01-30-11Predestined To What?

ROM 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

ROM 8:29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

ROM 8:30 and these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.

We stopped in the middle of a thought last week in our study of the 8^th chapter of Romans,

and we need to pick up right where we left off

and complete the truth Paul is offering us in these three verses.

If you are new to our study,

let me give you just a tiny overview

of what’s going on here

so that Paul’s words may make a little more sense.

For the past several weeks

we have been studying a section of this letter

in which Paul is equipping the people of God

with the tools we will need

to handle the added suffering that will enter out lives

as a result of our union with Christ.

I know that most of our preaching and teaching within the family of God

focuses on the way our Lord’s presence in our lives

lessens our pain,

and our loneliness,

and our suffering

because of the healing He brings to us,

but that is not the whole picture.

The truth is

our union with Christ

and our willingness to follow His leadership in our lives

will at times

actually increase our suffering.

Some of that suffering comes

because of the reconstructive work our Lord seeks to accomplish within us.

Some of it comes

from the natural antagonism of both Satan and the world around us

to the presence of Christ within us.

And as Paul pulls together

his final summery statements

from the first 8 chapters of Romans

he spends some considerable time

equipping us with the perspective

and the knowledge we will need

to handle that suffering.

In Romans 8:18-30

we have seen Paul offer us 5 tools

to accomplish this equipping process within us.

He began by talking with us

about what lies ahead for the people of God -

assuring us that we will never ever regret

the hard choices we make now,

and assuring us that the time will come

when this world in which we live,

and these physical bodies in which we live

will one day all be brought into perfect submission to Christ.

In other words,

the battle now may be intense at times,

but it is not forever,

and absolute victory will one day be ours.

Then, from there,

Paul turned his attention to the here and now

and offered us two more essential pieces to the picture.

He talked to us about the true nature of prayer for the Christian,

boldly affirming to us

that prayer is not some kind of game we must play with God,

trying to find just the right words

spoken in just the right way

before our Lord will hear us.

He told us that,

when we cry out to our God in our pain

His Spirit searches and knows our hearts,

interceding for us,

giving us perfect access to our God

even when we may not know what words to speak.

Which brings us, then,

to the 5^th support for suffering

given to us in Romans 8:28-30,

and brings us, too,

to both one of the most remarkable promises ever given to us by our God,

and to one of the most remarkable insights into the work of God in our lives

that we will find anywhere in Scripture.

We looked at the promise last week:

ROM 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

In that promise we saw that

this is not just some passive affirmation

that things will somehow all work out best in the end for the people of God.

This is a direct, active commitment of God Himself

to each individual Christian,

a commitment in which He tells us

that He will take everything that enters our lives

and not just give us the wisdom and strength to endure it,

but actually to reshape it into good within us as we place those things into His hands,

good that would never have existed

had they not touched us.

It is a commitment based upon His absolute knowledge of everything in our lives,

and His intimate involvement with us

at the deepest possible level of our existence.

Now, I know that the acceptance of the truth being communicated to us in this verse

requires us to drastically rethink the way we view the events in our lives.

From a purely logical point of view

what Paul is telling us here

should come as no surprise.

Here we are, as Christians,

claiming that each of us have,

through our faith in Christ,

been restored to an eternal,

absolute,

and unconditional love union

with the Creator God of all that is.

We are claiming

that the God who is,

the all-powerful,

all-knowing God of everything

has established a Father/child relationship with us,

a relationship in which He not only notices us,

He not only knows our name,

He not only has granted us absolute and unlimited access to Him through Christ,

but He cares deeply about our individual lives,

knowing every pain,

every fear,

every turmoil we face.

Now, if that’s true,

logically what should we expect from that kind of a union

with God Himself?

Logically what we should expect

is, “...that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.”

The problem we run into, of course,

and the reason we have so much trouble with this,

is because what we see going on in our lives on a daily basis

doesn’t seem to fit

with what we would expect

if God was really working all things together for good in our lives.

And this, right here, is where it is essential

that we keep reading the next two verses,

because it is those two verses

that give us the context in which this remarkable promise of God is made to us.

You see, the difficulty is with that word “good”.

