Watch as Len Finn opens Romans 8:29-30, and shows us the abounding grace of the Gospel.
“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 among many brothers. And those whom he predestined he also called, and those whom he called he also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.” Romans 8:29-30
The Purpose of Your Life
The purpose of your life is to set the stage for making you into a real human being – a real one, not the broken, fractured knock-off one you are now, but a true human being shaped in the image of God’s Son – Jesus Christ. God is making you into the true son or daughter of God, that God envisioned and loved before the beginning of time. And even more, the one God beholds face-to-face in a reality that for us is in the future, but for God is as real and tangible as this present moment is for you.
Cross-Shaped
If the purpose of your life is to shape you into Christ, then it makes sense that your life will be cross-shaped. The christian life involves suffering, being humbled, and dying to little and big things in your life. It involves forgiving others when it hurts, and being self-sacrificing when you have nothing left to give. For the Christian, Jesus’ story becomes your story. Just as the glorified and risen Jesus only appears after the suffering of the cross and the cold, dark tomb, likewise, the glorified you in all of its true glorious humanity only appears after your cross and tomb.
The Good
We do not know what ‘the good’ is instinctively. When the Bible promises good to you, it is not just promising some general abstract notion of good, it’s not leaving the definition up to you. If the good was just any good, than Christians would never get sick or die. They’d never watch loved-ones suffer and nothing bad would ever happen to them. When Paul says that ‘all thing work together for good for those who love God’ he has something very specific in mind. The good promised to you, is that God has predestined you to be conformed – made into the same shape, as the image of His Son – Jesus. You will be shaped to have His same trust in the Father. You will have His same love for the Father. You will have His humble-confidence, self-sacrificial compassion, and generosity. In short, you will have all of His goodness. That’s ‘the good’ that God has decided to be yours.
History is Christ-Centred
News Flash – you are not the centre of the universe. You are not the centre of history and creation. Jesus is. All of history has a purpose, it all exists that Christ might be the firstborn among brothers. That’s history’s purpose. History is Christ-centred. History is Christ-purposed. History is not about you, but, at the same time, it is all about gathering you and me up into that purpose.
Creating a Family
God is creating a family. Your salvation is not firstly for you – your salvation is chiefly about bringing glory to Jesus, so that He might be the firstborn among many brothers, of whom you are one. Your redemption is not specifically about you, it’s about Jesus firstly, and then it’s about His many brothers and sisters, which happens to include you. And that means there’s no such thing as the lone Christian. You are who you are, as a Christian, not just singularly in Christ, but always with your brothers and sisters, also in Christ. This should humble you and impress upon the importance of your church-family. Your church-family, those sitting around you, are the physical manifestation, in your life right now, of Christ’s family, throughout all time and space. Let this truth reshape your thinking around your role in their lives, and their role in your life.
History is Cross-Shaped
If history is Christ-purposesed, then logically it’s also Christ-shaped. And that means it’s cross-shaped. The groaning and pains of history point us to the cross. But your groaning, cross-shaped lives, is what ultimately gives birth to you, to the real being that is you in the image of Jesus Christ. The places you have probably grown most in your faith have been the valleys – the places of suffering and need – the places where you have been stripped of things that you thought gave you confidence and security, and were left solely to trust in God’s mercy, love and goodness in your life. We tend to grow when our lives start to groan.
Being Christ to One Another
Nothing will teach you to pray so much as deep suffering and need. But it isn’t just prayer that brings you growth in the groaning – it is your brothers and sisters in Christ. When you are suffering, they are the ones who will be Christ to you. They will suffer alongside you, weep with you and sacrifice for you. When your brother or sister is suffering, you are the one who will, or should, be Christ to them. It’s not about being nice or people thinking that you are nice. The point of church family isn’t niceness – it’s about being Christ to one another. Every brother and sister around you is a living, walking miracle, a rescued sinner, whose very existence points to the hope you have in Christ – to His work on the cross and to the love of the Father.
