The opening words, “And we know,” introduce a crucial assertion for victorious Christian living that apprehended by faith. The verb “we know” (Oidamen) denotes “the knowledge of faith and not mere intellectual investigation.”1* As Watson remarks, “As axioms and aphorisms are evident to reason, so the truths of religion are evident to faith.”2* The assurance expressed in Romans 828-29 is not a logical deduction of cold reason but rather an inner conviction of believing heart produced by the Holy Spirit on the basis of Scripture and verified in personal experience. In setting forth the great truths of the gospel in the first eight chapters of Romans, Paul used the verb (Oidamen) six times (2:2; 3:19; 7:14; 8:22; 26, 28). Romans 8:28 states the crowning certainty of the Christian life.




Many indeed have found the sweeping assertion, “all things work together for good” (Rom 8:28), difficult to believe. Faced with sufferings and catastrophic experiences of life, many believers and even Christian leaders have found it difficult to accept this categorical assertion. In our current War, a prominent preacher designated Romans 8:28 as “the hardest verse to believe.” While willing to admit that the countless ravages that have occurred the human race are the logical consequences of mankind’s sin and rebellion against God, many a devout believer, when some shattering experience has befallen him, has cried out in confusion , “Why does God allow this to happen to me?” How can this kind of experience be reconciled with Roman 8:28? When Jacob’s sons, who has gone to Egypt to buy needed food, came back with out the brother Simeon, and  reported to their father that the next time Benjamin must also go to Egypt, the pariach cried out in despair, “All these things are against me” (Gen 42:36)






And today Christ rejecting secular humanists in their spiritual blindness may reject the assertion that “all things work together for good.” Such individuals, unconscious of any beneficent activity of God in their lives, while observing a chaotic world with weary eyes, may readily conclude that human life has no higher meaning. They may prone to agree with the cynical poet who wrote:






''The world rolls round forever like a mill,




It grinds out of life and death, and good and ill,




It has no purpose, heart, or mind, or will''.







''Man might know this thing, were his sight less dim,




Life whirleth not to suit his petty whim,




For it is quite indifferent to him.







Nay, doth it use him harshly, as he saith?




It grinds for him slow years of bitter breath,




Then grinds him back into eternal death''. 3*








How utterly contrary such a cynical evaluation of human life is to the declaration of Paul in Romans 8:28-29!  No one can truly accept the gospel of Jesus Christ and accept such a cynical, godless interpretation of human existence.  Instead the ringing assurance declared by Paul offers a message of inner certainty and reality that imparts meaning, power, and encouragement to the believing heart.  The assurance “God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God” is a message that the indwelling Holy Spirit vitalizes in the intuitively, though they may not always fully understand and sense it experientially.”4*




The importance of the truth declared in Romans 8:28-29, as well as the questions, perplexities, and unwarranted assumptions that have been made, make it clear the need for a careful study and interpretation of these verses in the light of the context.






Next article will follow this one “The contextual Setting”









1 R C. H Lenski, The Interpretation of St. Paul;s Epistle to the Romans (Minneapolis :Augsburg, 1961), P.550.




2 Thomas Watson, All things for Good (1663; reprint, Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1986), p. 10




3 Thomson, James, Collected quotes and poems




4 John A. Witmer, “Romans,” in The Bible Knowledge Commentary, New Testament, ed. John F. 

Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck (Wheaton, Il: Victor, 1983), p. 473.