed with the apostle John, who’s sometimes called the apostle of love, and John says this,
"Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another" (1 John 4:7-11).
That’s the human side. To be a Christian, to be a person who’s saved, is to be a person characterized by love.
But from the divine side, every person who loves God is someone who has been called according to His purpose.” And this, of course, emphasizes God’s sovereign, decisive work in bringing us to Christ.
Paul speaks like this all over the place in his letters. Let me give you just a couple of quick examples.
In 2 Timothy 1:9: he says that God “saved us and called us to a holy calling, not because of our works but because of his own purpose and grace, which he gave us in Christ Jesus before the ages began.”
Or Second Thessalonians chapter two, he says, “But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the first fruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth. To this he called you through our gospel, so that you may obtain the glory of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Thess. 2:13-14).
So what this means is that behind your salvation, if you believe, that if you love God, behind your salvation is the call of God. In other words, you didn’t seek Him first; He sought you. If you love Him it’s because He loved you first.
Now that should be really encouraging to us in several ways. It should encourage us to know that our salvation rests not on some dramatic spiritual experience in our past that we can mark with absolute precision. There are a lot of us who can’t look back to the day and the time and say, “This is when I know that I know that I know I became a Christian.” Lots of us can’t do that, and our salvation doesn’t rest on that in any case. It rests on God’s work in drawing us to Himself, which sometimes happens slowly and almost imperceptibly over a period of time.
But the passage assures us that if we love God, if you love Him, if you believe in Jesus, if you want to follow Him, then the reason behind that is God’s call. And you know what that means? That means you have nothing to boast in. It’s all of grace. It’s all of grace.
So that means we should be the most humble people in the world. It means that we never cause to look down our noses at someone else who believes something different, or who thinks something different, who lives in a different way than we do. We should be the least judgmental people in the world, folks, because it’s all by grace, and without grace we would be utterly and completely lost.
An anonymous hymn-writer once said,
“I sought the Lord, and afterward I knew
He moved my soul to seek him, seeking me.
It was not I that found, O Savior true;
No, I was found by thee.”
It wasn’t me seeking him, it was him seeking me, and the only reason that I believe is because God did something in my heart and in my life. And so we should be humble.
If you’re not a Christian this morning but you’re seeking spiritual answers, this should be encouraging to you as well, because can’t you see in your life the people who you’ve talked to, the conversations you’ve had, the books you’ve read, the things that you’ve heard, the circumstances you’ve been through that have brought you right to the point you are this morning?
Well, who do you think was behind all that? Who do you think has been leading you along? It’s the sovereign God, God who’s the divine chess player, who strategically maneuvers the board to bring us to the point of relationship with Him.
Or maybe this morning you’re praying for someone who’s not yet a Christian, and if so, don’t give up. Instead, take heart in knowing that the God of grace is the God who saves, He’s the God who calls, and the only way anybody ever changes is if God does a work in the heart. So pray. Pray hard and ask God to save them.
So, we’ve seen what His purpose is—His purpose is to do us good, namely to conform us to the image of Christ, and He uses all things to accomplish that. We’ve seen who the purpose is for; it’s for those who love God, those who are called according to His purpose.
III. Why is God’s purpose sure?
Now finally, why is God’s saving purpose sure? Why is God’s saving purpose sure? And the answer is given in a series of words that Paul links together in verses 29 through 30.
This passage has sometimes been called “the golden chain of salvation.” There are five links in this chain; five words. These words trace out five important actions or movements in God’s saving plan. I’m just going to hit these really quickly, all right? Verses 29 through 30. Let me read the text again and then just quickly hit these five words.
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
(1) First of all, “foreknew.” This word means “to know beforehand.” The obvious question, of course, is, “What does this mean? Does it mean that God foreknew who would believe and then chose them on that basis, brought them into salvation? Or does this mean that God foreknew people and in His foreknowledge determine that they would believe and then brought them into salvation?”
Well, this passage doesn’t really give you the answer. The passage itself doesn’t really give you the answer. It could be interpreted either way in this passage.
Now I believe the balance of Scripture places God’s decisive work prior to our faith. I’ll give you one verse for that. I could give you more, but for the sake of time I’m going to give you one. Acts 13:48. The historian Luke is describing how the Gentiles, the non-Jews, first came to believe the Gospel. They’d heard the Gospel from Paul and Barnabas and the apostles, and this is how Luke describes it.
He says, “When the Gentiles heard this, they began rejoicing and glorifying the Word of the Lord, and as many as were appointed to eternal life believed.”
So the appointment to eternal life comes before the belief, and I think that’s the pattern that you see through Scripture. That God’s decisive work comes prior to our faith, and our faith is a result of His work.
There’s more to be said about; we’ll talk more about that when we get into Romans nine, which really dives into this in much more detail, but that’s my perspective on the passage. If you happen to disagree and take a different theological perspective, that’s fine.
(2) The second word is “predestined.” This word is used twice: once in verse 29, and then again in verse 30. Those whom God foreknew He predestined, and we’ve already seen He predestined us to be conformed to the image of Christ.
This just means that God determined beforehand what the end result would be. God determined that we would be made like Jesus.
(3) The third word is “called.” We’ve already looked at this work. God’s effective call, his summons for the sinner to come to faith in Christ.
Let me just give you an illustration of this. This is one of my favorite illustrations in all of Scripture. You remember the story of Jesus and Lazarus in John chapter 11. Lazarus was a friend of Jesus, and he died, and so Jesus went to the tomb of Lazarus, but several days after he died. So Lazarus has been in the tomb, the body is stinking, right? The corpse is stinking, there’s an odor, and people are kind of skeptical of Jesus doing anything. Even Lazarus’s sisters are kind of upset with Jesus that he wasn’t there to heal him.
And Jesus comes to the tomb and He just says, “Lazarus, come out!” And you know what Lazarus does? He wakes up, and he comes out of the tomb.
And it’s a perfect illustration of an effective call. Jesus told Lazarus to do something, and he had to do it. He obeyed the call. But the only reason he obeyed the call was because Jesus gave him life and resurrected him, and that’s a perfect picture of what happens to us when God calls us.
He comes to us and we’re dead in our sins. We have no thought of God. He comes and we hear the Gospel, and the Gospel says, “Believe!” It’s just like you wake up; you believe the Gospel, because God has called you.
That’s the idea here of this call.
(4) And then the fourth word is “justified;” “those whom he called he also justified,” in verse 30. We’re going to talk more about what that means next week, but essentially it just means this: it means that the moment you believed in Jesus, God declared you to be right with Him. In that moment.
In spite of all your sins, in spite of all the terrible things that you’ve done, in spite of all the things that you are going to continue to do. Even though you deserve judgment, even though you deserve to go hell, and you do and so do I; we all do. We deserve to be condemned, but the moment you come to believe in Jesus, he looks on you and he says, “Not guilty! I accept you. I receive you as righteous. I welcome you into my family,” because he looks on you, when you believe in Jesus, and what he sees at that moment is not you and your performance; he sees Jesus.
He sees Jesus and what Jesus has done, and so when he looks at the obedience of Jesus in your place, he says, “All the sins are forgiven, all the debts are cancelled; this person’s now righteous in my sight; welcome to the family.” And he never takes that away, never takes that away.
(5) Those who were called he justified, and then here’s the fifth word in verse 30: “...and those whom he justified he also glorified.” “He also glorified.”
Now as we saw last week this means that our bodies will be redeemed. It means we’re going to be made like Jesus in His glorious body. Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and after you die, if Jesus doesn’t come back before you die, then when Jesus comes back you’re going to come out of the tomb, your body is going to be resurrected, and you’re going to live forever. That’s glorification.