Swallowed Up in God’s Purpose
History has a purpose in Jesus and you are a part of it. That purpose is bigger than anything you are going through and anything you will ever go through. God’s purpose swallows up everything. However not good something is for you, it is ultimately being made to serve what is truly good – you being conformed to Christ – you becoming a true, whole, unbroken son or daughter of God.
Your Future is all Mapped Out
The Apostle Paul doesn’t just want you to rest in hope, he wants you to be confident and assured. Salvation is all God’s doing. The you God foreknew and fore-loved is a dead ringer for Jesus. When God imagined you, He imagined you conformed to the image of His Son and fell in love. For those who God loves, He has already decided for them. He has your future all mapped out. It may seem offensive to you that God arbitrarily chooses people regardless of their say in the matter. But that is what Romans 8:29-30 is telling us, and it makes sense because of who God is and what He is like. The God of the Bible does not love half-heartedly. He’s not wishy-washy about love. Again and again and again He is described as a jealous God. Those whom God loves, He loves fiercely, passionately and possessively. You may not want that in your next boyfriend, but when you’re talking about your relationship with the Almighty, perfectly good and loving God of the Universe – you want that. You want a God who will never let you go. You want a jealous, loving God who isn’t going to leave matters up to you. You want a God who loves you too much to let you make choices with bad permanent consequences. You want a God who is more interested in being with you for all eternity than in your free-will and pride.
God has always loved you. He has decided you will be His son or daughter, and he has called you, dragged you, back to Him. Because of Romans 8:1, you can look back on your past and know that the court of God your slate is clean. You are guiltless. You have nothing to fear about your past.
Glorified
Those whom God calls and justifies, He also glorifies. If there is no fear about your past, then the only better news, is that there is only hope about your future. The assurance of all this is that this is all God’s will, determining and doing. You can be confident because it is already done. The word ‘glorified’, in this passage, is in the same tense as all of the others. Paul is talking about our glorification as though it has already happened. Now if you tell your spouse that your glorification has already happened, they will tell you that you are wrong. So what’s Paul talking about here?
Viewing Time and History
Moderns tend to look at the world and time as ours to make. That’s not how Ancient people viewed things. Ancient people thought time and history was more like a book that was already written, and you walk through it discovering what happens next. Moderns read Genesis chapter 1 as the beginning of time. But the early church often reads Genesis 1 as all of time. God wasn’t just creating a place, but actually creating a history. For them, Genesis 1 then works like a summary statement at the beginning of the Bible.
We sees echoes of this in John’s gospel. Man was created on the sixth day. In John 19, when Pilate presents Jesus to the crowd to be crucified he says, ‘Behold the man.’ What day is it? Friday. Friday is the sixth day. John is telling us that this is the real sixth day of creation, because here is the creation of the first real human being – the firstborn among many brothers. Day 6 wasn’t back there for them – it is here in 1st century Jerusalem.
The Beautiful Picture
Why is this interesting? Because the beautiful picture that Paul is painting in Romans 8:30, where he is describing you as already glorified, becomes more vivid when you imagine it through that ancient view of history. We see a picture of a history that has already been fully written by God – a history where every moment through all of time is somehow fully present and alive to God at all times. This means that no matter what you see with your eyes right now, there already exists in creation a fully glorified, truly human you – shaped in the image of Christ – known by God and loved by God. Although unseen by you, because it’s in your future, this you is 100% present to God. Paul can talk about your being glorified as a past doing of God because, in the real future, God has already glorified you. He has made you after the image of you He fell in love with before the beginning of creation – the image of you in Jesus.
Making Sense of Your Life
Just as the resurrection is what makes sense of the cross, so it will be when your present moments catch up to your future. Your future will make sense of these present moments – the good and the seemingly bad. Then you will really know that everything has worked together for our good and His glory.
