Working Together For Good

 

(Israel bombs Gaza city in reprisal for 7/10/23 HAMAS terrorist attack)

It must be one of the most heartless and crass Christian clichés! How many times, when some inexplicable calamity strikes, illness invades or passionate prayer goes spectacularly unanswered, have you heard (or yourself cited) the most fatalistic, deistic, deterministic verse in the New Testament: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose…” (NIV)? When illness and/or death stalk our friends and family; when a girl from our church is raped and beaten in an alleyway; when a narcissistic pastor’s wife is, gaslighted, insulted, demeaned and diminished by his abusive behaviour; when four young people from our Youth Group are killed in a car crash, caused by a drunk-driver; as innocent men, women, and children are blown to bits, maimed, dispossessed, displaced, and dehumanised in Gaza by the Israeli Defence Force’s brutal and disproportionate retaliation for HAMAS’ despicably evil terrorist attack of 7 October 2023, in which some 1500 Israelis were murdered, raped, beheaded and kidnapped, are our words of “comfort” to our brothers and sisters in Gaza, Palestine, or in towns surrounding Jerusalem in Israel, really as insulting, trite and traumatic as these?

This is surely not what Paul said at all. We need better linguistic and lexicographic analysis if we are going to prise the truth from this mistranslated text.

The RSV had a better proposition – sometimes “modern” translations can make things worse, rather than clearer! - “We know,” says the RSV, “that in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose.” Already we have a glimpse of the truth, whereby God works with his people, rather than for them.

We need to look deeper. Fortunately, NT (Tom) Wright has just published a whole book on this one chapter of Romans: Romans 8. (Into The Heart of Romans, A deep dive into Paul’s greatest letter: SPCK, London, 2023) Those who value Tom’s erudition, spiritual wisdom and insight, and his profound grasp of the enormous implications of the Gospel of Jesus the Christ will devour this easy-to-read exposition of the keystone chapter of Paul’s letter to the church in Rome.

Romans 8:28-30 in Wright’s own translation, reads: “We know, in fact, that God works all things together for good to those who love him, who are called according to his purpose. Those he foreknew, you see, he also marked out in advance to be shaped according to the image of his son, so that he might be the firstborn of a large family. And those he marked out in advance, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified he also glorified.” (The Bible for Everyone [Old Testament, by John Goldingay; New Testament, by Tom Wright] SPCK, 2018) His contemporary rival, both in Theology and in Greek New Testament translation, David Bentley Hart, suggested this for tricky verse 28: “And we know that, for those loving God, all things work together for good to those called according to a purpose.” (The New Testament David Bentley Hart, Yale University Press, 2017) This remains woefully inadequate, however.

It was the work of Dr Haley Goranson Jacob (Whitworth University, in Conformed to the Image of His Son – Reconsidering Paul’s Theology of Glory in Romans, IVP Academic, 2018, pp245-51), as well as that done by Sylvia Keesmaat and Brian Walsh, Toronto (in Romans Disarmed, Grand Rapids, MI: Brazos Press, 2019, pp375-9) that profoundly changed Wright’s understanding of the meaning of this critical verse.

They argue that the RSV translation more accurately translates Paul’s words and intention.

Wright explains:

“The verse doesn’t say (in other words) that ‘all things work together for good to those who love God’, which appears to give God’s people a kind of inside privilege of knowing that things will fall out the way they want them to. It means that God is the subject of the main verb: it is God who is ‘working’, rather than the ‘all things’. And it means that God does not work just for those who love him – as though they were simply the passive recipients of his ongoing benevolence – but that he works with those who love him.” (Into The Heart of Romans, p158)

Indeed, as he goes on to point out, the purpose of God is to have a people in the image of his Son, as co-workers with him in transforming the world through the expansion of God’s good. Paul uses the Greek word synergeō which, literally, means “work with”. (From which we get “synergy” and “synergism”). So, instead of the traditional sense of “everything working together,” like different aspects of life’s tapestry, somehow automatically, Paul is talking of a collaboration, a co-operation, a partnership between God and humanity - in Christ. There is agency, intention and dynamic, individually and corporately, between the co-working partnership of God, and a Spirit-enabled humanity who love him.

This is radically different – and carries so much more prophetic purpose, resonance and hope than the depressingly deterministic deism of our traditional misunderstanding. Indeed, Haley Jacobs concludes her linguistic and text-contextual analysis, writing: ‘Whichever translation is chosen, the good that is done is not for the believer but is done by God and the believer on behalf of “all things.”’ (Ibid p249 My emphases)

In Romans Disarmed, Keesmaat and Walsh sum up the recovered meaning of Romans 8:28 – as: We know that in all things God works for good with those who love God and are called to his purpose. And in more concrete expressions of how this works out in practice they seek to earth such “works” in meaningful ways:

            Paul is not saying, “Cheer up, God’s got it all under control, even if it doesn’t look that way.” No, Paul is saying that in the face of suffering, pain, brokenness, and the labour pains of creation; in the face of deep, deep longing, inarticulate sighs, and groaning; in the face if being rendered utterly wordless, followers of Jesus don’t grasp for cheap words and easy comfort but get busy in paths of redemption. We get busy with the purposes to which we have been called. Those who love God are those who embrace their calling to tend creation, who have a vision of life in the face of death, and who claim redemption even against the evidence. In Paul’s worldview those who love God are renewed in the image of God, they live with an aching longing for his kingdom, and they suffer with Christ.”

(Israeli police evacuate families under rocket attack from Gaza by HAMAS terrorists, 2023)

Paul has already made the connection between a creation in labour, eager to “birth” (see the revelation of) the children of God through the Holy Spirit, in order for its long-desired liberation to be made manifest, and the co-operation of God’s people with God to make this happen. He told the church in Colossae that as we are in this world, so also is Christ. And his suffering becomes our suffering as the elect – elected to bear God’s image, co-suffer with Christ, and co-resurrect the world, too. God’s Revolution requires Revolutionaries – us! It is why he tells the Ephesians we have been “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly dimension” (Eph. 1:3) – not for a happy-clappy church to sit out “the last days”, but rather to get on and do the work God has prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. And, just in case we feel unqualified, untrained, or otherwise inadequate, Peter reminds us that we have the nature of God, as well as everything pertaining to life and godliness. (2 Pet. 1:3)

Keesmaan and Walsh ground the truth further:

            God works for good with those who love God and are called to his purpose. Whether we are planting a community garden or seeking a reduction in fossil fuel extraction, sponsoring a refugee family or seeking deeper reconciliation with the First Nations, building community or holding vigil at the side of the dying, sharing our own resources or advocating for economic redistribution, in these and so many other ways, we are working with God to bring  all things together for good in the face of unspeakable evil. We may be speechless, but we are not paralysed. We may have nothing to say, but that doesn’t mean we have nothing to do. (Ibid p. 377)

(Gaza, 2023 - citizens search rubble after Israeli air strike.)

So, let’s stop trotting out trite and meaningless tropes that dishonour God; instead of unseemly glee at the idea that unspeakable horror, violence and evil in Palestine and Israel herald the imminent return of the Lord, Jesus the Christ; instead of a wholly misplaced and distorting zeal for Zionism in defiance of Christ - through whose battered and bloody Cross-impaled body peace was made between heaven and earth, Jew and Arab, Israeli and Palestine, male and female, East and West, God and the World - a full and faithful confession of Christ in us all, the hope of glory.

Amen.

 

Grace and peace, fellow Wayfarers. Go, and cooperate with God that his kingdom will be manifest and his will be done – as in heaven, so also on earth.