What is great about Romans 8:28 is not only that God is sovereign, nor that all things work together for our good, but that the good God has designed for us is far better than any good thing we might imagine for ourselves. Whatever good we can think of, God intends all things to work towards our ultimate good of becoming like Jesus. That good is far good-er than any goodly thing we might think of.

Romans 8:28 is one of those much beloved, oft quoted verses. Everybody likes it. It is the kind of thing people like to stick of mugs and t-shirts. If we’re going to hear about the sovereignty of God – which gets people hot under the collar for some reason – let’s think of it in Romans 8:28 terms. God’s sovereignty ultimately works for my good. That’s a truth we can get behind.
Unfortunately, as with the overwhelming majority of things ripped out of context, the truth of Romans 8:28 is usually massaged to mean whatever the person quoting it wants it to mean. If all things work for my good, then God will only ever do what is good for me. So far, so true. So, goes the reasoning, what is good? Money is good. Health is good. Every wish-dream I can possibly imagine must be good. If all things work together for good, God must surely be gearing up to give me all this stuff.
It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to see how many of things might prove not to be so good. If the history of Israel tells us anything it is that when everything is going pretty well, they do not suddenly start to thank God and believe in him more, but forget him and think all is well. Far more dangerous than difficult circumstances that cause us to press into our reliance on God are good times where we fool ourselves into thinking we have no need for him. Then, of course, there are the various biblical warnings specifically against these things at any rate. The New Testament has lots to say about storing up treasures on earth and seeking after money. These apparently good things are not warned against for nothing.
We all know instinctively anyway that too much of a good thing is a problem. Just think of “good” weather, for example. Good, in the eyes of many in the West, means pleasantly warm and sunny. But again, Israel knew only too well the problems associated with that sort of good weather all the time. What they were usually crying out for was rain.
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Written by R. R. Reno |
Thursday, October 27, 2022
We have deliberately deregulated our culture. The old, culturally ­reinforced pathways to normalcy have been dismantled. We have restructured our society to cater to the “sexually marginalized.” The normal has been recast as “repressive.” This project has been sold as noble. Many progressive Christians have declared it to be a fulfillment of the gospel. But it has meant transferring resources, social prestige, political power, and legal privileges to those whose desires are disordered. H.R. 8404 is one example.

Our ruling class seems determined to drive our country into a ditch. H.R. 8404, the Respect for Marriage Act, is a case in point. Ostensibly, the bill is meant to codify the right to same-sex marriage that was discovered by the Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges. In view of present realities, it serves little purpose other than to flaunt the power of the Rainbow Reich.
Gay marriage is a luxury good in our society, largely the province of professional men and women. Meanwhile, among Americans without college degrees, marriage is collapsing. The decline is not happening because heterosexual men and women are co-habiting in stable relationships. Recent studies show that the number of individuals between the ages of twenty-four and fifty-four who are living alone is increasing, and now approaches 40 percent. Not surprisingly, fertility and family formation are declining as well.
These hard numbers point to a reality only the willfully blind refuse to see: the increasingly dysfunctional relations between men and women. Why the male–­female dance has broken down over the past generation is not easy to explain. But it does not take a graduate degree in psychology to recognize that children need clear pathways toward adult life as men and women. Nor does it take a degree in sociology to see that those pathways are precisely what we have systematically denied to children, often in the interest of making our society more “inclusive.”
Gay marriage is not an innocent innovation, a ­win-win for society that, as many claimed, would strengthen the institution of marriage by making it more available. It was always implausible to imagine that our society could celebrate homosexuality and honor it with the institution of marriage without undermining the socialization of children into healthy patterns of male–female reciprocity. Given the ambition of the Rainbow Reich to restructure social attitudes, transgender ideology and the current epidemic of gender dysphoria were entirely predictable. Gay liberation was never solely about legal rights. It undermines the normative status of heterosexuality. As the more honest activists always insisted, the goal was to “queer” society.
Well, we’ve gone a long way toward achieving that goal. Spend a few hours with mainstream media, and you’d think a third or more of people were ­homosexual. The messaging has been effective. The rate of people identifying as LGBT has risen dramatically, especially among the impressionable young. A recent Gallup poll has more than 20 percent of Gen Z checking the LGBT box.

No doubt the severe decline of norms that privilege marriage, family, and heterosexual coupling has been beneficial for a small class of people whose desires are abnormal. But for the majority of Americans these changes have come at a great cost.

