I. The term “good,” it must be said in the first place, is very different, both in the language of the bible and in the estimation of the truly wise, from what it usually represents in the language and opinion of the world. The bible teaches us to view all things in their consequences, and in their real and essential nature. View things in their consequences, in their final end and issue, if you would view them at all justly or wisely. Ease, and health, and worldly wealth, and success may be good, just as the plentiful feast is good, provided a man has temperance and soundness of constitution properly to partake of it; but, if he is likely to indulge to a surfeit, or if every morsel is food to some mortal disorder, and every cup adds strength to a fever that is raging in his veins, no one in reason would call such an entertainment good to such a man. And just so with the good things of this present life: the Christian does not unreasonably deny that prosperity is pleasing, health desirable, friends and relations deeply attaching to us, and the smiles of social endearment or public favour greatly captivating; but neither does he, like the world, consider them to be necessarily all they seem to be, good to all persons, and under all circumstances; he does not forget that earthly and bodily good is just what it becomes in the use of it; that many times the use can hardly be separated from the abuse; that lawful things, when unlawfully or idolatrously used, are just as evil as unlawful ones—nay, rather, that for a few comparatively who have perished from a hardened course of forbidden pleasure, multitudes have been for ever lost by allowed indulgences. Till he sees, then, the application made, and the resulting consequences of any worldly boon, he does not call the possessor happy, nor the possession good, nor very eagerly or supremely does he desire it either for himself or others.
But, again, the things really and essentially good in their very nature and inseparable qualities are those which, in the estimation of the mere world, are held in no account whatsoever. What the bible chiefly esteems, and the world wholly neglects, are spiritual blessings,—the good things of the soul of man, “the precious things of heaven, even of the everlasting hills.” Those precious things, the goodwill of him who is the great I AM—the peace of God which passeth all understanding—the luxury of promoting the good of man and the glory of God;—still more, the pardon of sin, through faith in the atonement of Jesus Christ—a gradual advancement in true holiness—a growing fitness and longing desire for the future blessedness of the saints, and a final admission and “abundant entrance into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Saviour,” the “inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that fadeth not away;”—these are truly to the world but as a dream, a fancy, a cunningly-devised fable; but, to the mind of the Christian, stand for everything truly and substantially good. They are in all his plans first and foremost, and nearest and dearest to his heart. They are as necessary to him in his calculation and account of human happiness, as profit and pleasure are to his neighbours around. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart conceived, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him.” But God hath revealed to him by his Spirit, these very things, as his chief good, his measure of all true happiness. Wealth may be good, health still better, kindly affections and attached friends the best of earthly boons; but the favour of God, the acquisition of his image, the means of grace, and the hope of glory, are to him sovereign and above all. While many ask, amidst the increase of their corn, and wine, and oil, “Who will show us any good?” he exclaims, “Lord, lift thou up the light of thy countenance upon me”—“in thy presence is the fulness of joy; at thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.” He weighs well the nature, and “remembers the end” of all that is called good, and so “does not amiss.”
II. For, secondly, he finds that, while we so do, and so consider, “all things work together for good to those that love God.” There is, first, on the mind of the Christian that secret influence in the very disposition of love to God, which will of itself turn to good every thing that comes from the God whom we love, and the Saviour on whom we fully and implicitly rely. And there is, secondly, a full disposition on the part of our heavenly Father so to order and direct every event which befals his loving and attached children, as shall be found at last to have answered the ends of sovereign wisdom and divine mercy.
In the first instance, the tendency, on our own part, of love to the great and good God will be this, namely, to turn all that befals us to an instrument of good. As, in the healthy body, food of very different descriptions may yet all turn to nourishment, and minister to health and bodily strength; so, in the healthy mind, purified and strengthened by the grace of God’s Holy Spirit, every thing that meets it is converted to its advantage, and adds in some way to its improvement and its happiness. There is ever a colour cast upon outward circumstances from the complexion of the inward soul. The vain man, on his part, the ambitious, the sensual, the gainful, well know how to turn all to the advancement of their sinful objects; and no less does the good man turn all to the enlargement of his goodness, and the lover of his God to the increase and exercise of that love. Viewing every thing in the glass, or by the lamp of God’s word, he ingeniously, so to speak, finds in every thing a reason for loving and fearing, serving and obeying God. Every event works for his good, because he is resolved it shall do so; and every result satisfies, pleases, rejoices him, because he is persuaded it ought to do so. Loving God, he has a confidence that he is beloved of God; and then, feeling himself in a world made by God, and proceeding forward under his guidance and permission, he never will believe that any thing falls out in it but what is intended to make him both good and happy. Happy then he will be, if God intends he should be so; and holy he will be encouraged to become, under the consciousness that God intends his holiness.
