No and yes. Let's eat.
Introduction and Two Questions Posed
Is God the author of sin? No. And does my sin work out for my good if I'm a believer? Yes.
So those are difficult questions. I was assigned this by Reverend James P. Von Butler Haven. It's a really good question, and the confession addresses this in chapter three, paragraph 1B, and we'll look at that in a second.
Is God the author of sin, and does my sin work out for my good? I think I'll be able to get to both questions. But in order to answer the first question, I wanna go back to 2 London 3.1, I will go back to 3.1B, A is the scope of God's decree whatsoever comes to pass. B is the qualification concerning God's decree, in these words, yet so as thereby, so God has decreed whatsoever comes to pass, yet, here's the qualification, so as thereby is God neither the author of sin, nor hath fellowship with any therein,
God's Decree and Human Liberty
nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established. We'll try to work our way, not through all the language there, but the major elements of that, and some texts as well. So to answer the first question, we'll go there, and then to answer the second question, we'll go to Romans chapter 8, verse 28. But prior to that, I'd like to frame this lecture.
Help me not put my glasses on, because David's going to give me lip tonight about me putting my glasses off and on, so I'm going to try not to use them. If you saw the font size I'm using, you're saying, why in the world are you putting your glasses on? It's an 18 font. Jim uses an 8.
Wow. So prior to looking at these questions and the answers to them, I'd like to frame this lecture or contextualize it, utilizing a quote from an article written by James Dalzell. This article is in the Journal of International Reform Baptist Seminary 2019. It's on actually chapter five.
It was part of a lecture he delivered at our conference one year. He says this. I think it sets up the questions very well.
Framing the Problem
If God is the one who immutably decrees the end from the beginning, accomplishing all his good pleasure and working all things after the counsel of his will. It would seem that one of two things results. Either rational creatures, angels are men, are not sufficiently free so as to establish their moral culpability. If they're not free in that sense, how can God hold them accountable?
How can they be guilty? Or God is somehow complicit in the evil of fallen angels and humans. So either they're not free or God must be either the author of sin in some sense or have fellowship with those in sin. So first question, is God the author of sin?
No. But I have to work our way through that. So it's at this point, after the scope of the decree is stated in 3.1a, God hath decreed in himself whatsoever comes to pass, it's at that point when you say things like that, people often object. Does not this make God the author of sin?
Does not this make God the doer of evil? Or are we, you know, puppets or robots? You know, nobody effectually called goes like this, right? You don't sit there going, I am being effectually called, therefore, since I'm being effectually called, I was predestined.
And if I was, since I'm being effectually called, and I was therefore predestined, I was therefore foreknown by God. I know what's happening to me. God is executing his decree of effectual calling in my soul right now. do that, right? We experience that work in us, and it effects, causes a change in us, and we're made willing to come to Christ.
But we're not puppets. We are likened unto clay, and is it maggots? Man, that maggot? Or is that just John Gershner?
I think there's a text. Yeah, yeah. So I got a story about John Gershwer. One time he was lecturing on total depravity.
He says, man, man is a vicious sinner. Man is horrible. Man is dark. Man is wicked.
Man is evil. Man is, you know, whatever. And some lady during the Q and A says, I demand that you retract that statement. Oh, he said, men are like rats.
And the lady said, I demand that you retract that statement. Men are not like rats, they're created in the image of God. He says, yes, but they're fallen. You're right, I retract it.
They're worse than rats. Anyway, back to the lecture. Puppets, we're not puppets.
Three-Fold Qualification of the Decree
So what's the use in preaching the gospel or doing anything for that matter if God has already settled everything in this so-called comprehensive decree? So I want you to feel that. So sometimes sensing this objection, the confession makes a three-fold qualification to the scope, the universal scope, the comprehensive scope of the decree. It's a three-fold qualification.
This qualification concerns God first, man second, and second causes. And I'm not sure if we're going to get through all this, but the qualification concerning God is seen in these words. Yet so as thereby the decree, yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor have fellowship with any therein. So the confession clearly, categorically, explicitly denies that God is either the author of sin, we'll look at what that means in a moment, or has fellowship with sin, and rightly so.
The Bible's pretty clear, God who cannot lie. Lying is a sin, therefore God cannot sin. The confession asserts that God is not the author of sin. So we have to ask the next question, what does the confession mean by the words, the author of sin?
