“Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for saints according to the will of God.”
“And we know that for those who “agape” love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his son, in order that he might be the firstborn of many brothers.”
“And those whom he predestined he also called, and those who he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”
We have slowed down our walk through this section of scripture. Many things disclosed in scripture are not obvious on a first read. Our Holy Spirit ministers and reveals mysteries into our heart when we are disposed to agape love Him and seek His heart.
A case in point is verse 28 which is also tied to the beginning of verse 29 with “For those whom he foreknew.” Obviously, those whom He foreknew are related to the “all things” that work together for good for these are the very ones he foreknew; they are included in God’s own purpose and is part of the “mystery” of His will.
Those whom He foreknew includes those whom we don’t know. We do not know those who have not yet begun breathing in our temporal air. God knows things which to us do not yet exist, while to Him, they do. Those whom He foreknows includes those living among us who have not yet received His righteous gift of redemption through Jesus.
We mortals are in a habit of seeing “things” from our finite perspective while He is working out His eternal plan through finite temporal time, His Kingdom is eternal! We see “our things” through secular circumstances, things He already knows because “all things” are operational both within His eternal Kingdom and our temporal experience. Jesus was the lamb who has slain for those whose names were written in the “book of the life of the lamb” before the foundation of the world.
God is an eternally living Person and preparing us for eternal things by sharing His eternal life to us as well as in us! We possess a new Spiritual identity being actually “born-again” of the Spirit. We are to now live in the Spirit and not in the flesh.
Here, once again, we become aware of the faithfulness of God our Father. He is agape loving those whom belong to Him before they exist, before they are born! In other words, we see here the invincibility of God through His faithfulness to His unborn children including those born once but not yet twice! This itself reveals something of the depth and gloriousness of God’s agape love to His family of children, us! We must see His eternal-Self, not only in awe and wonder, but truly as our Father with worship and devotion!
He foreknew us and loved us before we were born the first time in the flesh, and now He agape loves us as His adopted children in the Spirit! God is both absolute and infinite! Our loving Father is God!
It is within this context we need to consider “all things” working together for good! God uses our temporal things to reveal His eternal things. All things are working for “good” to those agape loving Him while we continue to hear His call and grow into Him, into His fellowship, into His agape love and righteousness.
These two verses, 28 and 29, are a single statement broken up into parts. If we take one part out of the whole and apply it out of context, we are compromising God’s Holy Word. Remember, this is God’s inspired Word and He is very much engaged in us as His children; this worldly universe still belongs to Him and He is in absolute control even while people deny and hate Him; we are to be living in Him as a light on a hill.
Romans 8 is a very brilliant and glorious facet on God’s diamond of salvation. It tells us about who we are in Christ Jesus and how God is continuing His work in us so that we are conformed into the image of Jesus, our savior and God’s Son.
God created time and space with a heart full of agape love. We are just finite spirits living in clay jars whom God has reconciled to Himself so that we are able to reconcile ourselves back to Him. Our finite soul may have difficulty sorting this all out but God has provided, not only His Son for our redemption, but His Holy Spirit in order that we can deal with our human issues with His Spiritual strength while giving us, get this, the ministry of reconciliation to others!
If we may borrow a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “To be or not to be.”
For Hamlet it was the physical life issue of being alive; for us it is an issue of being alive Spiritually. For Hamlet it was coping with life and death circumstances; for us, it is as well, separating ourselves from temporal priorities and choosing, rather, agape love in Jesus in preference to the death issues of not being of the world while still being in the world! Our choice, in Christ Jesus, is being holy or not being holy, to be in Jesus or not to be in Jesus! He is faithfully in us even though we may not be walking in Him, He is forever our faithful heavenly Father.
All things are working together for good to those who are in God’s Kingdom! Only those who are called are able to “agape love” because they are “predestined” to be conformed to the image of Jesus. It includes the generations whom have died before our arrival on this earthly scene, as well as, those who are yet to enter His Kingdom prior to our bodies being raptured into the place John visited in Revelation 4:1, “Come up here and I will show you what must take place after this.”
We should remind ourselves, we are all being called who are in Jesus because Christ Jesus has become alive in us! As Paul put it, “I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus,” or as the King James puts it: “I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.” God is our Father and is calling while we, His children, need to press toward the “mark” of His high calling.
Once we have entered into God’s family through Spiritual adoption, we can be quite sure our Holy Spirit will be calling us out of the cold, calling us home for supper and tucking us in at night. God will be nurturing us to grow in His grace and faithfully counseling us because He is our Spiritual Father! We are in a very intimate agape love relationship with all three Persons of the Trinity … even while we might be suffering and learning!
