Big Healing Book - God Works All Things for Good (Romans 8:28); This Includes

Objection: God Works All Things for Good (Romans 8:28); This Includes Sickness

The title of this objection is a misquotation of Romans 8:28. Did you notice that? The verse actually says, “And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” This verse does not say what almost everyone thinks it says. It does not say that God purposefully works bad things for our good. It says nothing at all about bad things. It says nothing about God’s direct involvement at all. Read the verse! Do you see anything there about bad things such as sickness? NO. Is God even mentioned in the verse? NO! Instead, this is a definite statement that things work together for good for us as believers. There is no mention that these “things” include sickness and other attacks.

What is really said here is that all things will work for you, not against you, if you love and serve God. It is a spiritual law. God’s direct involvement is not stated. This is similar to what God told Joshua (Joshua 1:7-8) – if he kept the Law, HE would make his OWN way prosperous. God didn’t say that He would make Joshua’s way prosperous. Keeping the Word makes you prosperous – it’s a spiritual law. God said that if you love Him, all things will work together for good for you. He didn’t say that HE would make them work together for good any more than He will “make” the law of lift work if you’re in an airplane. His spiritual laws always work.

“Yes,” someone will say, “but you’ve heard about the girl who dove into shallow water and broke her neck. She became a Christian after that incident. It was a bad incident, but that was an example of Romans 8:28 where God worked good out of a bad situation. If God works ALL things for good, He would surely work BAD things for good for her.”

But that person would be completely in error. Romans 8:28 did not apply AT ALL in that situation, and I can prove it. Romans 8:28 says that all things work together for good to those who love God. The girl who dove into the water did NOT love God. It doesn’t matter that she loved God later. She didn’t love God when it happened, so God was not working ANYTHING together for her good. What happened was that she hit bottom (literally) and she realized that it would be better to serve God than not to serve Him.

There are many other testimonies from people who figuratively “hit bottom” and suddenly turned to God at breakneck speed. Many of these people say that GOD orchestrated their loss of their health and/or their businesses and/or their marriages to bring them to Himself, but their testimonies are junk. The devil ate their lunches. God had nothing to do with their losses. I always wonder why anyone else would want to serve a God whom you testify to be a destroyer of health, businesses and marriages.

Besides, the Bible does not teach that God uses calamities to lead you to repentance. It DOES say that the GOODNESS of God leads men to repentance (Romans 2:4). People followed Jesus when they saw God’s goodness manifested through the healing of the sick. The healing of the sick should continue to lead people to Jesus today. If more people saw healings in front of their noses, perhaps fewer would have to “hit bottom” before realizing that life is better when you serve God.

God is not using sickness for your good. Satan is using it for your harm.

God can work good DESPITE bad situations, even though that is not the subject of Romans 8:28. But that does not mean that God deliberately uses bad things for your good as part of His plan. God can turn things around for His glory even if situations were not from Him to begin with. This is what He did with Joseph. Joseph was thrown into a pit and sold into slavery, then his brothers faked his death. That was ungodly, and God did NOT incite them to lie about Joseph. The incident got Joseph to Egypt, where he would be needed. Potiphar’s wife framed Joseph. It got Joseph into prison, where he met someone who would give him access to Pharaoh. Joseph was in jail and someone who was supposed to help him forgot him. That wasn’t good, either, but Joseph ended up being second in command in Egypt next to Pharaoh and he delivered his family from a famine. The path of Joseph’s life led to power in Egypt and the salvation of Israel, but that does not mean that all the things that happened to him were good, and it certainly doesn’t mean that GOD prompted the bad actions. It means that God brought good OUT OF them. However, God could have orchestrated a way for Joseph to reach power in Egypt without bad things having to happen. One can just imagine Satan trying to do everything he could to snuff out Joseph’s dream, but to no avail. But even though Joseph didn’t have Romans 8:28 in his day, he WAS someone who loved God and had things work out for him.

I’ve heard the stories about people who got sick and went to the hospital and witnessed to someone. (There’s even a whole objection reply devoted to that.) It doesn’t mean that their sicknesses were good or that they were from God. It just means that God worked something good (which He always seeks to do) in a bad situation that He had nothing to do with setting up.

The objection can be extended to say that sickness is covered here because verse 26 says that the Spirit helps our infirmities and we groan. But if you insist on interpreting “infirmities” as illnesses, you have just come up with another good proof text for divine healing! It says that the Spirit helps our infirmities, not that He gives us our infirmities that get worked for our good. Actually, the word helps means take hold together with against. He helps us get rid of them. The groaning is a spiritual thing having to do with intercession. To say otherwise does violence to the meaning of the verse: “Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself [Himself] maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.” Really, in context, this verse is about the Holy Spirit helping us pray and certainly has nothing to do with God wanting us to be sick. Therefore, to claim sickness as a context for verse 28 is ludicrous.

Then, consider verse 29, where Paul says that we were predestined to be conformed to Christ’s image. Jesus Christ was not sick until He took our sicknesses, so sickness cannot conform you to His image! The “for” at the beginning of the verse makes it a continuation of verse 28, so it makes no sense to claim that verse 28 could be talking about sickness.

Now let me ask you something. Do you honestly believe that dying prematurely in horrible agony can possibly be an example of all things working to your good? No way. That is an example of all things working to your bad. That is an example of not getting the victory in this life. Even the world is sensible enough not to think of that as something that worked to your good. Of course, not even sickness can rob the Christian of his ultimate victory over sickness. No Christian will ever be sick again after he dies! People in heaven do not get sick. People’s redeemed bodies on the new earth will be sickness-proof! If you’re a Christian, you win ultimately. However, you do not have to lose in this life. You are to receive the victory and always triumph in Christ (1 Corinthians 15:57, 2 Corinthians 2:14). Dying in terrible pain does not represent victory in this life. You get the final victory; you end up where the devil can’t touch you and sickness can’t touch you. You’ll never suffer again. But you lived beneath your privileges in this life if some horrible illness takes you out.

Someone once cited Romans 8:28 as a proof text that terminal illness can be a gift from God. I kid you not! If dying prematurely is your idea of things working together for good, perhaps you should refer to the section on mental illnesses for help. No one but a religiously brainwashed Christian would ever consider it good to be taken from this world early, unable to do any further work for the Master. The only others who would think this was good would be the devil and his demons!

Yes, God can do good things in bad situations. He can do good things in good situations, too! He is always interested in doing good things. If you get sick and God does something good in the situation (like using you to lead a nurse to the Lord), it certainly does not prove that it was the will of God for you to be sick in the first place or that the sickness was in any way part of His plan for you. God’s ONLY plan for sickness is healing it!