“Fore-known, Predestined,
Called, Justified, Glorified-in union with Christ!”
Rom 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. Rom 8:29 For whom he did
foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son,
that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Rom
8:30 Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he
called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.
Introduction
This is a
favorite Scripture for many church-going people. This verse brings much
encouragement to them. In today’s message, I would like to take a convergent,
and divergent approach to bring out the meaning of this three verse passage of
Scripture that we may learn according to 2Ti 3:16 All Scripture is God-breathed, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteousness, 2Ti 3:17
that the man of God may be perfected, thoroughly furnished to every good
work.
Let’s begin with a convergent, or a
zooming in approach, by doing a word study. A word study helps us to know the
range of meanings assigned to that word. We begin with the word, ‘know’, or ‘eido’ in the Greek, which means,
(A primary verb); properly to see (literally or figuratively); by
implication (in the perfect only) to know:
- be aware, behold, consider, (have) known (-ledge), look (on), perceive, see,
be sure, tell, understand.
Next
is the phrase, ‘all things work together
for good’. Working out the meaning gives us the sense that ALL things,
which surely means EVERYTHING, in life (and we need to realize that ALL things,
and EVERYTHING includes things are not positive, things that are negative such
as illness, relationship strains, problems in the office, even death, circumstantial
difficulties) , work together, or comes together for the benefit, of them that love God. Which is why the apostle James in
his letter, chapter 1, verse 2 says, ‘Count it all joy when you fall into
diverse trials…’ The OT is replete with this theme of all things working
together for God. We only need to remember how what was meant for evil, was
turned around for good by God for His chosen ones. And this message of all
things, even the baddest of the baddest things, culminated with the death of
Christ in a humiliating death on the cross, which then gave rise to the
resurrection of the Son of God to His exalted status at the right hand of God. What
an assurance for ‘them that love God’.
Who are these ones who love God?
Many
people who are merely church-goers think that they ‘love’ God. It is a tragedy that church-going people think of this
word ‘love’ along very human lines. A
love which has earthly and humanistic contexts. Oprah Winfrey is regarded as
one who ‘loves’, and so by extension, many people think that Oprah loves God.
From her show, we actually realizes that this lady may love the idea of love,
and may seem to be quite spiritual, propounding especially an idea of god-ness
which is completely unlike and dissimilar to the Judeo-Christian and Scriptural
revelation of God, and the love of God.
It
therefore becomes very crucial to know who are these ones ‘who love God’. And here is where we begin to take the divergent
approach, or the zooming out approach. The epistle of Romans is a letter from
the apostle Paul to the believers in Rome, both Jews and Gentiles. And to such
a believing congregation, Paul highlights his central thrust of his letter,
inspired of the Holy Spirit, the very God-breathed word, Rom 1:16 For I am not ashamed of
the gospel of Christ, for it is the
power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also
to the Greek. Rom 1:17 For in it the
righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith, as it is written,
"The just shall live by faith."
At
this point, it is good to know the story-line of Romans, its central truth, and
corollaries. It is also good to note, observe, and hopefully come to an
understanding and conviction that the gospel of Christ is the ‘power of God unto salvation’, in this
letter, for a church, not so much for non-believers.
So
many believers, and especially, pastors, preachers, leaders and theologians think
that the gospel is to get people saved, and then, this gospel message, can be
retired from preaching and teaching the church further. Not so for the apostle Paul.
The blessing of the gospel message he was bringing to the believers in Rome was
in helping them understand and apply the glorious message of the gospel in its
fullness.
The
message of Romans is a message of the good news to man. Paul works through
chapters 1 – 3 in bringing home the point that man is born with a guilty
conscience as a result of knowing that God exists and is good, but that man
suppresses this knowledge of God in his deepest levels of consciousness, and
choses to worship the creation rather than the creator, that man is therefore ungodly,
without strength to do good, and totally depraved as a result of original sin, that
which Rom 5 talks about the ‘sin which came into the world through Adam, which
then brought in death to reign over all the world’, thus causing all human
beings to be in bondage to sin, slaves to sin. Just look around us, read the
papers, see what’s happening in the world today. The world readily provides
evidence of what Paul is saying in the Roman epistle about the bad-ness and
evil-ness of the fallen, sinful, Adamic nature of man, and of the world. Man’s
nature as a result of the fall is corrupted totally – body soul and spirit, and
needs a complete renovation, in fact, a giving of a new nature from God through
Christ.
Still
on the divergent and zooming out approach, since Genesis chapter 3, man has
always had two options – believe and perform with total obedience, all of God’s
laws to the ‘T’ in order to be righteous or justified before Him, or to receive
God’s prescription or solution of God’s WORD for man’s current state of
rebellion and disobedience.
So
the genre of the epistle to the Romans is more of a pastoral-theological letter
rather than a theological treatise alone, or a systematic theology paper.
Chuck Swindoll “The primary theme running
through Paul’s letter to the Romans is the revelation of God’s righteousness in
His plan for salvation, what the Bible calls the gospel”
When
the great reformer, Martin Luther understood this main theme of Romans, he
said, “When I discovered that, I was born again of the Holy Ghost. And the
doors of paradise swung open, and I walked through.”
