Reflection: All things for Good – Romans 8:28

by Rev Peter Lockhart

In recent decades, the Western world has seen the emergence of Positive Psychology and a growing focus on wellbeing. There is much in these approaches to human flourishing that can resonate with Christian faith. Yet they can also become highly individualistic, even drifting into a kind of narcissism when they lose sight of the common good.

The wisdom of Paul’s letter to the Romans stands in contrast to such approaches when he writes, “We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.”

Taken on their own, Paul’s words “all things work together for good” might be misunderstood to mean that if we love God, our lives will be easy, free from suffering, and filled only with joy. Such an interpretation can sound a little like some personal and organisational change approaches, where the emphasis falls on focusing on the positive and discouraging anything that sounds negative.

Yet Paul’s letter to the Romans is not written in denial of difficulty. It faces hard realities: universal sin, suffering, persecution, and division. These realities are held together with Paul’s deep conviction in the unconditional grace of God revealed in and through Jesus Christ.

Paul’s claim about “good” follows verses that speak of the sufferings of this present time, the groaning of creation, hope in what we do not yet see, and the need for the Holy Spirit to intercede because we do not know how to pray as we ought. In the words that follow, Paul also moves into the difficult concepts of foreknowledge and predestination.

Paul does not avoid the possibility of suffering or persecution. Instead, he names it directly: “Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?”

This means that when we consider “the good” Paul is referring to, our eyes are drawn beyond comfort, success, health, or wealth. The good is found in our union with God in and through Christ, and in the sustaining power of that union whatever our present experience may be. A triumphalism that moves too quickly to identify God’s goodness with ease or prosperity misses the depth of Paul’s witness.

Paul’s faith reflects this deeper confidence in his well-known declaration: “For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

In his letter, Paul invites us to lift our eyes beyond our current circumstances and to lean more deeply into the loving presence of God, shared with us through the Holy Spirit and revealed in Christ. This is both challenge and comfort: we are not promised lives untouched by suffering, but we are promised that suffering and death will not have the final word.