So I'm gonna look at sin first and then I'll look at author.
Defining Sin as Privation
I take sin here as a deformity. I understand sin to be a privation, a lack of something good where good ought to be, okay? So sin isn't a space-extending thing created by God. I know it's weird.
First time I heard that, I'm going, what? Sin's a thing. Follow me around. You'll see that it's a thing.
But I think it's better to say, no, it's not a space-extending entity or thing created, because it'd have to be a creature, and therefore the creator of it would have to be God, and that's kind of weird. If it's a privation, if something good ought to be there, and it's not there, it's a privation, it's a lack of something, then we'd have to call it, because God created Adam and Eve perfect or mature in his image without sin, we'd have to say a deformity came upon human nature by virtue of the violation of the covenant of works, and that's what we confess, right? So a deformity came upon human nature. It was threatened by God that it would come upon Adam when he ate.
By the way, who ate first? Adam or Eve? Don't we know the answer? Eve.
Did deformity come upon Eve's human nature upon the taking, eating of the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil? No. Did deformity come upon Adam when he ate? Yes.
Why? He was the federal head. And did deformity come upon Eve once Adam took? Yes. by virtue of God's threatening, God's judgment in execution upon man for his sin.
So he lacked something by virtue of the divine judgment that came upon him. By the way, did the fruit have medicinal power? Like he ate it, and if you could see, sin just started going down all the way to the bottom of his toes. Was it pharmaceutical?
That's what Turin, I think, calls it, calls that view. No, I don't think God gave the fruit some sort of creaturely power to alter the created state of man's soul. I think it was a divine judgment. God took something, some sort of ability from Adam that's good, and he ought to have it, but God said, on the day that you eat from it, you shall surely die.
So this is divine judgment. So I take sin to be a lack of something good where good ought to be, and I take author, the author of sin. Is God the author of sin?
Defining the Author of Sin
I take author as an agent who acts according to its nature. An author of sin lacks something good, and an author of sin acts in a deformed state from a form of existence that has issues, I have has issues in quotes. You're deformed, especially some of you. I'm deformed.
So these things being so, defining sin as a privation, an author as an agent who acts according to its nature, these things being so, it becomes clearer, I think, that God cannot be the author of sin, nor can he have fellowship with any therein. God cannot be an agent who lacks something good and in that state acts, right? Because he wouldn't be God. God is essentially good, that's just what he is, the goodest of beings.
He can't lose some aspect of his goodness and still be immutable, right? He would have changed. So God cannot be an agent who lacks something good, because he wouldn't be God, and in that state acts. That's what it would take for God to be the author of sin, an acting agent, acting from a deformed nature.
How many want to say that of God? Four, five, six, seven, wow. Nobody said that.
God as Efficient Cause, Not Formal Cause
However, God can be and is the primary cause of the sinner's life, movement, and being. Remember I said Acts 17, this is Acts 17, 28. I do have to put my glasses on because I wrote the text in here. For in him we live and move and have our being.
So this makes God the efficient cause of a sinner's action, God has to be causing the life, the movement and being of the sinner while he's sinning. So God can be the efficient cause of a sinner's action, but not the formal cause of his action. So the formal cause of a sinner's sinful action is his deformed human nature. That sinner's act comes from God.
How sinners act is in accord with their created, and in this case, fallen nature. Dolezal again, by the way, anything Dolezal says good, he's depending on me for that, it's obvious. What did they say, that guy's stupid, smart? He asked this question, how is God, not the author of evil, if he is the one from whom every moral agent derives its movement when it sins.
See, here's what I'm saying. This created cause, creatures, on a does something a fallen creature does, acts from his nature, and his nature, being fallen, is deformed. There ought to be goodness there, it was there from the beginning, but it's not because of the sin of Adam, and original sin and imputation of all that. God upholds us as we're sinning, he's doing the divine things that the first cause does with his creatures, and then we're doing the sinful things that the second causes do, being upheld, and our ability to move is ultimately coming from him, not us, how is it then that God is not somehow, someway, the author of sin?
Let me read the Dolezal quote again. How is God not the author of evil if he is the one from whom every moral agent derives its movement when it sins, its ability to make a choice, let's say. Here's his answer. And it's pretty good.
