"And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Romans 8:28
Paul states a profound, comforting truth for the genuine Christian in Romans 8:28, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."
The life of a Christian resembles the works of a watch. Open a watch, and what do you see? You see that certain wheels which turn in a counterclockwise direction are attached to other wheels that are working in a clockwise direction. Your first thought may be that the watchmaker is either foolish or confused. But he is neither.
Rather, he has so arranged the works of this watch and put in a mainspring to govern all its wheels, that when wound, though one wheel turns clockwise and another counterclockwise, all work together to move the hands around the face of the watch at precisely the right speed. Many wheels appear to counteract each other, but they all work together for the identical purpose of revealing accurate time.
Such is symbolic of the life of God's people. Some wheels in their life run clockwise, which provides hope that the events of their lives directed by God's providence are good for them, but other acts of God's providence seem to run counterclockwise, that is, seem to run against them. Only when their eye of faith is fixed on the great Watchmaker, who has planned everything in His all-wise decree, do they see and understand that He has placed the mainspring of free grace within their "watch-life" so that all providential and spiritual wheels work together for their welfare. Yes, believer, though much often seems counterclockwise and against you when you see one wheel of providence work within or against another wheel of grace in various afflictions and riddles, yet your wise God knows exactly what He is doing. He shall work all things together to produce a divine and blessed result according to His sovereign good pleasure and eternal counsel.
Paul allows for no exceptions to this radical promise. He writes, "All things"- that is, all good things and all evil things - "shall work together for good." The best things - including the attributes and works of God, the promises and providences of the Father, the work and Person of the Son, the graces and labors of the Spirit, the everlasting covenant of grace with all its accompanying benefits of salvation, and all divine ordinances, such as the Word and the sacraments, prayer, the communion of saints - shall all work together for your real good if you are one who genuinely loves the God of the Scriptures. Even the worst things - including divine desertion, sin, Satan, infirmities, temptations, afflictions, persecutions - shall all work together for your welfare and God's glory.
No doubt some of us will say, "It is easy to understand how good things will work together for good, and I know that evil things are supposed to serve the spiritual welfare of God's people, but how affliction, divine desertion, and even sin can work together for their good I cannot comprehend."
Today and in next week's message I wish to show you in several ways how even these three things - affliction, divine desertion, and sin - work together for the spiritual welfare of God's children, and from this we shall be able to safely conclude that "all things work together for good to them that love God." Today let's focus on the good that flows out of affliction for the believer, and next week we will focus on how good flows out of even divine desertion and sin for the believer.
No one naturally enjoys affliction. Afflictions can be very heavy and difficult to bear. "If sin is the head of the serpent," Ralph Erskine wrote, "affliction is its tail." And yet, dear believer, do not afflictions also serve as medicine for you in the hands of your great Physician, Jesus Christ? Let's look briefly at nine different ways in which in His hands your afflictions serve your spiritual welfare and eternal health.
First, through affliction doesn't the Lord humble you deeply, showing you who you are and what you remain in yourself - nothing but sin and corruption apart from divine grace? Does not the Lord teach you through affliction the same truth He taught Israel in Deuteronomy 8, "Who led thee through the great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought... who fed thee in the wilderness with manna, that he might humble thee, and that he might prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end" (v. 15)?
Affliction not only makes a true Christian humble before God, but it keeps him humble. Affliction vacuums away the fuel that feeds his pride. An afflicted believer resembles a fruit-ladened tree; the tree that hangs lowest to the ground is usually the tree that bears the most fruit. If God uses your afflictions to humble you before Him, do not your afflictions work together for good?
Second, through affliction God's people learn what sin is in its God-dishonoring, defiling, and damning nature. Through affliction they learn, as has been aptly stated, "that sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages." They learn through affliction that sin is actually an attack upon the very heart and being and attributes of God. As John Bunyan wrote, "Sin is the daring of God's justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeering of His patience, the slighting of His power, and the contempt of His love." They learn through affliction that sin is both the strength of their death and the death of their strength.
In affliction the believer's soul is, as it were, searched with candles (Zeph. 1:12) for secret and open sins. When affliction is sanctified by the Holy Spirit, sin is dragged out of its hiding place in the heart and set in the light of God's holy and all-searching eye. Affliction strips off the Adam-like fig-leaf covering God's child strives to cling to by nature. "The sins of God's people are like birds' nests," wrote Puritan William Bridge, "as long as leaves are on the trees you cannot see them, but in the winter of affliction when all the leaves are off, the bird nests appear plainly." When affliction is sanctified, sin becomes heinous and hated. Sin becomes exceeding sinful in its very nature. It becomes hated more for its nature than for its consequences.
Third, the Holy Spirit uses affliction as a medicine to destroy the deadly disease of sin in the children of God, causing them to bring forth healthy and godly fruit. When sin causes the believer to backslide from his Savior, the Lord Jesus as Good Shepherd must send the rod of affliction to set the crooked believer straight. Affliction is the Shepherd's dog, sent out not to devour the sheep, but to bring them back into the fold again. Sanctified affliction cures sin. "Before I was afflicted I went astray"; David confesses, "but now have I kept thy word" (Ps. 119:67).
