LIFE AS A CHILD OF GOD - II

Romans 8:26-30
April 23, 1995
Bob Bonner

Wednesday, April 19, 1995 will be a day that many Americans will not soon forget. At 9:00 a.m., in Oklahoma City, the world was rocked and shocked by the bomb blast that slaughtered the lives of innocent children and adults, leaving hundreds of people injured. The pictures have been ghastly. This incident has struck a nerve of security in this country that may never be repaired.

For us, as Christians, to think that none of those killed or injured or affected personally by this event would be to live in a fantasy world. I imagine that there are some Christian parents and grandparents just like many in this room, who lost babies in that bombing. Babies whose bodies were so destroyed that they couldn't even collect the parts to put into a coffin. There were Christian parents, grandparents and employees killed or injured as well.

I bring this to your attention simply to remind us that life as a child of God is not life without pressure, problems, pain or grief. Even as a child of God, we are faced with occasions and events that leave us just as shocked, momentarily confused and speechless as others who do not claim Jesus Christ as their Lord and savior. It's at times like these that we don't know how to pray and even wonder how or why God could allow such an evil tragedy to take place.

In personal times of pressure or heartache or tragedy, which of us have not prayed a similar prayer as this one: "Lord, I'm drowning in a sea of perplexity. Waves of confusion crash over me. I'm too weak to shout for help. Either quiet the waves or lift me above them---it's too late to learn to swim." [FOR THOSE WHO HURT, Swindoll, Multnomah Press].

As children of God, how are we to face these times? In our passage for this morning Paul will confront these questions and show us God's provision for quieting the waves of confusion and lifting us above them.

We are going to begin our study with Romans 8:26. However, let me remind you that we will be looking at the second half of a portion of scripture which began back in 8:14, in which Paul deals with the subject of "Life as a child of God." For those of you who were not here when we looked at the first part of this section a couple of weeks ago, allow me to quickly remind you of what we have already seen from verses 14-25.

First, we learned that not all people are children of God. We are all creations of God, but not all are children of God. Only those who have committed their lives to Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior have been born again and adopted into the family of God. And when we became a part of the family of God, we inherited many privileges. We looked as several of those tremendous privileges.

Those privileges were so great, that one of the natural questions that comes to anyone's who recognizes the significance of those privileges is "How can I be sure that I am a child of God and those privileges are mine?" Or, "What are the evidences that I am a child of God?"

In verses 14-28, Paul gives us four evidences of one being a child of God. Last time we looked at the first three and only part of the fourth evidence that one is a child of God. The first three were that our lives reveal that we are:

A. Lead by the Spirit of God.B. Aroused from the heart to pray, "Abba, Father."C. Our spirit testifies to the spirit of God.

Our spirit testifies to the reality of the spirit of God doing something in our lives. This is not something objective that you can see or touch, but very subjective. Inside, you know for the first time in your life, that you and God are at peace and that He is involved in your life.

And finally, where we left off last time, we realize that there is a connection between suffering and glory. Paul gives us three illustrations that demonstrate the reality of this connection between suffering and glory. 

The first illustration was the suffering that the creation itself experiences and the glory that is to come when the new world comes.

The second illustration was the reality that we as human being experience physically as our bodies get older and soulishly in our relationships with each other. There is a deep sense within that there has to be something better for us.

The third illustration of the connection between suffering and glory is seen in the suffering or the "groaning" that the Holy Spirit goes through on the part of every child of God, as seen in verses 26-28. Paul explains in these verses, "And in the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we should, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words; and He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints [believers like you and me, not somebody placed in an air-tight glass vault somewhere] according to the will of God."

So many times we don't know how to pray. When we or our friends are in the midst of trouble, or have been victimized by something even as horrible as a bombing, our hearts ache and we just don't know what to pray for. We are confused because we don't see any rhyme or reason to what has happened. It is at times like this, that there is a deep groaning going on down in our spirits, and that groaning comes from the Holy Spirit, who is joined with our spirit, praying to the Father.

That term, "helps" that Paul uses in verse 26, is a word made up of three different words. The first two words are prepositions, "along side" and "bears up". These are attached to the verb "take". Hence, the idea is that the Holy Spirit comes alongside, lifts us up, hurts and all, and takes us and our concerns directly to the Father. The Holy Spirit within us does not just give us armchair advice. He rolls up His sleeves and helps us and intercedes for us by telling the Father our hurts and asking on our behalf for exactly what we need.

