All Things Work Together for Good to Them that Love God

GOSPEL MESSENGER 

Williamston, N.C., April 1900

From the language of the Apostle Paul before and after this verse (in verses 16 to 27, and 29 to 39), it is evident that by "all things" in the 28th verse he means all the sufferings, trials, tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, peril, or death which the child of God endures here on earth, that is, all the afflictive providences of God which seem to be for his injury, but which conform him by Divine grace to the humble and watchful and prayerful and patient and heavenly and holy image of Christ, and thus really work together for his spiritual and eternal good, according to God's purposes of infinite love towards him from eternity, so that, instead of desponding and murmuring under earthly trials, he ought rather to resignedly and even thankfully receive them as sure evidences of his Heavenly Father's love. The inspired Apostle says that "we know" this truth; he knew it from his own many and severe afflictions, imprisonment, scourging, stoning, hunger, thirst, cold, and even the opposition, slander, and reproaches of false brethren; and all the children of God know it, not only from His Word and His infinite love for them in giving them His Son and Spirit, but also from their own spiritual experience, and from that of their brethren and sisters. Paul expresses the same precious truth in Rom. v. 1-5, and in 2 Cor. iv. 15-18, and in Heb. xii; and so does James in his Epistle, i. 2-4; and Peter in his 1st Epistle, iv. 12-16. It is certain that by the expression "all things," which Paul uses many times, he seldom, if ever, means all things universally or unlimitedly, but "all things" in a special or limited sense, as explained by the context, his preceding and following words (see especially Rom. xiv. 20; 1 Cor. ix. 22; x. 23, 33; xiii. 7; Eph. i. 10; Philip. iv. 13; Col. iii. 22; and 1 Tim. vi. 17). The idea that he included a believer's own sins in the "all things" is not only foreign to the connection in which this passage occurs, but it seems utterly forbidden by his language in Rom. ii. 1-16; iii. 8; vi., and by all the remainder of the word of God which proclaims His infinite holiness and infinite hatred and punishment of sin. To be sure--God can and does bring life out of death, light out of darkness, order out of confusion, and salvation out of ruin, but God alone does it, and sin is not to be praised, nor is the sinner to be thanked for it at all; and there is not one letter in the Holy Scriptures to encourage any creature in sin, which is rebellion against God, who is, to sin in every form and in every being, a consuming fire (Deut. iv. 24; Heb. xii. 29).

Elder Sylvester Hassell