I was proud of James when I read this. Moral evil follows from the lack of a form of goodness in a subject's will where such good is morally expected of him or her. He continues, and this lack of good form is precisely a lack in the creature and not in God, who is goodness itself. It would only be a privation and so evil in God if God were under natural obligation to move the will of every creature to every good required of it.
And then he closes with this. He is under no such obligation. Remember I said God doesn't owe us being, and once we be, he doesn't owe us well-being. We're talking about this side, the fall into sin.
I don't even wanna begin to try to discuss how in the world, with no privation, did Adam sin? I don't know, whoever's gonna deal with that chapter can dive into that one. I think that's, on the horizontal level, that's the biggest mystery. But we're talking about us now.
God is not the author of evil, evil outcomes, because there's no lack of good in him. He does not do the evil thing, excuse me, due to deformity in him. I had to put my glasses on because I wrote a note in there and I couldn't see it. Dolezal again.
The creature's deformity alone provides the formal reason for the evil of any action. So we can say this, that's unquote, if God does not determine to produce in a sinner the ability to act contrary to his, in this case, fallen nature, in the words of Dolezal, there is nothing evil positively produced by God when he withholds any form of good from the creature's will or action. Could God have effected, or caused, effected, my soul in such a way that I didn't sin last night or whatever. Yeah, does he owe me that?
No. So God is not the author of sin because he is not the personal deformed agent who does not do what it ought to do or does what it ought not to do. So we have to conclude something like this, that God has no has so designed things that he can decree all things whatsoever comes to pass and yet not be held personally liable for the authoring of sin. No, correct me if I'm wrong, Dr.
Scheider. Is that? Sorry, fell off. I won't make any comments about that.
Is that something like compatibilism? God has determined things to be in such a way as that there is a comprehensive decree, and he's absolutely sovereign in what he has decreed, and yet man has liberty. Man is able to choose according to his nature, but we're dealing with fallen nature now, so I'm saying it's deformed, it's all messed up, and God doesn't owe us effective willing that changes us and gives us the ability to do and to will for his good pleasure, Philippians 2.13. He does that sometimes and it's wonderful.
By the way, will there be a time when all we are doing is we are agents acting according to our natures that aren't deformed? What in the world is that going to be like? You can't say, well, it's like last Tuesday. You should have seen me.
I was formally deformed, but not experientially deformed. How are we going to make that distinction? I had a pretty good day. I was floating six inches off the ground.
You could see my wings and my halo. That's over eschatologizing. the inter-advental period. We're not sinless. We have remaining corruption.
Our deformities are not all out of us. But you know what's gonna happen? Someday, by virtue of the power that he is able to subject all things to himself, he's gonna execute that power, terminating on our souls and bodies, bringing our souls and bodies back together in a non-deformed state. actually in a better state than the original state of Adam because we can't fall from it. That's pretty good news.
Back to the... Argument here, what is it? If God does not determine to produce in a sinner the ability to act contrary to his, in this case, fallen nature, in the words of Dolezal, there is nothing evil positively produced by God when he withholds any form of good from the creature's will or action, unquote. So God is not the author of sin because he is not the personal deformed agent who does, does not do what he ought to do, or does do what he ought not to do.
So we have to conclude that God has so designed things, here it is. that he can decree all things whatsoever comes to pass and yet not be held personally liable for the authoring of sin. God has decreed all things whatsoever come to pass, including sin, but God is not a personal agent committing sin. So this is where I think, and if I'm wrong, don't correct me publicly, do it privately. I think this is where theologians often distinguish between something I mentioned before, God's effective will and God's permissive will.
I remember the first time I read that, I think I said that the first time. I just didn't like that. I was a new Calvinist. It was probably in Burkhoff or something, because we used Burkhoff as our systematic theology text at the Master's Seminary in 1986.
And we read Bovink's Doctrine of God, translated by William Hendrickson. It was all way over my head. But I was going Calvinism, Calvinism, by my second semester. I was a five-point Calvinist.
I read this permissive will. Like, what is that? Are you a Molinist? Somebody text me, by the way, and called me a Molinist.
That was listening to the, I'm kidding, they didn't do that. If you know what that means, you know I talked about it. If you don't know what it means, don't worry about it. Well, worry about it, but worry about it later.
