God is Good (part 2)
Last week we noted Eric Alexander’s understanding of God’s goodness highlighted in Romans 8:28, showing that God is personally at work for us, God is ceaselessly at work for us, and God is universally at work for us and in us. But that leaves us with a question.
What type of person is able to say that God is working in all things for my good?
Well, Paul is anything but vague about that. Indeed, he is quite specific. His first description is “those who love God.” But, of course, that love, in Scripture, is the love of commitment. I have often spoken with young people who told me they had declared their love for someone, only to receive the answer, “Oh now, I don’t want to get too serious!” There are many who say that to God. Could you be one of them?
The second description in Romans 8:28 is “those who are called by God.” Now, whenever someone hears the gospel message, they hear the external call of God summoning them to personal faith in Jesus Christ. But that call, when it is truly heard inwardly by those to whom God has given spiritual ears to hear it, actually draws the sinner to Christ: “I heard the voice of Jesus say ‘Come unto me and rest’: I came to Jesus, as I was.” The question is, have you heard the call of God in the gospel, and have you found it drawing you to Christ?
So, “all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called by God.” They then discover that they are caught up into the perfect, sovereign purposes of God, which involve His “good and acceptable and perfect will” (Rom. 12:2).
I well recollect Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones preaching in Glasgow from Psalm 73. He told us that he had discovered that the first line of Psalm 73 could be better translated “God is good and nothing but good to Israel (his people).” I have been a Christian now for almost seventy years, and I must tell you that that is my personal testimony. As you worship the Lord God today are you adding a personal testimony of praise and thanksgiving through Jesus Christ?