Family offers a safe harbor in the rough seas of life. For most, it’s a reliable place of comfort and a source of profound satisfaction. Public health officials scratch their heads, trying to explain the extraordinary decline in life expectancy in the United States, a shocking trend for a country so rich. Their captivity to progressive ­ideology makes them invincibly ignorant. They cannot acknowledge the obvious truth, which is that ­isolated, disoriented individuals deprived of the norms that would guide them toward marriage and family have dim prospects. They are more likely to stumble through life and engage in self-destructive behavior.
Count me among those who are no longer willing to pretend. We need to reckon with a harsh reality: Their premature deaths are by design. That is, our elites have destroyed the structures that foster healthy lives. Our educational ideologies celebrate critical methods that “disorient” and “deconstruct.” That’s what “queering” means. Our elites applaud Drag Queen Story Hour, believing that putatively stultifying “stereotypes” are being shattered and children are learning to be more “open-minded.” As the data accumulate, showing how bad life has become for ordinary Americans, those who repeat progressive platitudes are complicit in their neighbors’ misery.
Things will get worse, I’m afraid. We have deliberately deregulated our culture. The old, culturally ­reinforced pathways to normalcy have been dismantled. We have restructured our society to cater to the “sexually marginalized.” The normal has been recast as “repressive.” This project has been sold as noble. Many progressive Christians have declared it to be a fulfillment of the gospel. But it has meant transferring resources, social prestige, political power, and legal privileges to those whose desires are disordered. H.R. 8404 is one example.
No man is an island. We respond to incentives and social signals. Our cultural elites cheer Rachel Levine, the Biden administration’s assistant secretary for health. A man with two children who was divorced in 2013 and refashioned himself as a woman, Levine is held up as an exemplary American, heroically loyal to himself and a pioneer of liberation. Are we surprised that increasing numbers of people, especially those who lack social capital or are psychologically vulnerable, are now living dysfunctional and self-destructive lives?
Sexual minorities are people, made in the image and likeness of God. But we must not remain silent about the great costs that the imperatives of “inclusion” have imposed, often on the most vulnerable.
In the first chapter of his letter to the Romans, St. Paul gives an account of our descent into bondage to sin. ­Verses 18–32 draw upon the Wisdom of Solomon, which gives an extended account of the spiritual, moral, and social disaster of idolatry. In his compressed version, Paul explains how humanity turned away from the invisible nature and eternal power of God, which is clearly manifest in ­creation. Our minds darkened; we became fools. Claiming to be wise, we raised up graven images, exchanging worship of the living God for devotion to dead idols.
The Bible often uses the term “vanity” to denote the spiritual import of idolatry. We assume that “vanity” refers to a conceited self-regard. But in its literal sense, vanity means emptiness or nothingness. Idol worship is thus vain in a metaphysical sense, a spiritual project oriented toward emptiness, a dead end that sucks the life out of us.
In his perfect justice, God honors our choice to exchange worship of the source of life for worship of dead idols. As Paul explains, “Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity [patheatimias—­dishonorable passions].” We get what we want, an emptiness that we fill with disordered desires. Paul goes on to specify, playing on the theme of exchange: “Their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural, and their men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in their own persons the due penalty for their error.”
Paul, who goes on to list a host of vices, is not saying that homosexual acts are the sole form of impurity. He is identifying same-sex eroticism as emblematic. For just as idols are lifeless, homosexual acts are intrinsically sterile. The life-giving potential of our instinctual drive to act upon our sexual desires is perverted, made vain, which is to say empty and fruitless. In this way, homosexual acts typify the dead end of sinful transgression.
It is important to read this passage correctly. Because of the power of instinct, in most instances sexual sins are far less grave than those committed with premeditation and malice. Homosexual acts are, however, metaphysically singular, serving as a “condensed symbol” of our fallen condition.
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Jesus both provoked the world to the ultimate sin and then stepped in the path of that wrath. He came at the right time just when the priestly people who had been given the covenant law had become the worst offenders. He literally came on Judgment Day. And the only reason there is a world of human beings today is because that judgment fell on him instead of the ones who deserved it. 
Paul writes to the Romans in what may seem almost an off-hand comment: “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly” (Romans 5:6 ESV; emphasis added).
This verse starkly shows that Paul, at times, can refer to the flow of human history as a collective pronoun. “We” were weak in the beginning of the first century, and then Christ died for us. Many Christians have conversion stories whereby they learned what Jesus did for them, repented and entrusted themselves to Him, and were empowered by the Holy Spirit to walk in newness of life. That is a fruitful analogy, but Paul obviously isn’t talking about what happened in all Christian biographies. He is talking about what God and Jesus Christ did in human history at the crucifixion.
And this passage tells us not only that Christ died in human history but that he did so “at the right time” in human history.
What was it about what we now know as the First Century AD (which is also the common era, but that designation remain dependent on the work of Our Lord) that made it appropriate for Christ to be born, live, die, rise, ascend to the throne, and pour out the Holy Spirit?
Paul repeatedly makes this claim about the timing of redemption is Christ:

“In the same way we also, when we were children, were enslaved to the elementary principles of the world. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:3-5 ESV).
“…making known to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth” (Ephesians 1:9–10 ESV).
“For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time” (1 Timothy 2:5–6 ESV).
“Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God’s elect and their knowledge of the truth, which accords with godliness, in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began and at the proper time manifested in his word through the preaching with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior” (Titus 1:1–3 ESV).

