Paul starts the golden chain with God's foreknowledge and Dr. Sproul discusses this word from the various views that are currently held and applied by believers. In the discussion of the word foreknowledge, it is demonstrated why it must come first and what it is that God foreknows.

We will continue with our study of Paul’s letter to the church at Rome, and we are still in the eighth chapter. I am sure that God is not willing that we complete that chapter this evening, but that we make progress into part of it at least. So, I would ask that the congregation stand for the reading of the Word of God. I am going to read from Romans 8:28–30:

And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose. For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

The passage I have just read is known in the history of theology as the golden chain of those actions wrought by God in His grace to bring about the redemption of his people. This is the infallible Word of God for our edification. Please be seated. Let us pray.

Now, O God, as we explore briefly the depths and, indeed, unfathomable riches of the sweetness of Your providence, by which You order all things that come to pass and work them together for the good of those who are Your people, we pray that our hearts may be lifted up and our souls thrilled to contemplate the mystery of Your divine providence. For we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Nothing Bad

We know from the teaching of Scripture that our ultimate destiny as Christians is to enter into heaven, a place where, as we are told in the book of Revelation, there will be no night, no death, and no tears. It will be a place where we will live forever without affliction, without pain, and in an environment that is in no way marred at any time by the presence of evil or of sin. That is to say, heaven is a place where nothing ever goes wrong, where no evil ever takes place, and where nothing bad will ever happen to us.

We have looked forward with joyous anticipation, as the Apostle did just before this text when he spoke about the fact that there is no comparison between the afflictions we endure in this life and the glory that has been stored up for us in heaven. But I now ask you the question: What about now? What about here? We are not in heaven. We are still in this veil of tears.

How would you feel if Jesus walked in the door, came to the front of the church, asked me to leave the pulpit—which I would be happy to do if He were here to speak directly to us—and said, “I have good news for you: For the rest of your lives in this world, I promise that nothing bad will ever happen to you again”? How would you feel if our Lord gave that announcement and assurance to you about the rest of your life in this world? Would that not be great if He would say to us, “Don’t worry, nothing bad will ever happen to you”? In a very real sense, beloved, Jesus has already said that in a sideways kind of a way that we will explore today. That is basically the affirmation we get in Romans 8:28, when the Apostle Paul says with assurance, “And we know.” He is not speaking in the editorial or magisterial “we,” but he is speaking inclusively of all those who are in the faith such that one thing we know for sure is “that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

I mentioned last week when we first spoke of this passage that there is so much contained in it that all we will be able to do this week is scratch the surface of it. It is an astonishing affirmation the Apostle gives us when he says with certainty that all things we experience are working together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose.

Good and Evil Actions

One of the most fundamental principles of biblical Christianity is that we are never, ever to call good evil or to call evil good, because that is essentially the lie of Satan that has been spread abroad through every generation. The great seduction of the enemy is to convince us that sin, which brings pleasure, is really not so bad. In fact, the enemy wants us to think sin is actually good, and if we are to experience the best that life has to offer us, then we must indulge ourselves in things that God prohibits. Because Satan lies, he calls evil good and good evil. We are not supposed to do that. I have to be very careful how I handle this text tonight, because I am afraid I could come perilously close to calling evil good and good evil if I am not careful.

I had a mentor in my theological training whose views were recently cited to me. He was fond of making a distinction among four types of actions. There are what he calls actions that are good-good. There are those kinds of actions that are bad-good. There are those kinds of actions that are bad-bad. Then there are those kinds of actions that are good-bad. That should be enough to confuse you for the rest of the week. What was he getting at with these fine distinctions? Let us look at them seriatim.

Good-Good

First is what he called the good-good. The good-good is that kind of virtue done by Christ, by God, and by the saints in heaven, where there is no alloy of evil mixed in it. In this world, whatever good we are able to do as we are being sanctified never reaches the level of good-good, because there is a pound of flesh in all the virtue we accomplish in this life. As Saint Augustine said, our best works, because of the way in which they remain tainted by our human pride and the way in which they fall short of the glory of God, are, at best, splendid vices.

Bad-Good

That takes us to the second category, bad-good. These kinds of actions are intended to be acts of virtue and obedience to God but nevertheless may be accompanied by shortcomings and failures. This could also describe what Calvin defined as civic virtue, that righteousness achieved even by the unbeliever or the pagan who is unregenerate. Even the unbeliever can, through enlightened self-interest, at times stumble upon the good and do good, though not of a heavenly sort.