It is as good for a child of God to be chastised with affliction as it is for a young tree to be pruned (John 15:2), for the pressure of affliction not only presses out the awful stink of sin, but also sends forth the fragrant smells and fruits of divine graces. Do you know that in some countries trees will grow, but will bear no fruit because there is no winter there? The Christian needs winter-times of affliction if he is to experience spring-times of blossoming, summer-times of growing, and autumn-times of harvesting.
The life of God's children is like a bell - the harder it is hit, the better it sounds. They learn more under the rod that strikes them than under the staff that comforts them. No, the Good Shepherd is not drowning His sheep when He washes them nor killing them when He shears them. Rather, His washings are needed cleanings; His shearings are necessary strippings; His corrections are essential lessons.
Affliction reaps golden fruit. It mines, smelts, refines, and forms the believer until the divine goldsmith can see His reflection in the work of His own hands. Then the Christian experiences with Job, "When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold" (Job 23:10). "Affliction," wrote the godly Robert Leighton, "is the diamond dust that heaven polishes its jewels with."
Fourth, the Lord uses affliction as a means to cause His people to seek Him, to bring them back into communion with Himself, and to keep them close by His side. As sheep will stay close by their shepherd in storms, so the Lord said of Israel, "In their affliction they will seek me early" (Hos. 5:15). The storms and stones of affliction only force God's sheep closer to their Shepherd. All the stones that hit Stephen only knocked him closer to the chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ, and opened heaven all the more for his soul. Affliction drove a woman of Canaan to the Son of David; it drove a dying thief to a dying Savior. Not the crown of Manasseh, but his chains were used to bring him to the knowledge that "the Lord was God" (2 Chr. 33:11-13). Even the magnet of God's rich mercy does not bring nor keep His flock so close to the Great Shepherd as do the cords of affliction.
Fifth, the Lord uses afflictions for good to conform His flock to Christ, making them partakers of His suffering and His image. Christ was chastened "for our profit," the author to the Hebrews wrote, "that we might be partakers of his holiness" (12:10). God had but one Son without sin, but none without affliction. His afflicting rod is a pencil to draw Christ's image more fully upon His people. Through the way of suffering to glory they become followers of the Lamb of God who walks before His flock. Every path of affliction they encounter has already been traveled, overcome, and sanctified by their Shepherd whose stream of substitutional blood, from His circumcision to the cross, is their sure pledge that no affliction or trial shall be able to separate them from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:39). Their deserved suffering leads them to Christ's substitutional suffering, which in turn, makes them exclaim, "His yoke is easy and his burden is light" (Mt. 11:30). Dear believer, are not the occasions of your sufferings usually the times when you have most communion with Jesus Christ in His sufferings - whose entire life, as Calvin says, was nothing but a series of sufferings? Can you then complain for the light crosses you have to bear as a guilty sinner when you behold the heavy cross Christ had to bear as the innocent sufferer?
Sixth, spiritual afflictions work for good because the Lord balances them with spiritual comfort and joy. "Your sorrow," Christ told His disciples, "shall be turned into joy" (Jn. 16:20). He brings His people into the wilderness to speak comfortably to them (Hos. 2:14). Where godly suffering abounds, godly consolation abounds (2 Cor. 1:4-5). The Shepherd's rod has honey at its end. God's Pauls have their prison-songs. The sweet shall follow the bitter. Joy shall come in the morning. The Lord turns their water into wine. Samuel Rutherford once wrote, "When I am in the cellar of affliction, I find the Lord's choicest wines." In affliction, God's sheep sometimes may experience sweet raptures of divine joy which lead them, as it were, to the very borders of the heavenly Canaan. At such moments they may confess with Eliphaz the Temanite, "Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth and his hands make whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee" (Job 5:17-19).
Seventh, affliction also works for good by keeping God's children walking by faith and not by sight. If sensible enjoyments were always allowed to believers in this world, they would begin to love this life and live off of their spiritual provisions instead of the Provider Himself. Therefore, with their sweet meals, the Lord orders some sour sauce to help their digestion, in order that they may live not by sense, but by faith. In prosperity God's people talk of living by faith, and often darken counsel by words without knowledge; but in adversity they come to the experimental knowledge of what it means to live by faith.
Eighth, affliction works for good in weaning Christians away from the world. A dog never bites those who live in its home, but only strangers. Affliction bites God's children so deeply because they are too little at home with the Word and ways of God, and too much at home with the world and ways of man. If they were more often at home with their Master and Shepherd in heavenly places, the afflictions would be far easier to bear. "God," says Thomas Watson, "would have the world hang as a loose tooth which, being twitched away, doth not much trouble us."
Finally, affliction is profitable in preparing God's people for their heavenly inheritance. Affliction elevates their soul heavenwards, to look for "a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God" (Heb. 11:10). Affliction paves their way for glory. "For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Cor. 4:17). "He that rides to be crowned," John Trapp wrote, "will not think much of a rainy day."
Children of God, is not this enough to convince you that affliction is for your spiritual welfare - that you "shall not want" anything necessary or good for you, both temporally and spiritually? Though the wind of affliction is contrary to your flesh, yet it pleases God to use this crosswind to blow you toward heaven. Your afflictions are tailor-made to fit you with divine precision all the way to glory. "In every thing [even in affliction], give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you" (1 Thes. 5:18).