Effective Will and Permissive Will
God's effective will and God's permissive will. God has decreed to do certain things effectively, that is, caused directly by his divine power, devoid of creaturely agencies or operations, like the effectual call, that is, the effective will of God in execution. We don't say, you know what, could you effectually call me? Neither do we say, I'm coming to Jesus even though I'm not effectually called.
God causes something to happen to our souls. And then we come most freely being made willing by His grace, right? So creation ex nihilo is God's effective will. Regeneration is another example of God's effective will.
But what is this thing called the permissive will, the thing that I used to not like? Here's, I think it's something like this. That God does not personally effect all that he wills, but he does permit creatures to do certain things as creatures to bring about his will. In other words, he can and does will things to be done, but in distinct ways.
God wills things to be done in distinct ways. God's willing to cause the effectual call to terminate on your soul is one thing, and God's willing, for instance, in Acts 2.23, listen to this, being delivered by the determined purpose and foreknowledge of God, and then it says, taken by lawless hands, crucified and put to death. Acts 4.27.28, we read, for truly your holy servant, Jesus, whom you anointed, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel were gathered together to do whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done. So they killed the Son of God incarnate according to whatever your hand and your purpose determined before to be done.
So we could say this, the murder of Jesus is within the scope of God's decree. True? Yes. There were active creaturely agents who caused his death, being upheld by God all the while.
God didn't change their hearts so that they would not do that. He permitted them to do what they did. But their actions as creaturely agents were only possible because in God we live and move and have our being. So if you ever thought of basically what middle knowledge is, or what Molinism as I understand it, and I could be wrong about this, is that there are some things in our life that God really doesn't decree.
He decrees big things like for the earth to be, and for the sun to be, and for the moon to be, and all that stuff. But when it comes to your choice concerning Christ and the gospel, he just leaves that to you, and he doesn't know which way you're gonna go. But when you go, then he knows, something like that. We're saying, no, that's not what happens here.
There's no choice we make where the primary cause, God, isn't doing God things. There's no choice we make where God is not being God, the agent of providence. Sometimes theologians call this concurrence. I remember my beloved systematic theology professor, Mark Mueller, he says, within the causal nexus of reality, There is concurrence between God, the first cause, and us, creatures, second causes.
And I'm going, what in the world does that mean? I didn't know what it meant.
The Doctrine of Concurrence
To concurrence is two agents acting according to their nature simultaneously. Is it true that God is just doing God things while I'm doing man things? No, God doesn't do God things while I do man things. Then what does he do?
He is the agent, divine agent, who does what he does, given creation and providence according to his decree, while we're doing the creaturely things, things that he has decreed. So concurrence, God and creatures act in the same events, but not in the same ways in those events. The death of Jesus is a clear, in the two texts I just referenced, Acts 2, 23, Acts 4, 27, and 28. And did somebody, Dr.
Renahan mentioned, you meant it for evil, but God meant it, the evil act that they committed against Joseph, for good. By the way, is Joseph somehow like Jesus a little there? I think so. Is Joseph a type of the Lord Jesus?
I think so. He had an evil act done to him by men, and yet God had determined the act, the death of Christ, for the salvation of an innumerable host of sinners. Two operators are operating at the same time in the same event, though each acting according to their nature doing the things they do by virtue of their natures. God, therefore, gives power for man to live, to move, and to be.
He is concurrently acting in a divine manner during every evil act of man." Let that one sink in. Why aren't we in hell? Was that like Jim Butler? Oh, the first thing I should have done is take off my jacket, right?
Oh, I'm not in your pulpit. I'll do it Sunday. But can't you hear Pastor Butler say, why aren't we in hell if God is upholding us in the very act of sin? He's doing that which the primary cause does, and I'm doing the thing that the secondary cause does.
God has decreed other things than just our sins. Like the remedy for our sin. And being a better Christian is not the remedy for our sin. The remedy for our sin is way better than our sanctification.
It's our Savior. That's the remedy. So we could say that God gives power for man to live, to move, and to be. He is concurrently acting in a divine manner during every evil act of man.