The
epistle of Romans, more than any other book in Scriptures, explains very
clearly, Christ, His Person and work of Salvation, and especially the doctrine
of soteriology. How is man saved? How does man acquire right standing before
God? The great themes of righteousness, repentance, faith, conversion,
adoption, calling, foreknowledge, predestination, justification and
glorification, are all in this epistle, duly explained, with reference to the
Old Testament. Paul does not say anything which Christ does not teach in the
gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
This
is not simply a religious matter. Every human being throughout civilization has
been trying to justify his or her existence. Why do I do what I do, and why I
do? Who am I ? What is my purpose in life? What’s my motivation for living?
What drives me? Who drives me?
Back
to verse 28. The same verse goes on to say, ‘to them who are the called
according to His purpose’.
The word, ‘purpose’ is ‘prothesis’ in the Greek, meaning,
simply, ‘intention’. The ones for which all things work together for good, are
those who are called according to God’s intention. Today, this message has been
severely diluted, and the beginning of a person’s salvation is simplistically attributed
to the sinner’s decision in ‘accepting Christ’, or ‘making a decision for
Christ’, and thereby, clearly attributing salvation to the intention of the
sinner. Pastors and preachers continue to insist in giving an altar call,
especially disastrous because of the emaciated gospel message which accompanies
this call, that Christ will give you peace, bless your life, and save you from
an eternity without Him, and people will live happily ever after.
A very truncated gospel. A gospel which
very strongly highlights the sinner’s power of choice to ‘choose Christ’. A
gospel devoid of grace, a gospel devoid of the law. An easy believism, which
then, as the hen comes back to roost, is shown by a commitment-less
Christianity, an insipid Christianity, only worthy to be called ‘churchianity’,
where church-goers are determined to do the barest minimum, which is to attend
Sunday worship, give a little bit of their time and tithe, to one or two
activities, and try and live a moral life, in their own human strength, and
life live in the workplace completely in sync with the way of the world, except
they don’t lie, and cheat as much or as blatantly as the non-believer, or they
don’t speak obscenities (at least most of the time that is!).
Not so the message of Apostle Paul here.
Rom 8:29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son, for Him
to be the First-born among many
brothers.
Rom 8:30 But whom He
predestinated, these He also called; and whom He called, those He also
justified. And whom He justified, these He also glorified.
God already foreknew and predestinated,
according to His purpose (not ours, not the pastor’s or the preacher’s
purpose), those He had called, to be conformed to the image of His Son. God’s
intention is nothing less and nothing else, but that those He foreknew and
predestinated, He called to be conformed
(summorphos, Thayer Definition:1) having the same form as another, similar, conformed to). To this,
other Scriptures attests and confirms - 2Co 3:18 But we
all, with our face
having been unveiled, having beheld the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are
being changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Lord
Spirit. Eph 4:13 And
this until we all come into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the
Son of God, to a full-grown man, to the measure of the
stature of the fullness of Christ;
The purpose and intention of all
preaching, of all teaching, and of all ministry, is to hold forth Christ
through the Scriptures so that we may ‘behold the glory of the Lord’. Christ,
and Christ alone, through the Scriptures faithfully preached and taught, and
ministered either in one-to-one or one-to-many ministry formats, brings about
the life of Christ within the believer, to the glory of God alone. As Christ in
all His glory is preached, taught and ministered regularly, the people
experience the ‘hearing of faith by the word’, are saved thoroughly and
genuinely, and begin to live in the power and glory of Christ dwelling within
by His mighty Spirit.
Christ must be preached and taught and
ministered every time the church comes together. There is always a possibility
that there are some who are still not genuinely converted in the midst. And
more than this, every believer needs to be confronted with Christ, again and
again, with Christ’s demands of utter and complete Lordship over our lives,
nothing less, and nothing else. When Christ, His Person, and work of
Justification by grace through faith is not preached continuously, ‘the Hinge’
is broken or has fallen, the ‘article of a standing church’ has been lost, and
it is only a matter of time before the church or the congregation falls into
either one of two evils – Legalism, or Antinomianism. Keep the law by your
boot-straps, or hell, I’m saved, so I am free to do anything I want because I’m
saved, and am no more ‘under law’.
The glorious gospel gives us this awesome
message that God intends for us to share His glory, only in our union with
Christ – Romans chapter 6. We are to be thoroughly dead with Christ as communicated
very powerfully through the symbolism of baptism, so that the power of the Holy
Spirit Who in uniting us with Christ in death, also raises us up with Christ,
up from below the waters, into Christ’s resurrection power for living a
victorious life.
In conclusion, brothers and sisters, God
has intended for His called, chosen and elect ones, to be ‘glorified with
Christ’. This is only Paul restating what Jesus Himself communicated through
His prayer in John’s gospel, chapter 17, verse 22, “And I have given them the glory which You have given Me, that they may
be one, even as We are one.”
The final word of application is contained
in all of John’s gospel again, in all of chapter 15, ‘Abide in Me, and let My words
abide in you, that you may bear much fruit for therein is my Father glorified!’
If you are finding it so hard to abide in
Christ, today, admit and acknowledge your weakness, and your own culpability in
allowing yourself to be so easily distracted by the cares and riches of the
world, repent, and ask for His grace that Christ by His mighty Spirit may
increase the Life of Christ in you, and you, in your fallen and sinful Adamic
self, may decrease, to the glory of God.
Let’s pray.
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