And notice how personal the Holy Spirit gets. He truly identifies with our pain, because even the Holy Spirit shares our grief and "groans" in a fashion that is unexplainable by words. This word "groan" has been used in this section 3 different times. It's a word that speaks of a heavy awareness of how wrong this life is or how unjust an occasion may be in this fallen world.

If we are ever going to truly communicate with someone else how we really feel about something and sense that that other person truly hears us, that other person must empathize with what we are feeling. Here, Paul is saying, that the Holy Spirit empathizes with the hurt you are feeling and with that empathy goes straight to the Father and asks on our behalf for what's best for us.

And pay close attention to what the Spirit prays for in these next verses. Too many people separate verse 27 from verses 28-29 and miss the whole point of this section and what the Spirit prays for. Paul tells us in verse 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." Note, Paul doesn't say that everything that happens to us is good in the sense of good being the opposite of evil. This term for "good" does not mean that everything, including things like rape or other forms of injustice or evil are somehow all of a sudden good or right or honorable or just. Evil is always evil. 

The term used here for "good" is a word that means "worthwhile or productive" versus worthless or vain. Hence, since we know who God is, Paul is saying to us here, that God uses even the wrongs we suffer, like bombings, here in this fallen world to produce something worthwhile in our lives today and in the future. God doesn't even allow the pain we suffer to be wasted. He uses it all to produce something worthwhile in our lives.

When we put verse 28, together with the previous verse, Paul is telling us that the Spirit of God, in concert with the mind or will of God, has been praying for exactly what is happening to us, knowing that all along this calamity or pressure will bring to our lives experiences we need to grow up and mature.

Tragedies or injustices do not happen by accident. Sometimes these painful experiences happen because the Spirit which is in you has prayed and asked the Father to allow them to happen because you or someone near you needs this difficulty to produce something good or permanently productive in their lives. 

This past year, I must tell you I wrestled with one of the ballot measures we were to vote on, regarding physician assisted death. I wrestled with it because I have seen the pain of those dying a slow painful death. I've listened to the verbal and emotional cries of their family members and friends. I've watched as the medical bills have caused financial ruin, and I have cried out to God, "There has to be a better way!"

These verses and others have taught me a lot about that ballot measure and about pain and suffering. They have taught me things that I don't want to hear or even obey, but they are truth and right and to be obeyed.

We in this country are too soft and afraid concerning the subject of pain or poverty. We have enjoyed health and wealth for so many years in this country that we think we deserve it and to have anything less is wrong. But these verses and others teach me that God may cause me to suffer a painful and financially ruinous death for the growth and maturity of my family members. And for me, to deliberately assist someone else's death, something only God has the right to do, is wrong. As much as I want to alleviate all pain and what I may consider unnecessary suffering and a waste of money, God says I have no right to do. 

I may be confused and never understand why he has allowed my dear sweet mother-in-law to be tortured until she dies with Alzheimer’s, but I cannot put her to death and still be obedient to God. God is doing a work in our family's life that He knows that He could not do any other way, than what He is presently doing. Who am I, to question the almighty, all knowing, and all loving God? Who am I to take matters into my own hands, and do what is wrong, simply because I want to alleviate what I consider not to be necessary pain or discomfort?

God has a purpose for allowing pain and suffering to continue and I am not to short circuit His purposes. When we get angry or upset with God or fearful concerning the hand he has dealt us or a loved one, we have gotten off at the wrong exit. We have believed a lie, for Paul says, "we know that God causes all things to work together for good..." God's character never changes. He never does anything that is not loving or in our best interest. He never makes a mistake nor has anything caught Him off guard that He could not have prevented. We may not understand what He is doing or how He could allow such a horrible event like the bombing.  But as Isaiah the prophet tells us, "His thoughts are not our thoughts; His ways are not our ways."

That's hard to accept and handle though, isn't? But the Holy Spirit is right there, as we focus on God's character to bring peace to our hearts, even if we don't understand, for now. Someday we will. But for now, we are called to trust our Sovereign Father to meet our every need. There is no such thing as bad or good luck; only doors of opportunity that no man opens or closes; only God can do that.