The person who drives his car according to the speed limit and is obedient to the civil magistrate is doing a good thing. But when we consider goodness from the perspective in which God considers it, we note that God considers an act both in terms of its outward conformity to His law and in terms of the inward motive, which is that motive that is inclined to be pleasing to God. The pagan may have external righteousness. He may drive his car according to the speed limit at fifty-five miles an hour on the interstate, but the reason he drives his car at fifty-five miles an hour is not because he has a desire in his heart to please the Lord but because he is trying to escape a ticket or other bad consequences to his economic situation.

We also find people who drive fifty-five miles an hour on the interstate not because they are desirous of being model citizens of civil obedience, but because they like to drive their car at fifty-five miles an hour. You may find that those people drive their car fifty-five miles an hour in a thirty-five mile-an-hour speed zone or even in a twenty-five mile-an-hour speed zone. It just happens from time to time that their outward behavior corresponds to the law, but not out of any virtuous intent. That is bad-good. That is good that is not motivated from a pure heart.

Bad-Bad

Then we look at bad-bad. Bad-bad is so bad that there is no admixture of virtue in it. It is pure transgression outwardly, motivated by a hostile heart to God inwardly. This is the kind of action that is undertaken every moment by Satan and his fallen angels.

Good-Bad

I think it is easy to understand these three categories that I have just given. But the one we are concerned about now is this one that we call good-bad.

Good-bad is true badness. That is why we do not want to say that good-bad is really goodness. But we see that there are certain actions that, when they take place, are evil. They are bad. Nevertheless, under the providence of God, under His sovereignty over human events, God has the power to bring good out of evil, which is a glorious thing that we can experience as Christians. We can know that all of the bad things we suffer in this world, which are truly bad considered in and of themselves, are nevertheless used by God for our ultimate good. Viewed from a proximate perspective, they are indeed bad and there is no redemptive virtue in them, but from the ultimate perspective it is good that they are happening because God is using them for His ultimate purpose.

That is a critical point for us to understand if we are to understand anything of the providence of God. The fact that this can happen is based on what we call in theology, under the heading of providence, the doctrine of concurrence or confluence. This doctrine teaches that certain actions take place where human beings exercise our wills, doing what we want to do, and in many cases, the choices we make are diabolical, harmful, wicked, and bring destruction upon ourselves and upon others; nevertheless, even in our sin the providence of God is at work, and He has the power to trump our evil inclinations and desires such that He brings good to pass despite us.

One Action, Different Intentions

The best illustration of concurrence that we have in the Bible is found at the end of the book of Genesis. Joseph had suffered so greatly at the hands of his treacherous and jealous brothers. He had wasted away for years in a prison and was separated from his family and from his countrymen. He had been sold into slavery, taken to a foreign land, falsely accused, thrown into prison, and then finally, through the providence of God, was rescued from that fate and elevated to the right hand of Pharaoh, becoming the prime minister of Egypt.

You might know the story. The famine came into the land of Canaan, and Jacob, Joseph’s father, sent emissaries from among his sons to Egypt to seek relief from the famine from the storehouses of Egypt. In that process, they encountered Joseph. They did not recognize Joseph, and they spoke Hebrew among themselves, but Joseph recognized them. It is one of the most poignant narratives that we find in the entire Old Testament.

Finally, the moment of truth came. Joseph was revealed to his brothers, and they were terrified of his wrath. They begged for his forgiveness. Do you remember what Joseph said? He said, “You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Gen. 50:20).

What an incredible, incomprehensible biblical revelation that is. God so orders His providences in such a way that He does not cancel out secondary causes or annihilate the actions of the human will, which are undertaken freely. In that text, Joseph was aware that his brothers not only sinned against him and committed something that was truly evil, but they sinned with intent, with malice aforethought. They had conspired together and schemed a plot to get rid of their brother, of whom they were so jealous.

We have in this text the appearance of what we call intentionality. As rational beings, Joseph’s brothers fully intended to bring harm against him. Their sin was intentional. But Joseph essentially said: “While you had your intentions in this action and worked to exercise your will to bring evil to me, in that very action God was involved. God was acting. His intention was purely righteous with no mixture of evil in it. His sovereign providence in it was altogether good.”

We see the same thing operating in the story of Job. Job is at the mercy of Satan and the Sabeans and Chaldeans, who exercised their intentional actions of harm against Job. All the while, in their sin, they were fulfilling the plan of God Himself, whose purpose in these things is never evil but altogether good and glorious.