This is similar to God knowing things and man knowing things. God knows after the divine manner of knowing, and man knows after the creaturely manner of knowing. And we can even say this, in the most evil acts, God is there giving life, upholding life, moving life, but man is the deficient agent not doing what he ought or doing what he ought not to do by virtue of his deformed nature. So is God the author of sin?
I'm gonna say no. There's another qualification, not only concerning God after the statement of the scope, of Scripture. He decrees the scope of the decree. He decrees everything whatsoever comes to pass.
It gives a qualification concerning God. He's not the author of sin. He doesn't have fellowship therein. And then concerning man.
Nor is violence offered to the will of the creature. Nor is violence offered to the will of the creature. So the second qualification that the confession has here concerns the will of man. God's decree does not violate the liberty of man's will.
It actually establishes it. I think confession says that someplace. God's decree does not cancel man's liberty or freedom to act as he wills. So it might be helpful at this time to explore what I do and don't mean by liberty or freedom.
If one means by liberty or freedom here, the ability to do anything at any time, this must be denied. Can God do anything at any time? No. God who cannot lie.
So whatever liberty or freedom means for us, it can't mean that. Everyone has limits. Does God have limits, Pastor Cam? That's a weird question, huh?
Because you're going, well, he's infinite. There's no bounds. If one means by freedom the ability to do good or evil at any given time, since the fall into sin, we're going to have to say, no, that's not what I mean. However, if one means by liberty of will or freedom of the will, The ability to do what one is inclined to do according to one's nature, that's different, right?
The ability to do according to the inclination of one's nature, something like that. I think the first time I heard that was from R.C. Sproul, and I think he was kind of repeating Jonathan Edwards. Freedom or liberty in the sense I intend here means to be free from external coercion or a force outside of us causing us to do what we do not want to do.
Even, well, anyway, we are not forced to will and do what we will and do against our better judgment. That's one of the problems with sin is that when we sin, what are we doing? What we wanna do. So when you sin against your wife, oh, that doesn't happen here.
When you sin against your husband, let's go with the first one. When you sin against your wife, When you apologize, do you say, I'm sorry, honey, I didn't mean to say that. That doesn't work with my wife, because I trained her. No, I meant to say it.
I shouldn't have said it. I had a bad attitude. There was an evil inclination in my heart. That guy got provoked by the dumb thing you just did or said toward me. you know, justifying it.
But I shouldn't have said that. I meant it at the time, though. I was so captivated by my lustful inclination. There should have been good there.
God required good of me at that time, but there's something wrong with me. I'm deformed. Honey, it's not my fault, it's Adam's. You know, I don't do that, but...
Freedom Defined as Absence of External Coercion
Freedom or liberty means to be free from external coercion. which I mean by that, a force outside of us causing us to do what we do not want to do. We are not forced to will and do what we will and do against our better judgment. We do not act against our desires, but in accordance with them and without external coercion to do so. So when we sin, we do what we want, God all the while upholding us while we are sinning.
But if, by the grace of God, we do well, we are the ones doing it, and we are doing exactly what we want to do, though by God's effective grace within us. But God's effective grace in us does not do what we end up doing. We do it by the grace of God. God tinkers with our souls.
God doesn't, well, in one sense, he does owe us the things he's promised, right? Does God owe us anything? Yes, whatever he's promised. Has he promised that all justified sinners will be sanctified?
Yes. Has he promised that all justified sinners will be sanctified and perfected in this life? No. He's promised that none of us will be perfected or glorified in this life.
That comes at the coming of Christ or upon our death. Effective grace changes us and empowers us to do good. So God's decree does not work against our freedom or destroy our freedom. In fact, without God's decree, we not only would not possess the freedom we have, we would not exist.
Without God's decreeing that we would be the type of creatures we are, we wouldn't be the type of creatures we are. He asked a decree that we're, free creatures who choose according to the inclination of our natures. There's a quote here from A. A.
Hodge might help. The free actions of free agents constitute an eminently important and effective element in the system of things. If the plan of God did not determine events, if the plan of God did not determine events of this class, He could make nothing certain and his government of the world would be made contingent and dependent. Let me say it again.
The free actions of free agents can constitute an eminently important and effective element in the system of things. If the plan of God did not determine events of this class, how could we have what we call prophecy in the Old Testament or in the New Testament? So the confession has a third qualification concerning second causes, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes, we were talking about this and we noted when you were reading, second causes have contingency, there's contingencies in relation to second causes. No contingencies in relation to the first cause though.
Like God's knowledge, of our contingent decisions doesn't make God contingent. Like God doesn't foresee our contingent acts and then based on seeing them, decree. Or how about this way? God does not decree God does not foresee what he decrees.
God decrees, no, I forgot how I put it. Anyway, it was good on the plane up here. And I checked with AI and it agreed. I just learned today that when you do a Google search, a little AI thing comes up there.
I go, oh, that's what that was. I didn't know. Anyway, unless God absolutely, infallibly decrees future events to be what they end up being, God can't secure any promises for us. It just has to be that way.
Anyway, third and final qualification refers to the use of means, and I'm gonna jump over that and just say this. jump down to 3.2 where it says,
God Decrees; He Does Not Merely Foresee
although God knoweth whatsoever may or can come to pass upon all supposed conditions, yet hath he not decreed anything because he foresaw it as future, or as that which would come to pass upon such conditions. So here the confession acknowledges very clearly that God's decree is not based on what he foresaw as future. One reason we must confess this is found in Acts 15, 18. Listen to this, because the confession has us go there.
Known to God from eternity are all his works. Known to God from eternity are all his works. Here's John Gill. You quote John Gill, right, you guys do?
So one time I'm preaching, and I said, here's John Gill, and I read it, and then I explained it a little, and then I said, here's Gilligan. Everybody laughed. Here's John Gill on this text. All the things which God does in the church and in the world, they were all foreknown and predetermined by him, even all his works of creation, providence, and grace.
Here's John Owen. Three things concerning his providence are considerable from this text. One, his decree or purpose whereby he hath disposed all things in order and appointed them for certain ends which he hath foreordained. Two, his... prescience, pre-science, his knowledge beforehand, whereby he certainly foreknoweth all things that shall come to pass, and three, his temporal operation, or working in time.
That's John Owen. So if God's decree, creation and providence, are divine works, and if creation and providence are the execution of God's decree, and if God's decree is eternal and independent of creatures, then God determined what would be before things had been, and executes his decreed works according to what he decreed. Everybody repeat that. Now many in our day believe that what God foresees, God decrees.
However, the confession implies just the opposite. What God decrees, God foresees. Robert Raymond says, put it this way, the Bible teaches that God infallibly knows the future, and this because he has decreed the future. Jonathan Edwards, similarly, the foreknowledge of God will necessarily infer a decree, for God could not foreknow that things would be unless he had decreed they should be, and that because things would not be future unless he had decreed they should be.
One more quotation. This is found in Robert Shaw's exposition of the Westminster Confession. Upon such a subject, no man should be ashamed to acknowledge his ignorance. absolute comprehensive divine decree and sovereignty in the execution of that predetermined purpose and pleasure of God, and man's real responsibility, man's culpability, man's real guilt, man's freedom in whatever state he lives, liberty of freedom of the will in the first state of Adam before he's fallen in Adam's fallen state, which we're in as well. In a converted state, we still have liberty and freedom, all that stuff.
How do you balance the two? How do you tie the two together? How do you explain it? He says, upon such a subject, no man should be ashamed to acknowledge his ignorance.
We may not know how both things can be true. I think I'm quoting somebody else. But that does not mean he does not know how. And what's most important here?
God? And what he thinks? Or you? Notice I didn't say me, because I'm pretty important.
He goes on, we are not required to reconcile the divine decrees in human liberty. It is enough to know that God has decreed all things which come to pass and that men are answerable for their actions. Of both these truths, we are assured by the scriptures. The tie which connects the divine decrees and human liberty is invisible.
I think that's a good statement. I tried to do what I could and what I've learned in the agonizing study I've done for this conference, to say enough to keep us from error, but I haven't said it all because I don't know it all. And these older writers say, the sooner you get that way, even as a Calvinist, the better. is incomprehensible, God's ways are incomprehensible to the creature.
Do a Believer's Sins Work for Good?
So is God the author of sin? No. Okay, I got 10 minutes. Do my sins work out for good?
They better or else I'm going to hell. So look at Romans 8, 28. All things work together for good. So note what Paul is not claiming.
Not that some things work together for good, right? It's not what he says. Not that all things work together in order to make us feel good, you. Not that all good things work together for good.
That's not what he says. Not that all things God controls work together for good, as if some things were beyond God's control, some events outside the sphere of divine providence. So note what he does mean. He's claiming this.
Since all things refers to anything and everything other than God, this working together for good includes everything in the life of a believer. But somebody might ask the question, What about my sins? So here's my answer. Do my sins work together for good?
I'm gonna quote Robert Haldane on this text.
Romans 8:28 and the Sin of Believers
Even the sins of believers work for their good. He better explain himself, right? I got a lot of sins I've committed that I didn't think they didn't work for my good. Not from the nature of sin.
Not that committing a sin is a good thing. It's a bad thing. You know what he's gonna do here. But by the goodness and power of him who brings light out of darkness.
Everything in scripture we read of the great evil of sin. Everywhere we receive the most solemn warning against the commission. And everywhere we hear also of the chastisements it brings, even upon those who are rescued from it. finally condemning power. It is not sin, then, in itself that works the good, but God, who overrules its effects to his children, shows them by means of it what is in their hearts.
Before I was afflicted, I went astray. Then you afflicted me, and I'm keeping your law now. I didn't realize I'm way worse than I'll ever know, and you're way better than I'll ever exhaust. as well as their entire dependence on him, and this is what he says, God teaches us through our sins, and the necessity of walking with him more closely. Their falls lead them to humiliation, to the acknowledgement of their weakness and depravity, to prayer for the guidance and overpowering influence of the Holy Spirit, to vigilance and caution against all carnal security, and to reliance on that righteousness provided for their appearance before God.
It is evident. that the sin of Adam, which is the source of all their sins, has wrought for their good in raising them to a higher degree of glory. That one blew me away when I read it. Wait a minute, the sin of Adam has actually wrought, worked for our good? Yeah, because of it, and because of God's rescue mission, he's gonna bring human nature, which was all messed up, to an exalted state, a better state of existence than Adam's created state.
Before, I mentioned this before, before I was afflicted, I went astray, I sinned, but now I keep your word. David also says, it was good for me that I was afflicted. We may not know how something will work out for our good, but we may know that it will do so. So this working together has a goal for good.
The goal is the good, the benefit, the well-being of the believer. This refers to both temporal and ultimate or eternal good. All things are working together being directed by God's providence to a goal that will benefit all believers. God will bring his plan to a glorious end or goal which is for the good of all believers.
I think I mentioned this. Joseph is a good example that even the things in this life that are sinful in themselves are slowly but surely turned into means for good. There's that text again, Genesis 50, 20. As for you, Joseph's brothers, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good.
Now watch this. In order to bring about this present result, To preserve many people alive. So you left me for dead and you lied to our father about me, both of which are evil deeds. But God meant all of that stuff for good as a result of the evil that came upon Joseph.
Much good came to many others due to it. As the result of Adam's fall, much good comes to us by the grace of God. It didn't have to. As the result of the death of Christ, the murder of the Son of...they killed the Lord of glory.
As a result of that, we get heaped upon us much good. Sorry, Ed. By the way, I did that on purpose to Ed for a few times. You can say something real loud, and Ed just gets going to jump.
It's weird. You know, you think of that. But some of us can think back and go, wow, I sinned as a teenager, and I got my girlfriend pregnant. And there's probably people in here like that, right?
Do you want to take your child and give it back to something or someone? No. And in some cases that child grew up to be a believer and married a believer and they have your grandchildren and our sins somehow mysteriously actually worked ultimately for our good and we're going to be rejoicing with other people forever that Sinned and somehow God turned a horrible situation around for their benefit.
Closing Application and Warning
So this gives you a justification to sin, right? Sin so that more good would come to you. That's not what I'm arguing, okay? We don't need to do that.
But when you do sin, realize that God's gonna teach you something. You're gonna learn from it. You're gonna look back and you're gonna say, you know what? I'm glad the Lord afflicted me.
I wasn't glad while it was happening, but it brought me more to the realization that I am deformed. I'm getting reformed, but I'm not perfected yet. I depend on God, and I wasn't depending on Him, and I need to depend on Him more. So I am finished, and I'm finished early.
Isn't that great?