I. St. Paul believes that there is a purpose, an end, towards which events are tending. It looks at first sight like a faith rather than the conclusion of an argument. Reason alone, it has been said, might arrive at an opposite conclusion. How can we see a providential guidance, a Divine plan of any kind, in the bloody game which chiefly makes up history? How can we trace it in the conduct of generations, of races, who successively appear upon the surface of this planet to make trials one after another of the same crude experiments, as if the past had furnished no experience with which to guide them? It is true enough that the purpose of God in human history is traversed that it is obscured by causes to which the apostles of human despair may point very effectively; and yet here, as ever, we Christians dare to say that we walk by faith where sight fails us, as elsewhere, and we see enough to resist so depressing a conclusion as that before us to know that the course of events is not thus fatal, thus desperate. "All things work together for good."
II. By "good" the Apostle does not mean material, visible prosperity. Success in life is not linked to the love of God even in the majority of cases. The good of which the Apostle is speaking is real, absolute, eternal good. It is the good of the soul rather than of the body. It is the good of the eternal world rather than of the present world. It may be that a man's circumstances have no very marked character one way or another. It may be that they are a tissue of crushing misfortunes. It may be that they are a succession of conspicuous successes. The love of God is the magician which extracts the ore alike from each, and which makes each and all promote man's final, man's absolute good. No life whatever is made up of such commonplaces that each cannot be made, by this love, to sparkle with the very highest moral interest. No misfortunes are so great that they cannot be built into the very steps of the staircase by which souls mount up to heaven.
H. P. Liddon, Penny Pulpit,No. 647.
How are we to regard this certitude of the Apostle? Must we not look upon it as a rational conviction, strengthened and confirmed by an experience ample, varied, and wonderful; established by a faith in the Christian verities, and made immovable by the spiritual visions of a heart disciplined by trial and purified by affliction? And this is a certitude open to us all, if we seek it; for though it may seem impossible to our reason, it is easy of attainment to the obedience of faith, and yet faith is not blind. Let us contemplate the source of its light, that our reason be not confounded at the confidence of our heart.
I. All things are at work and subject to constant change. The fact is obvious. Ceaseless change conditions everything on earth. And what an air of sadness this self-evident fact gives to our life! As years wear on confidence becomes broken, expectation lessens, hope declines, a trust in creatures is found to be vain, a feeling of insecurity steals over us, which denies us peace, and so fills the mind with fear of foreboded evil, that even in laughter the heart is sad.
II. All things work together. The addition of this one word alters everything. It introduces design where there appeared to be no aim, order where all seemed chaos, and a matured plan where there seemed no purpose; so that now "nothing walks with aimless feet." Everything has its appointed way, occupies a given place, and exercises a prepared and regulated influence. The Divine purpose embraces all. They are but spheres and co-operative agencies carrying out the one purpose which runs through all ages. "Of Him, and through Him, and to Him, are all things," "Who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will."
III. But to what purpose, to what end do all things work together? Our text answers, "All things work together for good." This is no mere conjecture, nor simply the assertion of an inspired apostle, but a necessary deduction from the fact we have been considering. If all things work together, then good mustbe the result. For evil has no power of co-operation. Evil elements cannot be combined, they are antagonistic to each other. The way of goodness carries its security, for the attainment of its end, in its own moral power. The purpose of goodness cannot fail of accomplishment, for the true nature of everything is in accordance with the will, the way, and the work of God. But evil is vanity, and the way of evil a vain show, and the end less than nothing, and vanity.
IV. But if all things work together for good, then also for the best. Divine goodness has but one end for the same creature, and that is the best possible. His mind can only purpose the best in relation to the creature concerned. And to reach this end He has but one way, and that is the best. Science knows that there is but one way of doing anything truly, just as there is but one straight line between two points. How impossible, then, that the only wise God should have for His children any end or any way to that end but the best!
V. But for whom will this co-operation of all things work out its highest good? "For those that love God." The highest good can only be received by rightly directed affections. Only love can take up the issue of this universal co-operation, which is working out what the eternal love has purposed.
W. Pulsford, Trinity Church Sermons,p. 93.
I. "All things." We may say literally and without exception all things; for there is a sense in which a human being is related to everything. He is related supremely to God, and by that relation he touches the whole universe. There is a strain of truth as well as a lofty tone of poetry in that old war hymn which makes the stars in their courses fight against Sisera. All things, high and low, fight for or against a man continually. But probably the "all things" here meant are those things which more nearly and constantly affect men. There are things which gather round each person; things which are distributed over the field of his life; things which touch him so immediately, that they give him daily help or daily hindrance as the case may be.
