Oh, the deep joy we draw from Romans 8:28. Well, the first part, anyway. "All things work together for good for those who love God," we will repeat, through every hardship and every period of confusion. We invoke these words as an absolute statement, but it isn't even a complete thought. How often we leave off not only the end of that sentence, but the description given after about what that good actually is!

A whole post could be written just on what is meant by "called according His purpose," but let's focus on defining the good being promised. What do we think the good promised to us is? I was told once that there was concern that I was not on the path God actually had for me, because the speaker expected it would be a good bit easier for me if I was. "We walk in the steps of martyrs," I replied, "what ease are you expecting?" When we hear that God has good for us, do we think it will be wealth or comfort or ease? But the proverb says:

The author has a minimum, which is basically just that God meet their basic needs, but note where the priority lies. Asking for good things, for basic needs and freedom from deception, are not ends in themselves; if they were, there would be no cap on them. The focus is on glorifying God. The author is calling out to God to give enough that they can glorify God, but not so much that they fail to give God the proper glory. The ultimate good being requested isn't the material goods or even the freedom from deception, but the glory of God. And how many of the Psalms have the same message?

The whole psalm, David is crying out for salvation from enemies, for help in his time of need, but at the end he clarifies that this isn't just something he's asking for his own comfort. The desire behind asking for deliverance is that God's glory would be shown in how He handles the situation.

The good promised by God, like that sought after by the writers of Proverbs and Psalms, is to glorify God. And we most glorify Him when we can reflect Him to the world around us. The good God promises is that we will grow, and develop more and more in our walk with Christ, that we will enter into glory in the end. But this is a painful promise to fulfill. Paul, the man through whom God delivered this promise, could also honestly state that:

Paul not only endures, but praises, the trials God has brought Him through. Not because going through these things shows him to be a better Christian or a more devout follower. Paul is not praising the pains he has endured or his ability to endure it. He is praising the God who has brought him through it and taking joy in the way God has used these pains to conform him ever more to the image of Christ. Do we think any good greater than the glory of God? Do we think our growth must be easier than it is for other Christians?

Jesus knew what awaited Him in Jerusalem. Luke tells us that "he set his face to go to Jerusalem," knowing full well what would happen there (Luke 9:51b, ESV). We know that He knew, not only because we trust in His divine foresight, but because He told His disciples what was coming.

In Mark 8, cited above, Jesus asks the disciples who everyone else says that He is, then asks who they believe He is, then celebrate's Peter's recognition that He is the Christ. Then He begins to explain what lies ahead, and Peter stands against it, and Jesus condemns that response and resumes teaching. Now, I don't actually believe that Jesus was changing the topic when He began explaining His upcoming death. What I mean by that is that, while it is widely recognized that this was all one conversation, I've heard very few attempts to connect Jesus' coming death with His questions about everyone's perception of His identity.

I submit that this is what Jesus was talking about the whole time. His questions highlighted the expectations of the people around Jesus, and how He was subverting them. He wasn't living up to what people expected of John the Baptist, but He was kinda close. He spoke like a prophet but seemed to have authority beyond theirs. He met some of the expectations of the returning Elijah, but even that didn't quite stack up. He slipped into a number of categories of what the world was expecting, but He didn't quite fit in any of them, and so people didn't know what to do with Him.

The answer, of course, was that He was the awaited Messiah, but there was a reason that didn't make the list of outside interpretations: the Messiah they were expecting really had very little in common with the Jesus that walked among them. And this is where the next part of the conversation goes. Peter, having confessed that Jesus is the Christ, is suddenly being confronted with the realization that even his own ideas of what that means are being subverted. He was close enough to see the Christ in Jesus, but not yet close enough to realize what that meant for his notions of a Christ. Jesus sets about removing false notions and replacing them with truth, Peter pushes back, and Jesus makes a very firm rebuke that forces him to listen. He then continues subverting expectations, talking about laying down one's life, taking up crosses, standing beside the Christ not in worldly victory but in suffering.

And we can enter into that suffering without shame, looking forward in joy. James notes above that our trials should be treated as occasions for joy, not because of what they are, but because of who we will be on the other side of them. Jesus, who set his face "as flint," as described in Isaiah 50:7, can also claim the surrounding lines that He would not be disgraced or ashamed; even when tortured, put on public display, stripped, hung on a cross as a reproach both from the Romans and from His religious environment (after all, any hung from a tree were accursed), Jesus could come through without disgrace because He knew what awaited on the other side.

Jesus knew what death awaited Him, and He knew what victory He would claim over it. And as such, He could go forth, confident in the knowledge that no trial or disgrace He faced on this earth would surpass the riches in glory He would receive after it. And we, who have died with Christ and share in His sufferings and His victory, can look forward with the same joy and confidence that He had, regardless of what shame the world tries to lay on us, because we too shall some day be on the other side of death.