But what are the purposes of these painful experiences. What is God's goal in allowing suffering to touch our lives? Paul, in verses 29-30 goes on to tell us what His universal purpose is for His children. In these verses, Paul is going to cause us to take a few steps backwards and to get God's perspective on life. Paul will point to five steps that every child of God must take as we journey along in our pilgrimage with God. If you wish, you can look at the first and last steps to this spiritual pilgrimage as two book ends that cover all of eternity as it concerns the child of God's life. Paul writes, in verse 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; and whom He predestined, these He also called; and whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified."

At the very outset, we must get straight Paul's purpose for penning these verses. It is not Paul's purpose, at this point, to discuss the question of why some people believe in Jesus Christ and why others do not. That question will be dealt with in Chapters 9-10. His purpose here is to give us the correct perspective, the eternal perspective as to how suffering works in a believer's life, which is being guided by the hand of a sovereign God.

The first step in the process of God fulfilling His eternal plan as far as it regards the believers life, according to verse 29 is that God foreknew us. He knew in eternity past, long before we were ever born, that we would exist and become intimately related to God.

There is a certain line of teaching that attempts to explain this concept of "foreknowledge" as God looking down the corridor of time and saw that we would believe in Christ and therefore, He chose us to be part of His elect children because of what we were going to do. But as I said earlier, the purpose of these verses is not to discuss the question of election. It is not about WHAT God foreknew, but who He foreknew.

Furthermore, you will notice with each of the five steps, which are based upon five verbs, God is the subject of the doing of all 5 verbs, not us. These verses are not emphasizing what we are suppose to do or what role we play in this process, but what God is doing behind the scenes that we don't see.

The term "foreknow" deals with the question of one's existence. Paul is simply telling us here, that from all of the human beings that were created and out of all the potential human beings that could have been formed from the zillions of sperm and ovum that never became a human being, that God knew that you and I would exist and that we would become intimately related to Him as part of His family.

To go any further in trying to explain this term and all that it implies is pure conjecture. Paul's sole point is that from eternity past, God knew that each believer would exist and would be intimately related to Him.

The next step in our spiritual pilgrimage is that God "PREDESTINED" that some human beings were going to be a part of this process making us God's children. This term, "predestination" explains a goal or destination of a believer. The literal word means to "mark out before hand". God marked out the boundaries of our lives beforehand. And as this verse tells us these boundaries would lead us eventually to the goal of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. God is taking everything, every event both good and evil that comes into our lives to conform us to the character of Christ.

Now, some have mistakenly defined predestination to mean that God has chosen some people to go to hell and some to go to heaven. But the facts of scripture are that every time this term is used, it is only used to describe what God has planned for the believer. It is never used in scripture to describe God planning or electing to send some of His creation into eternal damnation. Those who will spend eternity separated from God, the scripture clearly says will be damned because of their own refusal to trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

Somewhere along the line, we in this country have bought into the idea that it was God's primary purpose to make us happy in life and our purpose is to pursue happiness. But that isn't what the scriptures teach. Certainly, God is interested in our happiness, but that is not His primary concern for us now. His primary concern is for our character to be change---for us to be made holy. And when the scriptures talk about us being made holy they teach us two things: first, that becoming children of God, we have been set apart and predestined for a unique purpose of God and we are to fit into that purpose. And secondly, that we be made wholey, or complete, functioning even in this life as God intended us to function physically, emotionally and spiritually through the power of Jesus Christ being joined to our spirits.

I can tell you by simply looking out at this audience, that heaven is certainly going to be full of characters! And yet, all of us will retain our personality and individuality. But our basic fundamental character will be loving, gracious, gentle, wholesome...like Jesus.

Now, I want you to notice that thus far, there is no inkling of our participation in this process. Everything up to here has been concerned with God's thinking and God's will. But in step three, here is where God's plan engages history and we respond to His drawing us to Himself and others observe the process of our lives being changed. Now, how this mystery and wonder of God's calling a person begins, I cannot explain. All I know is that it happens.

The fourth step of this process is that those whom God called He, “JUSTIFIED”, meaning that because of what Jesus Christ has done for us who have responded to the call and have put our trust in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, we have been fully accepted and approved by God, and hence have been given a worth. There is nothing we can add to what God has already done through Christ, by way of making us more approved or accepted or loved by God.