We just naturally bring to that word

our own highly refined definition

of what “good” is.

For us “good” means something along the lines of the guaranteed right to life,

liberty,

and the pursuit of happiness,

with special emphasis being given to that “pursuit of happiness” thing.

For us, whatever is “good”

is usually equated with whatever makes us feel good.

But our God’s promise to us

to work all things together for good

is a promise based upon His perfect

and absolute knowledge of each of us,

knowledge that enables Him to know

what real good is in each of our lives.

When, in the summer of 1968,

I signed up for a short-term missions trip to Trinidad,

I thought “good” for me at that time

meant having a great trip to the Carribean

and seeing a whole new section of the world,

and having the added benefit

of feeling like I was doing something of value at the same time.

How could I have known

what real good was?

How could I have known that real good meant for me to be immersed for three months

into the greatest loneliness

and emotional isolation I’d ever known,

an isolation that created within me

a desperate need for my God to become real to me

as He had never been real before?

How could I have known

that what I needed most of all,

what my spirit was really crying out for,

was an awareness of the depth of my God’s love for me

that went far beyond doctrine,

far beyond church involvement,

and religious routine,

an awareness that could only come

from having to begin each day,

before I even crawled out of my sleeping bag,

by pleading with Him to give me the strength to face the next 16 hours,

and then ending each day with a sense of gratitude because He had done just that?

Our God’s commitment to us

to work all things together for good in the lives of His people

is a commitment rooted in His perfect knowledge

of what true GOOD is for each of us -

the kind of good that reaches deep within us

and touches and heals not just our emotions,

but our spirits and souls as well.

Romans 8:29 and 30 show us what that true good is,

and give us the context in which our God makes His commitment to us,

but before we look at that context together

I need to say one more thing here.

The concepts we are dealing with in this passage

bring us right up against our true attitudes toward our God.

And when I suggest to you

that our God is committed to bringing into our lives the true GOOD

that touches not just our emotions,

but our spirits and our souls as well,

it is possible that those words may trigger within some of you

the fear that those are just code words for confirming

that all God is really after

is knocking us around until we shape up and behave ourselves.

In other words, His definition of GOOD

and our definition of GOOD

are so far apart

that His definition of GOOD

might be what we need from some Divine point of view,

but it is certainly not what we would ever really truly want.

If any such thoughts ever enter your mind,

let me just assure you

that there is no Divine slight-of-hand

with the promises our God makes to us.

We will never feel so deeply loved

as when we see the good being offered to us by our God for what it really is

and allow Him to build it into our lives.

It is certainly true that sometimes that process requires His removing from our grasp

some imitation “good” we are clinging to

so that we can then embrace

what we are really longing for,

but when that process is completed

we will see it as His prying our fingers free from a little piece of rotted garbage

so that He can then set before us

the banquet He has prepared for us.

And now, the context of this promise...

ROM 8:28 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.

That’s the promise,

and here is the context in which it is made:

ROM 8:29 For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;...

Now, there are some words in this verse

that I need to help us with.

They are words that,

if we chose to,

we could yank out of context

and analyze to death,

and in the process rob ourselves of the purpose for which these words

were given to us by our God.

The first of those words is “foreknew”.

It means exactly what it sounds like it means -

“to know beforehand”.

In this verse Paul uses the word

as a descriptive title for the people of God.

And with the use of this term

Paul is simply saying

that our God knew we would be coming to Him through Christ

long before we came,

in fact, long before we were even born.

He didn’t force us to come;

He didn’t manipulate us into coming;

He in no way compromised or undermined our true free will.

He simply knew,

just as He has known all things,

known the end from the beginning,

just as He could give to Daniel

a perfect,

and accurate description of the history of the political structure of the human race

before it ever happened in time,

just as, in the book of Revelation,

He gives us an exact presentation of the final events of this world

before those events ever take place within our human time frame.

He doesn’t explain His foreknowledge,

He doesn’t try to integrate it into some little intellectual system our tiny minds can wrap themselves around.

He simply states it as an aspect of who He is.

And actually, in this particular verse,

His foreknowledge is presented in a way

that is intended to tell us more about ourselves

than it does about Him.