So there are many reasons to ask the question: What was so important about the timing of Jesus’ mission? What made that point in human history “the fullness of time” and “the proper time”?
Perhaps it might help us to answer that question if we developed curiosity about another question. Maybe the real question should be: What delayed Jesus so long in human history? Maybe we ought to expect that there must have been something proper about the time of the incarnation and the work of Christ. Or rather, that there must have been some good reason for the delay. Without an explanation for the thousands of years between Genesis 3 and the Gospels, John 3:16 becomes rather confusing. “For God so loved the world, that” thousands of years later “he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
Why the wait?
Consider the synoptic Gospels.
Jesus declared that the sins of Israel were reaching a climax in his own death. In the parable of the tenants and the vineyard (Matthew 21:33–46; Mark 12:1–12; Luke 20:9–19), Jesus described his impending murder as the final climactic sin in Israel’s history, the one that will mean “the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people producing its fruits” (Matthew 21:41). Of course, this death is, in fact, the action that will provide for a New Covenant that involves forgiveness of many, as Jesus signified in the establishment of the Lord’s supper (Matthew 26:28). So this murder, while bringing wrath on those who remain in unbelief, also provides the salvation for all who believe.
Again, this isn’t presented as a simple one-time sin. It is presented in the parable as the climactic sin that builds on a repeated history. In Matthew 23, the point is a bit more obscure because Jesus includes the persecution of his followers along with his own suffering at the hands of the unbelieving rulers in Jerusalem. But nevertheless, Jesus is again warning them that they are culminating a historic pattern of sin.
Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers. You serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you to escape being sentenced to hell? Therefore I send you prophets and wise men and scribes, some of whom you will kill and crucify, and some you will flog in your synagogues and persecute from town to town, so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar. Truly, I say to you, all these things will come upon this generation (Matthew 23:32–36 ESV).
The plain reading of these texts is that the rejection of Christ (and his followers) was not an isolated incident. It was a climactic sin that fulfilled a practice that Israel had long engage in. And this sin was serious not only because of who Jesus was, but because it showed they were doubling down on their worst behavior. “Then the owner of the vineyard said, ‘What shall I do? I will send my beloved son; perhaps they will respect him.’ But when the tenants saw him, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir. Let us kill him, so that the inheritance may be ours’” (Luke 20:13–14 ESV). They were presuming on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness was meant to lead them to repentance. Because of their hard and impenitent heart they were storing up wrath for themselves on the day of wrath when God’s righteous judgment would be revealed.
God Meant It for Good
This might be a good place to briefly consider the mystery of predestination. God was repeatedly merciful to Israel. Though he slew the Exodus generation in the wilderness, that was a mere chastisement. When he was really angry he wiped out entire family lines. In this case, he saved all their children.
He constantly forgave Israel in the time of the Judges. When the sins of Eli and his sons caused the ark to be taken into captivity, damaging Tabernacle worship beyond repair, He gave them a new place of worship and a new system of government (Temple and the Monarchy).
And when they sinned to the point that the Temple was destroyed and God sent them into exile, seventy years later God brought them back to their land in a greater way. They had a new Temple and new international influence as a people both in the Promised Land and throughout the empires. Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.
But when Jesus began his ministry, Israel, having sinned against the grace of restoration from exile, was now more debauched than ever. The prophet Zachariah was shown a vision of Israel being cleansed of demonic possession at the return from exile in a kind of inversion of Ezekiel’s glory cloud (Ezekiel 1) involving an anti-ark of the Covenant:
Then the angel who talked with me came forward and said to me, “Lift your eyes and see what this is that is going out.” And I said, “What is it?” He said, “This is the basket that is going out.” And he said, “This is their iniquity in all the land.” And behold, the leaden cover was lifted, and there was a woman sitting in the basket! And he said, “This is Wickedness.” And he thrust her back into the basket, and thrust down the leaden weight on its opening. Then I lifted my eyes and saw, and behold, two women coming forward! The wind was in their wings. They had wings like the wings of a stork, and they lifted up the basket between earth and heaven. Then I said to the angel who talked with me, “Where are they taking the basket?” He said to me, “To the land of Shinar, to build a house for it. And when this is prepared, they will set the basket down there on its base.”Zechariah 5:5–11 ESV
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