Dispositions like these will indeed work for their possessor even upon the hardest materials, and will, by the very force of a new and spiritual nature, convert all into “servants to righteousness unto holiness.” Faith will be a hand, bringing together the events of life and the framer and guide of all life and all existence; and the result will be a solemn and heart-satisfying conviction, that “all things work together for good to them that love God.”
Nor, next, will such a faith prove to be groundless; for surely there is a power engaged, there is a pledge in the gospel, a sure word of promise, and even of covenant, that all things shall be ours;—“All are yours, and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s.” The trial of our faith lies indeed very much upon this one point. Can we, for a moment, believe that God permits all the disorder and confusion which appears to us in the world—the prosperity of wickedness, the trials and adversity of the righteous, in order to raise a doubt on our minds whether he be not absent all the while—whether he bears or not any share in the world he created, or in all those moving causes that owe their activity and life to himself alone? God is surely present; he is powerfully operating; he is the supreme controller, and the almighty director; he is fully aware of those adverse appearances, and is no less deeply engaged in the final issue of all events, to render them consistent with the ends of justice and mercy, than as if we saw him at work with our bodily eyes: or, as if we then could fully know the mind of the Lord, or be his counsellors to instruct him.
The expressions of scripture are too strong, and too agreeable to the very nature of God and of his works, to make us doubt for a moment of his providential care and unceasing watchfulness. “He is not far from every one of us; for in him we live, and move, and have our being.” To the true disciple saith Christ himself, “The very hairs of your head are all numbered;” and yet more strongly, “If a man love me, he will keep my words; and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him.” Promises, these, which have been ever realized in the history of the saints in all ages who have walked with God—Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and the patriarch Jacob—none more tried than he—yet we read his testimony to “the God, which fed me all my life-long unto this day; the angel which redeemed me from all evil.”
Keeping in view the notion of what is truly good for this state of trial, and for the soul as well as for the body, there is no time and no extent to which we shall not find the promise sure, and the fulfilment exact, where God is pledged for the supply of his servants that trust in him: his eye is ever open, his ear ever attentive unto them. The petition he denies is able to operate as powerfully and as favourably on their behalf as that which he grants; merciful alike in the gift which he bestows and which he withholds, and wise alike in the evil which he permits, and which he restrains.
There is nothing more important to the believer’s faith, than to apprehend that there is no uncertainty, nothing imperfect or weak in the dispensations of God, as they respect the final issue of the Christian’s trials. Either God is wholly absent and forgetful of his daily wants, or else he is wholly and for ever at work on his behalf. If he were wholly absent, well might his servants doubt that, after all their endeavours to that end, they should be able to turn to good all the events of this mortal life. If he do not temper the trials of his servants, how in truth shall they overcome them? If he do not controul their enemies, how shall they ever escape them? Figure to yourself any place, or time, or circumstance, where God is not, or where he can be spared from the concerns of his people, either temporal or spiritual: but, if none can be imagined or assigned, then is it but justly and essentially true, that, by his especial order and his immediate appointment, “all things work together for good to them that love God.”
III. But we may proceed, lastly, to show, in a practical manner, some of those very things which shall thus work together for good. Take the most unpromising and most unfavourable case, for instance, that of great prosperity. None will deny it to be a case of many others the most trying to the graces of the true Christian. Yet even shall the temptations arising from worldly honours and successes, to a man armed with the love of God, work together for good. Graces rarely exercised in exalted stations, shall be found to shine the more conspicuously in his instance. The grace of humility, and tenderness of spirit, shall be the more eminently illustrated in that station, where, too often, there is only pride and hardness of heart. If he be found, in a sober, self-denying spirit, setting little value on those things so commonly called good amongst mankind—using this world without abusing it—shall not the grace of God be more abundantly magnified? When not overcome, as Agar feared he might be, saying, “lest I be full, and say, who is the Lord?”—but rather, when led by fulness to more gratitude, and by a lofty station to deeper humility, and to a more lowly submission to God, and meekness to man—how will he by such prosperity as this testify to the reality of Christian principles: how will he, in giving freely where he has freely received, esteeming even his highest gains as loss for Christ’s sake, and returning upon others all that mercy which has been exercised towards himself, prove that he has not received the grace of God in vain; but that even prosperity has “worked together for good to them that love God.”