It is used almost in the form of a title for the people of God.

We are “the ones foreknown”.

Do you know what that means?

It means God’s thoughts concerning you,

His design for your life,

His love for you,

and His delight in you

began long, long before you ever knew Him as Father,

or called Him your God.

For those whom He foreknew...

which brings us to the second difficult word

that has the potential of robbing us

of the real purpose for this verse.

It’s the word, “Predestined”.

For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined...

And here again, the word itself

means exactly what it sounds like it means.

It means “to predetermine”.

It is used a total of 4 times in the New Testament in relation to the people of God,

twice in this passage in Romans,

and then 2 other times in direct reference to God’s involvement with the Christian.

And in each case

a correct understanding of what is being said

demands that we leave the word locked in the context in which it appears.

For, with each use,

God is revealing to us

a specific aspect of our relationship with Him through Christ

that has already been predetermined

and established by Him

as a “given”,

a nonnegotiable, non-alterable aspect

of our being joined to Him through Christ.

When it is used in Ephesians 1:5

Paul tells us that we have been predestined to a Father/child union with God.

In other words, that is the only kind of relationship He is offering us through Christ.

To come to Christ

is to enter into an eternal Father/child union with our Creator.

It is the only offer on the table.

When the word is used again by Paul in Ephesians 1:11,

if we took the time to study it in the context of that letter,

we would see that he is telling us

that God has also predetermined

what His own reward would be,

what His own inheritance would be

as a result of the death of Jesus Christ.

And the real shocker,

the thing that causes our minds to just plunge into confused wonder,

is when He reveals to us in that letter

what that inheritance is.

It’s US!

What God wanted,

and what He predetermined He would receive as a result of all that Christ went through,

was us...with Him...forever.

We are His reward.

The verse says literally,

“We have been made a heritage (His heritage), having been predestined according to His purpose, who works all things after the council of His will...”

And if that doesn’t change our perspective

on the value we hold in the mind and heart of God,

I don’t know what will.

Which brings us, then,

to this third use of the word here in Romans 8:29-30.

And here again,

our key to understanding

comes from looking closely,

not just at the fact that we have been predestined,

but at what it is we have been predestined to.

And when seen in context,

it is no mystery.

ROM 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many brethren;

Paul is telling us

that one of His predetermined

nonnegotiable purposes

for His work in us here and now

is to conform us more and more to the image of Jesus Christ.

The truth is,

He could not love us and do otherwise.

He is in the active process of reshaping our characters

into greater and greater conformity

with our Lord Jesus Christ

because He knows it is that reshaping process

that brings us into greater and greater freedom

to be the people He designed us to be.

But he reveals this truth to us

in this context,

because he knows it will help us to better understand

why our God does some of the things He does.

He has just told us

that our God is actively working all things together for good in our lives.

But He knows that, unless he completes the picture,

we will take our own flawed, flesh-based,

culturally twisted concepts of “good”

and plug them into the statement,

and then wonder why our God lied to us.

And so he goes on to explain

that the true good our God works for in our lives

is the good that comes from having our lives

brought into greater and greater conformity with Christ Himself.

We don’t have time to go into the 30^th verse in any detail.

For now I’ll just say that,

when Paul tells us, “...these whom He predestined, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified...”

he is assuring us that our God has already done the hardest part

when he called us and justified us through Christ,

recreating within us a new heart that loves him.

And what our God has begun within us,

He will also complete.

In fact, from God’s perspective,

it is already a done deal.

We have already been glorified.

But before we leave this for the morning

I need to offer just a final word

to help make it practical for us.

So often I think we fail to see and appreciate the incredible good our God is accomplishing within us

because we are clinging so tightly

to our own empty concepts of good

that we never see what He’s doing.

We are trying so frantically

to achieve what our culture has told us is “the good life”

that we fail to understand

that the truly GOOD LIFE

will never come from what we have,

it can come only from who we are.

A good man will have a good life

no matter what he has or does not have.

But a man who seeks the good life

at the expense of his own goodness

will find no fulfillment in life

no matter what he possesses.