What God Calls "Good"
PH Bible Teaching
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Homefront Family Services, here is this week’s Bible teaching clip, “What God Calls Good.” We use this verse to comfort ourselves quite a bit. We slap it on cards, speak it at funerals, and put it on bumper stickers. “God works all things for good.” But what does God mean by “good?” To avoid spiritual confusion, it’s best if we figure that out. Check out the clip below, or view the full message below the transcript!
Audio version only…
Clip transcript…
What does God mean when He says He’s working everything for good? Because when I think working something for good, I have certain ideas of what is good.
But here’s the problem, if I define good one way, and God is defining good another way, then… <holds up left hand to illustrate> This is how God defines good, but my definition of “He’s working all things for good,” is this over here <holding up right hand on the other side>.
Well, this <indicating his right hand> doesn’t happen. And so then I start thinking, Well, wait a minute. I thought God worked everything for good, and this isn’t happening. So clearly, something’s gone haywire here.
We need to know what God means by “I work everything for good,” otherwise we live this life of confusion. Well, you find out what He means when you keep reading. Look at verse 29 <of Romans Chapter 8>. We know that everything works for good for those who love Him <verse 28>. Now look at verse 29:
“For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be—” what? “— conformed to the likeness of his Son.”
What does God mean by “good”? “Conformed to the likeness of his Son.” That is the ultimate good.
His goal is not our comfort. God’s goal is not your comfort and your ease. It is that you will be made Christ-like. That’s why you have the Holy Spirit, who will knock off like a, like a … stone person. Awesome, Peter. That was really good! The people that shape the … <struggling to find the word> … and it gets hot, and they start whacking at it, and then they knock off the edges. What is that called? <someone shouts out the answer> Sculptor! Yes, a sculptor, stone-sculptor-person. Yes, that’s what He is, and that’s what He’s saying. Probably should have thought through that one before I launched myself down that road.
But you get what I’m saying. You knock off the rough edges. You know, he heats it up really hot, and then it’s malleable, and it’ll bend, and it’ll shape into what he wants it to be. That’s His goal, through the Spirit, to make us Christ-like. That! Okay? That’s the definition of good that we put into verse 28.
So, now go back and read verse 28:
“And we know that in all things, God works for the ‘ultimate Christ-likeness’ of those who love Him, and who have been called according to His purpose.”
That’s what He’s saying. That’s what He means by this. Now we say things like this: Well, God is working all things that happen to me to make me… and then we fit in whatever it is that we call “good”… to make me comfortable. It doesn’t happen. We’re not comfortable a lot of times.
So then we say, Well, God is working all things that happen to me to make me happy. But that isn’t true either. That’s what I call “good,” but that’s not what He has called “good.”
So, God is working in all things that happen to me to make me wealthy. Well, <blows raspberry> on that. So clearly that isn’t what it is.
This is what it is He’s saying right here. God is working all things that happen to you, Peter, to make you like Jesus. That’s the key. That right there is God’s ultimate purpose for your life. It’s why He wants you to come to Him. It’s why He wants to give you the Holy Spirit. It’s why He wants to be with you in all of those circumstances, using them to conform you to His heart to be more like His Son, Jesus. That is the good that He is working towards.
Everything God permits, everything He permits that happens to us, He will use to move His people towards that ending: Christ formed in me. That’s it.
That’s what John writes: [1John 3:2] “We know that when Christ appears, we shall be like Him.” It’s what Paul writes to the Corinthians: [2Corinthians 3:18] “And we all … are being transformed into His image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”
That’s why you have the Spirit. He is transforming you in that way. In other words, the promise here isn’t, “All that happens to those who love God is going to be enjoyable.” You know that isn’t true; not in this fallen world, that we have to inhabit for a time. Not everything is going to be enjoyable.
Here’s the promise: All that happens to those that love God will be purposeful. He will make a purpose out of those things.