God Ordains Everything

People choke when I say to them that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, at least in some sense, as the great Saint Augustine said. In our confessional standards, the Westminster Confession says that God ordains whatsoever comes to pass. But it is quick to amend that by saying that He does so in such a way not as to eliminate secondary causes or to make of no significance the will of the creature. He does not do violence to the will of the creature. Nevertheless, God’s sovereignty prevails in every instance.

There is a statement you may have heard, or maybe even repeated in the past—in which case I hope you never say it again—that goes like this: “God’s sovereignty ends where human freedom begins.” That is blasphemy. A moment’s thought will reveal it to be blasphemy—as if the sovereignty of God were in any way limited, conditioned, or dependent on your authority.

Your freedom is a gift of God. It is real. You exercise it. You enjoy it. But your freedom is everywhere limited by God’s sovereignty. That is what we mean by sovereignty. God is the sovereign; we are not the sovereign. Even the fall of the human race was in some sense ordained by God.

Recently at the Southern Baptist Convention, a special session was held with five thousand ministers present. A debate ensued between one of the top officials of the Southern Baptist Convention and the president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Dr. Al Mohler, on the doctrines of grace, specifically with respect to the doctrine of election.

In the course of the debate, sin was placed at my doorstep. The official said, “R.C. Sproul teaches that God needed to have the fall in order to bring about His plan of election.” That heated up the e-mail society, and the internet ran with it, and I was getting inquiries from many circles, not the least of which was from Al Mohler and some of my other friends who were present on that occasion. They said, “R.C., did you ever say anywhere that God needs the fall to bring about His plan of salvation?”

My answer was this: “I don’t remember everything I’ve ever said or ever wrote, but I will to tell you this: I would cut my tongue out before I would make a statement like that. I do not know where this gentlemen got that quote, but I challenge you to ask him to document it and cite it. He’s going to have a hard time, because I’ve never said such a thing.” God does not need anything. He does not need me. He does not need you. He does not need the fall. He can bring to pass His sacred will however He desires, not because He needs it.

It is possible that someone could have heard me state something like that in an exposition of Karl Barth, where in his qualified supralapsarianism, Barth speaks as if God needed the fall to bring about His plan of redemption. I may have been expounding Barth on some occasion and said, “Barth teaches that God needs the fall,” and someone who turned on a radio heard me say, “God needs the fall,” and just heard the second half of the sentence. Do not go out of here thinking that I am teaching you that God needed to have the fall. But He ordained it, in some sense.

How do I know that God ordained the fall in some sense? Because it happened, and because God is sovereign, and because God is omniscient and knew before the fall that Adam and Eve were going to fall. He had the power and authority to intervene, to crush the head of the serpent before the serpent ever opened his diabolical mouth, and He could have prevented the fall from occurring. But He did not.

That is not the same thing as saying God forced Adam and Eve to sin. He let them sin when He could have stopped them from sinning, and if He could have stopped them from sinning and did not stop them from sinning, then that means clearly that He chose not to stop them from sinning. If He chose not to stop them from sinning, then manifestly, in some sense, He ordained that they not be stopped. If He ordained that they not be stopped, negatively, then that means positively that He ordained they would sin.

Is that clear? That is simple, is it not? But if the Lord God omnipotent even permits the fall for His own purposes, He must have a good reason for it. Even though evil is in the world and evil is evil, it is good that it is here, or it could not possibly be here. Whatever God ordains that should come to pass, according to His inscrutable and eternal purpose, must be ultimately for good.

I said I would come perilously close to saying that evil is good. It might sound close, but I am clearly saying that evil is still evil. I am saying that evil is evil, but it exists within the broader eternal purposes of God for some good purpose which we know ultimately is His glory. What if the Creator would permit the creature to be engaged in evil, only to manifest in the final judgment God’s perfect justice in punishing wickedness? I do not know that is the reason, but I know that whatever God does, He does well.

Nothing to Fear

The affirmation in Romans 8:28 does not say that all things are good. Paul is not an illusionist saying there is no such thing as evil. Rather, he says that all things are working together for good—that is, the ultimate purpose is a good purpose. In the meantime, even though evil befalls us and afflicts us, that evil afflicting us now is working for our good.