The fifth and final step of this process is that we are “GLORIFIED”. And by that, the scriptures mean the completion of the redeeming process. 

[CIRCLES] When we were born again, it was only our spirits that had the flesh removed from them and totally regenerated. But either after our death or when Jesus comes again, which is ever first, the rest of the process will be complete, we will have been glorified. Sin or this propensity to do exactly what God does not want us to do, will be forever removed from our being. We will be like Adam and Eve before the Fall, except we will never have to worry about falling away from God again. Jesus is our savior forever. When we are glorified, the process of being conformed to His image will be complete. We will have our resurrection bodies. Paul calls that point in history, in verse 19, "the revelation of the sons of God."

This fifth and final step is the only step that is not completed yet. However, notice how Paul speaks of it as something done in the past. That is deliberate in Paul's part. He speaks of it as already being done because it guaranteed by God to be finished. And when God guarantees something, it's as good as done.

Notice something else. Paul does not include in this process the part with which we all have the most difficulty, that is sanctification, that is that step which calls us to our responsibility to cooperate with and obey His spirit. Paul deliberately leaves out sanctification because his whole point is to show us what God is doing, apart from us. When it comes to us spending eternity with God and being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, God is ultimately in charge from beginning to end.

Notice that God does not fumble one life. Whomever he foreknew, that person eventually reaches the goal of being glorified or conformed into the image of Christ. Not one child of God fails to complete the process or loses His salvation. If you were foreknown, it is impossible not to eventually be glorified. Why? Because God's the one who is making it happen.

To what degree we enjoy the process of being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ, right here and now; the degree to which our lives count for something significantly and eternally important, the degree to which our lives are blessed does depend upon us; but not the fact that we reach being conformed to His image.

When we get to heaven, every believer will have a different story to tell as to how God worked in his or her life to bring us to a state of completion. Because we live in a fallen world, we will each have stories to relate concerning the pain, suffering, injustice and sorrow; the sin, death, tears, disappointment, failure and forgiveness we have each experienced that brought us to maturity. But through it all, God's purposes will prevail and we will arrive.

There are three applications I want to direct your attention to this morning, even though I could present you with 10. I believe that these three are the major ones that Paul intended us to understand from this portion of scripture.

The first is that we must recognize that we are living in a fallen world. As a result of that, even if we are God's children, and we are walking closely with Him, suffering makes up a part of our lives as we move through God’s process from justification to glorification. 

To think that suffering is something out of the ordinary or unusual for our lives will only set us up for major disappoint. And when suffering happens, it doesn't mean that God has turned his back on us. Rather, we can view it as an opportunity that the Lord wants to take to continue the maturing process in our lives.

Secondly, as we face pressures, tragedies, disappoints, these verses, verses 14-30 tell us that the greater the groan, the greater the glory that is being produced in our lives. Most often, the deeper the pain, the greater the work of us being conformed to the image of Jesus Christ is taking place. And the more that the Lord will be able to use our lives for His purposes and the closer and more intimate we will get to know Him.

Finally, when those difficult times come, and our spirit is to weak and we are confused, that's when we will discover the stronger His support is for our lives. We will develop, through these times a track record of God's faithfulness, that since He enables us to bear the burdens of the past, He will enable us to bear the burdens of the future. This enables us to walk into the future with confidence.

We fear and dislike suffering because as humans, we tend to focus with our limited knowledge on only what appears to be immediately beneficial. But God, who is unlimited in His knowledge focuses on our ultimate and best interests. Therefore, God does not hesitate to use painful circumstances to produce good things in our lives or those lives around us who watch our suffering. Hence, His promise, that "all things work together for good" is to be claimed not ignored by every believer.

At this point, we are on over load, so why don't we stop and turn to our heavenly Father and pray correctly in response to what we have seen in His word. “Father, we are in awe that You have known us from the beginning of time. We confess that we don't fully understand what that really means. You alone are God and we accept Your purpose for our lives to be conformed to Your image during times of trouble. Thank You for the hope this gives me and the assurance that in all things You work for good. We reject the lies that fill our minds that we must not be Christians or walking closely with you if bad things happen to us or the one's we love. We reject the lie that You have forsaken us during hard times and that there is no hope. We chose to assume our responsibility to allow You to fulfill Your purpose in our lives, to conform us to Your image.”

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