It’s a future event; what’s interesting here is that Paul speaks of it as if it’s an already-accomplished event. “Those whom He justified He also glorified.” All right? It’s past tense, or in the Greek it’s an aorist indicative, which usually is a past tense.
So, there are a couple of reasons why Paul says it this way. One is because you’re already joined to Christ if you’re a Christian, and if you’re joined to Christ with Jesus, the firstborn of many brothers, the head of the new humanity has already been glorified, and so, effectively, the glorification has begun in Jesus. If it’s begun in Jesus and you’re in Jesus, then it’s going to happen for you, too. So that’s why he says this.
The other reason Paul says we’ve already been glorified, that those whom He justified He glorified, is because that process has actually already begun. Because part of what glorification means is being made more and more like Jesus, and that’s what happens to us through our lives, as we follow Jesus, as we get to know Jesus, as the Holy Spirit works in us.
Paul puts it this way in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” In other words, glorification has already begun.
So we’ve now seen what the purpose is, who the purpose is for, and why it’s sure, and let me just draw things to a close; we have about four minutes left. Okay? Four minutes. Let me just draw it to a close. I’m just going to make three comments, and then I’m going to end with a quotation from a theologian named J.I. Packer that I think summarizes very well what this passage is about.
Three Comments
(i) First of all, an observation: when you trace the pronouns through this chain, the links to this chain, it’s clear that everyone who is foreknown is also glorified. This is, again, part of the answer of why this is so sure. Look at the verses: “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, and those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
Now if you remember grammar in school, you’re always supposed to trace the pronouns back to their antecedent, right? which is the noun that went before. You go backwards, and so “those whom” is referring to the people he described before. If you do that all the way through, it’s really clear that those whom He glorified are the same ones whom He foreknew in verse 29.
(ii) If that’s true, that leads to this implication: it means that no one whom God has chosen, called, and justified can ever be lost. No one whom God has chosen, called, and justified can ever be lost. Salvation is secure.
(iii) And that then leads to this declaration—this is the third comment—it means this: that salvation is certain because it’s God’s work from first to last. See, I started this by saying the Gospel is not good advice. It’s not telling you how to live. Now there are important things to say about that, but that’s not the good news. The good news is not, “This is how you should live; this is what you must do to be saved.” The Gospel is, “This is what God has done to save you; just believe the message that salvation is His work from first to last.”
I think no one in our generation, perhaps, has stated this more clearly, more eloquently, than J.I. Packer. He’s an old man now, in his 90’s, gone blind in just the last year; it’s the end of an era with Packer coming close to his death and going to meet Jesus. But this is what Packer said. Wonderful statement; I’m going to end with this:
"God saves sinners. God—the Triune Jehovah, Father, Son and Spirit; three Persons working together in sovereign wisdom, power and love to achieve the salvation of a chosen people, the Father electing, the Son fulfilling the Father's will by redeeming, the Spirit executing the purpose of Father and Son by renewing. Saves—does everything, first to last, that is involved in bringing man from death in sin to life in glory: plans, achieves and communicates redemption, calls and keeps, justifies, sanctifies, glorifies. Sinners—men as God finds them, guilty, vile, helpless, powerless, unable to lift a finger to do God's will or better their spiritual lot.
“God saves sinners,” and the force of this confession may not be weakened by disrupting the unity of the work of the Trinity, or by dividing the achievement of salvation between God and man and making the decisive part man's own, or by soft-pedaling the sinner's inability so as to allow him to share the praise of his salvation with his Saviour. This is the one point of Calvinistic soteriology which the 'five points' are concerned to establish . . . namely, that sinners do not save themselves in any sense at all, but that salvation, first and last, whole and entire, past, present and future, is of the Lord, to whom be glory for ever; amen!"
If you’re saved this morning, you’re saved by grace, and if you’re not saved this morning, grace can save you.
Let’s pray.
Brian G. Hedges