The Greek word Paul uses here is the word synergeō from which we get the word synergy. A work of synergy or synergism is a cooperative venture. When two or more parties work together on a task, we say that there is synergy involved in the activity, a working together of two or more parties. That is the word Paul uses to describe the way in which God’s providence works together with our afflictions for good.

Notice the restriction, the limitation that the Apostle points out: This divine synergy by which all of the bad things that happen to us, through us, or by us are working together ultimately for good is not a statement that Paul makes for the benefit of everyone. It is not that everyone is living in a world where their afflictions are working together ultimately for their good. Rather, the restriction is plain. All things are working together for good “to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose.”

This drama of concurrence, of synergy, whereby God is making all things work together for good, is simply for those who love Him. Obviously, that is not everybody, because the vast majority of mankind live and die at enmity with God and are not numbered among those for whom all things are working together for good. But if you are a Christian and the love of God is shed abroad in your hearts, then you have nothing to fear.

Remember that this statement is in chapter 8 of Romans, and we are still dealing with the question: Is it safe? Are we in a situation, an environment in our lives as Christians, where there is now no condemnation that we have to fear? Are we in a situation that we have nothing to fear from eternity or from the afflictions we have to endure in this present life because all of these things are every moment working together under the sovereignty of God for good if we love Him? It is working for the believer, for those who love God?

Those Who Love God

Who are those who love God? Paul does not leave us to grope in the dark about their identity: “For those who are the called according to His purpose.” We hear debates all the time about election, predestination, that sort of thing. It is endless. The discussions will go on until the second coming. I am sure that every generation of Christians has to fight this battle, as if the doctrine of election were some esoteric doctrine that only elite intellectuals and professional theologians can grasp, as if it were not on every page in the Bible. But it is.

But if election were not on every page, and the only verse in Scripture we had was the one I just read, that would be enough to establish the doctrine of election forever. The assurance is given to those who love God, and those who love God are identified as the ones who are “the called according to His purpose.”

How do people deal with this text? They say: “When the Bible speaks of those who are called, it means those people who have heard with their ears outwardly the preaching of the gospel. Some of those who hear the gospel respond positively and some reject it. Those who say yes to the call of the gospel are the ones who love God, and those who reject the calling of the gospel are those who do not love God in the final analysis.” That is a nice theory, but it is not what the Apostle is saying in this text. He is defining those who love God as the ones who are the called according to God’s purpose.

The Effectual Call

Here is something that may be surprising to you: On almost every occasion in which the Bible, the Word of God, speaks of the call of God, it is speaking of what we call the effectual call of God. Last night, we had a Q&A session, and the very first question that was raised was about effectual calling. That is a term that describes the power of God’s call whereby what He calls forth to occur does indeed occur. What He purposes to effect by that call is effected.

It starts with creation. When God calls the world into existence ex nihilo, when He calls the light to shine into the darkness, it is not an invitation. God does not plead with the darkness to produce some light. He does not woo or entice the universe to come into being, saying, “Please, oh world, come into being.” When God in His omnipotent power says, “Let there be light,” and He makes that call, that call is always and everywhere effectual. What God purposes in whatever call He gives, that purpose is never and can never be frustrated.

Why? Because God is God. He really is God. He is not a president elected by majority vote. He rules sovereignly from all eternity because He is the Lord God omnipotent who reigns. Nothing—no darkness, no void, no emptiness, no threat of chaos, no sinful disposition—can ultimately resist the power of His call, because His grace in this call is irresistible.

His grace is not irresistible in the sense that we do not have the capacity to resist. Our whole lives demonstrate that we can resist grace and that we do resist grace. But when we talk about irresistible grace, we are not talking about an attractive young lady named Grace by whom no one can fail to be charmed. Irresistible grace means that even though we resist with all of our might, God’s grace trumps our resistance and brings to pass what His eternal plan has been, what His divine purpose is to bring it to pass.

When Christ called Paul to be an Apostle, it was no mere outward summons. When Paul identifies himself, his mission, and his life, he often says something like, “Paul, called to be an Apostle, not by men but by the will of God.” He is referring to that divine vocation, that divine purpose effected by the call itself.

When we are talking about “the called” or “the elect,” those who are the called-out ones from the world are those who have not merely been summoned outwardly, but those whom the Spirit calls inwardly by coming into their hearts. He changes the disposition of their hearts and effects the transformation of their souls, bringing about the resurrection from spiritual death to spiritual life. That is the power of the Holy Spirit working among us.