If this reality of Spiritual adoption is not our living experience, it could be one or two of several reasons. (1). We may know scripture in our mind without knowing Jesus in our heart. While being in Christ, we are also being tempted to turn off our Spiritual ears! (2). We may know Jesus in our heart but have temporal priorities interfering with our Spiritual maturity. In this case, we are interrupting God’s “things” with our own temporal “things.” In either of these cases, the solution is to put Jesus first in both our heart and mind while expressing Him in life; Jesus is our “good” shepherd so that we may follow Him by knowing His voice. All the seven churches in Revelation had these problems. We are called to be the ones who “conquer” overcoming temporal issues of the flesh. That I might know Him and the power of His resurrection. -Philippians 3:10.
Knowing Him is different than knowing His word! I have experienced Him in several personal ways. But the most profound was in a ministering capacity. I was to meet my local contact at a flight terminal after a 15 hour direct flight. It was a Sunday morning and I was told my engagement would begin Monday morning with a group of local pastors. As I came out of the terminal, I saw my pastor contact waving at me from the other side of a fence and motioning me to hurry, pointing to the gate area. I quickened my pace and as I came through the gate my host was motioning to a car to come and pick us both up. I quickly learned I was to be preaching at a church service this very morning … and we were going to be late!
We are taught in school to always have a sermon available in our hip pocket for such occasions. I did have a passage in memory for such occasions but this was the first time I was being put on the spot and it was the furthest thing from my mind. Plus, I didn’t know whom my audience was going to be or the circumstances which didn’t seem to be of concern to my host who was more anxious to introduce me to the country and its local culture as we drove northerly away from town.
I pulled out my Bible in the car and was thumbing through different passages while at the same time being social. We made a quick breakfast stop, for my benefit, and quickly headed further north for about an hour arriving at a large enclosed campus area with a larger size auditorium. A large-wide gate was closed but opened as we left our parked car.
The amazing thing was, I was perfectly calm, collected and confident as we were ushered around to a side door and led into the large double auditorium, both open, with standing room only. The service was already in progress with a large group of children sitting on the floor facing the stage area. There were several empty seats on the stage which four of us filled. I still had not decided what I was going to teach but I was expectant and secure!
The auditorium was standing room only; men were standing against the back wall side to side. I’m guessing there were about 1,000 people filling both auditoriums. I opened my Bible to a passage which kept lingering in my mind as we made the trip in the car, 2Corinthians 4:6-7. The children were dismissed as I was introduced to the congregation.
My sermon was only 25 to 30 minutes but my host afterwards told me he wanted me to preach the very same sermon to His church the following Sunday. I couldn’t, because I didn’t even know what I taught!
The Spirit of the Lord filled me with His words and I was just a clay vessel in His power and not my own. Although this is a ministry example, the same things occur in different personal ways according to our own spiritual needs and concerns.
There is a personal devotional I would recommend which speaks from this intimate personal perspective called “Jesus Calling.” It is a very short daily read but gives us a focus on the personal intimacy which is ours because Jesus is in us and we are in Him.
It is also important to load into our mind verses from God’s Word which our Holy Spirit uses to speak into our heart and mind about truth, about our relationship in Christ Jesus. We might consider memorizing, while pondering, Galatians 2:20, 2Corinthians 5:17, Philippians 3:10 and, of course, Romans 8:28!
Growing in both grace and knowledge of Jesus Himself requires our desire, so that, active agape love will develop in us. Our personal moments of reflection and devotion will be in Him. When we are loving Him and responding to His call in us, we will be called according to His purpose. When we do this, then, He does even more and we become overcomers through His resurrection power working in and through us, His children.
Christ Jesus is literally created in us, as well as us being in Jesus. In Jesus we became a Spiritual person! We are living in our own jars of clay to reveal God’s resurrection power, not our own, to test our Spiritual metal before our body is redeemed. His “good” for us may not feel good to us. Neither did my dad’s belt feel good to me, but it was needed … at least once!
God’s purpose is already established before creation, before earth and space existed. God pre-existed before creation’s time-line began. The transition from God’s direct supervision to the present ruler within time, Satan, is totally within the framework of God’s control and purpose. God is God, above and over Satan’s delegated authority. This is not the place to scripturally explore sovereignty, suffice it to say, we are included within this pre-time plan of God, so that, all things working together for God’s purpose includes us in His Eternal Kingdom.
Being in God’s Kingdom, in His Personal family is very, very important to God. Do we take this as seriously as God Himself does? He gave up His own Son into our fleshly container, so that, He could give us His glory! Tell me, is this serious or not? We best make our time in this fleshly container a priority!
God’s resurrection power is in us! He has provided us with this container of flesh to be overcomers within and for Him. We wants us to be like Him…. inside and out! He has already done all the inside work by creating us new within Jesus. It is now up to us, to take the inside work performed by Jesus’ resurrection and applying it to our outside by putting to death the world, the flesh and the devil in this mortal jar of flesh we are wearing.
He sent His own Son to redeem us, buy us back to Himself! Our names are already written in the lamb’s book of life so that we can be who He is! We need to be wearing our Spiritual ears; He is calling us to be conquerors and overcomers! Greater is He who is in you than he that is in the world.
“For everyone who has been born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world - our faith.” -1John 5:4.
I press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus!