CHRIST-LIKENESS REMAINS OUR
PREDESTINED PURPOSE
Romans 8:28-39
By late Spring, 1864, the American Civil War reached a military impasse that compromised President Lincoln’s re-election. He wrote a note to that effect, then filed it. General Sheridan’s victories in the Shenandoah Valley and General Sherman’s capture of Atlanta later that summer turned Lincoln’s re-election from impossible to inevitable.
Since it’s impossible for God’s word to change, its purpose invariably matures. Thus, Romans 8:31-39 remains inevitable because Romans 8:28-30 remains immutable. Though the texts have been historically misquoted and misapplied by everyone, Christians included. Thanks to Dr. Marion Henderson, professor at Lincoln Christian College, I never misquoted or misapplied it. But until a couple years ago I didn’t fathom the ultimate meaning of God works for the good of those who love him. Until then I thought it meant that God fashioned positive results from every possible negative circumstance.
Which is true, and not a small benefit, but still insufficient to the context since it doesn’t identify what Paul meant by GOOD. Verses 29-30 do, with unmistakable clarity. The GOOD God does for us is the same as the PURPOSE he has for us. And that is nothing less than conforming believers to Christ’s very image. Conformed means to fashion-like, so Jesus is the DIE from which God turns endless numbers of Christians.
Predestined in the context means then, not that God condemns some to Heaven or to Hell, but that he made Jesus his archetypal human after whom he fashions duplicate believers. That’s the inevitable result of conversion for every believer in any age. A hat may not always be merely a head covering. In 1948 a new scientific journal called Physics Today had a pork-pie hat on its cover—with no identifying statement. Because everyone in the field, and many outside it, knew it offered tribute to Robert Oppenheimer, the pork-pie wearing physicist who guided development of America’s first atom bomb. However, had newspapers in 1865 wanted to identify a dead President they would have pictured a Stove-Pipe Hat. People who make the news change, and with them the fashions that distinguish them.
But conversion has always had one, and one alone, identity: those baptized into Christ become progressively more like him. Think of Jesus as God’s MODEL home and of us as its unfurnished counterpart. The model has everything purposefully in place, every article and nuance complementing the whole and each an elaboration of the builder’s purpose and the interior designer’s vision. Then we walk into the very same house unfurnished—our house—with all those stark bare walls and empty rooms, crying for help. How can we duplicate what the model offers? By hiring an interior designer. The same is true spiritually. God gets us from the plain, empty house to the Christ-honoring edifice by consigning the Holy Spirit to us. And what the unfurnished home becomes under the interior designer’s whimsy, we become as the Holy Spirit intentionally redesigns our interior with Christ’s elegance. All families have distinguishing traits: the ancient Anakites, gigantic bodies; the republican Romans, large noses; Hohenzolleran kings, jutting jaws. And every Christian child of God, the nature of Jesus Christ.
Most importantly, according to our text, God has overcome the only two threats to our success in achieving his purpose.
A. The Spiritual World verses 38-39
In 1929, the Berlin Municipal Council recognized Dr. Einstein’s 50th birthday by awarding him a country villa with a lake view. But on visiting the house, his wife found it already occupied and the occupants unwilling to move. An embarrassed Council discovered it had previously given the inhabitants an inalienable lease.
To compensate, it presented Einstein a nearby acreage without a house. AFTER he accepted, the Council discovered that adjourning properties had been leased with the stipulation that no further building permits would be allowed in the vicinity.
OOPS! In desperation, the Council granted Einstein a third plot—only to discover AFTER publicly announcing the bequest that they didn’t own and couldn’t give it. Einstein finally purchased other property and built on it.
Don’t confuse God with the Berlin City Council. He has thoroughly investigated our problem; is knowledgeable of all the difficulties involved resolving it; and has done everything necessary and marshaled all the powers needed to do so. Indeed, he has left nothing undone in planning as Christ left nothing undone in securing our salvation. However incompetent Christians and churches are, it isn’t because Christianity itself is flawed or guilty of delivering insufficient power to the load it claims to carry.
B. Life-Experiences verses 35-36
We sometimes feel helpless before circumstances. Life is huge, and we’re small; it’s wicked, and we’re weak; it’s merciless, and we’re vulnerable. All too true. No Christian, however staunch in faith, but has found life’s tantrums raising questions about God’s love or our ability to persevere in faith.
But the question is: can even the worst circumstance keep us from becoming Christ-like? Does Satan have in place situations and problems that defy God’s goal? No. Never. Compare verses 38-39 with verses 35-36. Notice that Paul diminished the impact of life experiences, verses 35-36, by stressing our conquest of the spiritual world, verses 38-39. If nothing from the spiritual world—death, angels, demons, the present, the future, powers, depths, heights or ANYTHING in creation—can separate us from God’s love, how can the everyday problems of trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger or sword separate us from God’s purpose? God has conquered the greater menaces of verses 38-39; he certainly won’t let the lesser powers of verses 35-36 conquer us.
In whatever way Satan poses a threat to God’s purpose, God has previously determined success for his Son and Christians. Leaving all Satanic defiance in place, however ominous, God aggressively overwhelms Satan’s every power with his greater power. No Satanic portent can ever imperil God’s rule through Jesus Christ over history or the universe. That’s guaranteed to us if we don’t confuse lesser, still-contested political, judicial and military battles with the greater spiritual war Jesus won at Calvary, where he made a spectacle of all Satanic powers aligned against God and his people Colossians 2:15. But Christians often get sidetracked. We get disturbed if conservative judges aren’t nominated or approved for the Supreme Court; irritated with the continued effort of abortion or homosexual lobbyists to extend Satan’s influence in society; alarmed by the acquisition of atomic weapons by Islamic nations, fearing the consequence for Israel.
All too true. But nothing happening now in world capitals and our culture will keep God from ruling by his rules, achieving his will in history and conforming his family members to Christ’s likeness. Nothing. There are real dangers in our world, but there are more apparent dangers disguised as real. For Satan cleverly manufactures contentious, but nevertheless fictitious issues to confuse and disturb us. A stalking horse is a horse behind which hunters approach wary game. The horse, which they prey sees, isn’t the danger. The hunter, which the prey doesn’t see, IS. Symbolically it means any disguise that masks a person’s real nature or intent. Satan has more stalking horses than can be identified, and there isn’t a President or Prime Minister in the world who isn’t his victim, for they all consider their most pressing problems to be political, economic, social or judicial. ALL of which are Satan’s stalking horses to keep the world from seeing the basic issue in life as the ideological warfare between Biblical Christianity and secular humanism and Biblical Christianity and militant Islam. Though both wars have been won by Jesus at the cross and, in consequence, God continues to effect his purpose of turning every believer into a Christ-like copy. No world leader can be expected to be aware of this; but no Christian can afford to be ignorant of it.
So far from failing to achieve God’s purpose of Christ-likeness then, Paul stresses its incomparable success by declaring us more than conquerors in gaining and maintaining it. And that in a day when to be a conqueror meant autocratic mastery, ascendant royalty, even deity. Accepting the nomenclature, the apostle anointed its previously unknown spiritual dimension.
It involves, first, God’s gift to us. When a Bible class teacher asked what distinction existed between the kingdoms of men and the kingdom of the saints, a layman thoughtfully replied, “earthly kings TOOK their kingdom while God’s people RECEIVE theirs.” An excellent appraisal. Unlike the gift given by Grace, which survives all earthly effort to dislodge it, including God’s eternally-predestined purpose to have a spiritual family fashioned in Christ’s image, what is conquered by Force can be reconquered by greater force or, by lesser force, if God wills. As an old Russian Proverb says, if God wills, brooms will shoot. With less than 400 soldiers, accompanied by thousands of Indian allies, Hernando Cortes marched into Tenochtitlan, Mexico, 8 November 1519, to begin the conquest of an empire unrivaled in the Western Hemisphere. Using Aztec religious belief, God secured the impossible. Montezuma and his councilors saw Cortes and his Spaniards as descendants of their banished god Quetzalcoatl come to reclaim his inheritance in the very year Cortes landed at Vera Cruz. What the Aztecs had conquered by bloody force God prepared to overturn by bloody warfare.
The dimension involves, secondly, the impact Christians make on the unsaved, specifically in contrast with earthly conquerors. They inflict adversity as a means to rule; we accept adversity as a means to serve. They acquire vassals for their state; we acquire converts to Christ. They shed blood in vengeance; we invoke Christ’s blood in forgiveness. They divide enemies by stressing animosities; we reconcile enemies by preaching Christ’s love. They aim to destroy their enemies; we aim to rescue them. They conquer to be served; we serve as Christ-conquered messengers. They levy tribute on the conquered; we offer the Savior’s gifts to all conquered by him.
One caveat exists in all this glory, however. The only person able to deny us Christ-likeness is SELF—but SELF can. We can be our own enemy if we retain bad attitudes and behaviors; if we don’t seriously commit life to Jesus Christ; if we don’t persevere in discipleship; if we refuse to pay the price of being like Jesus…. IF….IF….IF….we can FORFEIT what no power can CONQUER. We can WILL ourselves outside God’s presence.
A concluding thought. The promise of 8:28-39 is, “nothing can separate us from God”, in order that we can mature in Christ-likeness. The promise is not, “nothing can separate us from God”, in order to make us secure and comfortable. God subjects our security and comfort to his purpose of conforming us to Christ, whatever insecurity or discomfort we experience in the process.
Therefore, if after adversity, we are more Christ-like, adversity has been GOOD. If, after success, we’re less Christ-like, success has been BAD. The only issue of importance in life is whether or not it brings us closer to, or leaves us farther from, God’s goal of Christ-likeness. Nothing else. We obviously need to perseveringly pray that whatever it takes, life’s experiences will find Jesus Christ more perfectly formed in us.
In another sense, what greater security and comfort could we have than the assurance that we’re personally fulfilling God’s purpose by being Christ-like. Money in the bank can’t provide that assurance; degrees behind our name can’t; titles on our desk can’t; a life time of experiences lived outside God’s love in Christ can’t. Only persevering discipleship CAN—but it does, without fail and to the full.
Do not weaken Romans 8:28 by making it broad; strengthen it by keeping it narrow. It applies only to those who love God and fulfill their calling by growth in Christ-likeness. But it does apply to them, and that single promise distinguishes the believer’s certainty from the unbeliever’s insecurity. While nothing is harder for Christians than to become Christ-like, nothing is worthier than repeated efforts to achieve it and nothing is more definitively true than we shall be more like Jesus if we try because God wills to complete in us what he began with our baptism.