God’s Purpose

If you are a believer today, it is not because you made God’s call effectual on your life. It is because God made His call effectually on your life since you were the called according to His purpose. What is a purpose? It is a desired end, a planned consequence.

When we set forth our goals, articulate our purposes, and set down in writing the ends that we would like to accomplish in this life, such goal setting, in all due diligence, is nevertheless fallible at best. We know the best laid plans of mice and men can go astray and fail to end in the designed purpose. But fortunately the poet, in talking about the best laid plans of mice and men, did not include God in that category, because the best laid plans of God never come to naught.

There is a doctrine of God that is pervasive in the Christian world today that strips Him of His sovereignty and, in effect, strips Him of His very deity. It almost paints a picture of a poor, impoverished deity who wrings His hands in heaven, hoping and praying—at times against hope—that someone will take seriously the sacrifice that His Son made and bring His plan of salvation to fruition. That kind of deity is not God and is not worthy to be given the title God.

God is the Lord God, the God who said to Pharaoh: “Let My people go. If you don’t, I’m going to destroy the very land in which you live, that the world may know that I am the Lord.” Pharaoh said: “Okay. Go. Please, get out of here. Just no more plagues, Lord.” But God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.

On the judgment day, will Pharaoh say: “God was a hyper-Calvinist. He hardened my heart. What could I possibly do? How could He judge me harshly for doing what He purposed that I should do?” No. Sometimes the writer says Pharaoh hardened his own heart. Sometimes the hardening is attributed to God. Paul will explore that in a text we will come to soon, Romans 9.

Keep in mind that even Pharaoh, the most powerful man in the universe at that time, was clay in the hands of our Creator and our Redeemer, who had a purpose for His people and through His people to the whole world—the purpose of exodus, the purpose of liberation, the purpose of redemption, and the purpose of salvation. This purpose, beloved, was not an afterthought.

It was not as if God never considered the exodus until He heard the cries of the people of Israel groaning about the burdens imposed upon them by Pharaoh, who would not give them straw for their bricks. It was not as if God noticed this calamitous situation and said, “I’d better do something about this.” No, as early as Joseph, whom the future pharaoh did not know, God spoke to the children of Israel through their brother Joseph, saying: “You meant it for evil. God meant it for good that many will come out through His salvation.”

God planned the bondage of Israel. He planned the exodus from Egypt just as much as He planned the betrayal of Joseph, his imprisonment, and his demonstration that all of the afflictions and suffering that Joseph endured were working together not only for Joseph’s good but for Israel’s good, for the good of all the saints of all the ages.

That is why it is not by accident that immediately following this dramatic affirmation that all things work together for good to those who love the Lord, Paul launches into the golden chain whereby he says: “For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified” (Rom. 8:29–30). That golden chain comes immediately in the wake of Romans 8:28.

From Tragedy to Blessing

One last point before I finish: What we can get from Romans 8:28 is that each one of us is visited in our lives at some point with what may be called or defined as tragedy. We are actors in the theater of the tragic. Tragedies are on our minds every day. They are in our bulletin every week as we pray for those in our congregation who are experiencing the tragic in their lives.

But what Romans 8:28 teaches, dear friends, is that ultimately—not proximately, but ultimately—there are no tragedies for the Christian. Tragic now is blessing later. In every tragedy we experience in this world, God is working, molding it and shaping it for our eternal blessedness. The tragic is ephemeral. The tragic is temporary. The tragic is simply in this world, but never, ever permanent.

The other side of the coin is this: For the unbeliever who persists in his unbelief, every blessing that he receives from the hand of God in this life is ultimately working together for his damnation. Every blessing that the impenitent person ungratefully receives from the hands of God adds more sin to the depository of sin that Paul mentioned earlier, where we heap up treasures of wrath against the day of wrath.

Every blessing that goes unthanked, unacknowledged, and unappreciated by the pagan will end up as a tragedy for that person. We live in a topsy-turvy world where the tragedy for the Christian is a blessing for eternity, but the blessing for the pagan is a tragedy for eternity.

God works all things together for good for those who love Him, for those who are the called, not just outwardly, but who are the called according to His divine, supernatural, and omnipotent purpose. Let us pray.

Surely, O God, it is safe for those who love You. Though we suffer evil for a season, that evil is nothing compared to the good You are working for our benefit throughout. Help us, O God, to look at today always from a perspective of eternity and in light of Your promises that cannot be broken. Amen.

This transcript has been lightly edited for readability.