II. "All things work together." That explains, in a considerable measure, the great changes that take place, and the great progress that is sometimes made very quickly. Things work together. A man is over-matched sometimes by the weight and pressure of the things he has to do, when a new circumstance occurs, a new thing is born, and as it were instantly yokes itself into harness with the rest, and the object is attained. All things work together, not in an aimless and capricious manner, for this end and that, now in one way and now in another, as though a stream should one day flow seawards and the next back towards its fountain among the hills, but in one volume, along one channel, in one direction, towards one end. Everything is held as in one despotic bond, and gathered up and hurried along the one inevitable channel.
III. The greatest question in life to a man is this, "Of what character is the supreme influence of all the things which work together in my life? I am being educated in what nurture? I am being moved forward to something what is that something? I am growing in whose image, and towards the measure of what stature?" The true test is this, "Is there love to God?" It is not, "Am I strong enough to vanquish or successfully resist the forces of life?" because no man is nor ever will be. To say nothing of the buffetings that must come and the changes to which the most obstinate must yield, there is to each at last, and to one as much as to another, the grand defeat every man, soon or late, is laid on the bed of death, is buried in the grave. The question is this, and no other, "Do I love God?" What we love, or rather, whom we love, and how much, will tell far more regarding our inward state, our real character, than anything else in the whole circle of our experience, will therefore also tell what moral position we occupy in relation to all outward things. If we love God, this is the position surely, although we are not accustomed to apply grand epithets to such things, yet surely, in sober earnestness, a splendid position! that all things work together for our good. We thus stand higher than conqueror or king; the world is our chariot, and we don't even need to hold the reins; the universe with all its wide-lying and progressive heavens our estate. "We are heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ."
A. Raleigh, The Little Sanctuary,p. 213.
Consider the argument sometimes so triumphantly alleged, namely, that since precisely the same troubles fall upon him who believes and him who disbelieves, it becomes absurd to say that these trials work in one direction for a man of prayer and in another for the man that never prays, and that circumstances, good or evil, work together for the advantage of the righteous in any sense which is not equally true of others.
I. I apprehend, however, that the regular and consistent life of a Christian man the temperance, the integrity, the self-control, the good repute which will result from his convictions will tendto obtain for him many temporal comforts which they will not absolutely insure, and will at least tendto alleviate for man many evils from which they cannot guarantee an absolute immunity. While it is literally and undeniably true that the same calamities come alike upon the good and the evil, it is a transparent fallacy to infer that the same ulterior results will follow in both cases. It is a fallacy, practically speaking, that the same visitation retains its nature and character under totally different circumstances and applied to different objects. It is on the temper of the recipient that the result depends, and whether or not all things good and evil concur to his advantage.
II. Of the grand maxim that he has bequeathed to us, St. Paul was himself the living illustration. Surely he had enough suffering to teach him that the chariot of God rolls onward along its imperial way, without any stoppage for inquiry about the several circumstances of the poor travellers that it passes on the road! But no: there is not even a momentary symptom of any such misgiving. The Apostle had learned the secret of distilling the sweetest essences from the most repulsive ingredients. From every trial he extracts nutriment for sustaining a more steadfast faith, a more fervid hope, a more expansive charity.
W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 146.
References: Romans 8:28. G. Brooks, Five Hundred Outlines,p. 110; Church of England Pulpit,vol. xviii., p. 145; Homilist,3rd series, vol. ix., p. 84; E. Cooper, Practical Sermons,vol. ii., p. 289; E. Garbett, Experiences of the Inner Life,p. 279; H. P. Liddon, Christmastide Sermons,p. 306; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 115; W. Hay Aitken, Ibid.,vol. xxix., p. 26; J. P. Kingsland, Ibid.,p. 123; Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 423; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. ii., p. 272; C. Garrett, Loving Counsels,p. 63; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation,p. 153; J. Wells, Thursday Penny Pulpit,vol. xv., p. 48; G. Bersier, Sermons,1st series, p. 269; Plain Sermons by Contributors to "Tracts for the Times,"vol. viii., p. 9; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning,p. 218.