All things work together
The True Christian's Blessedness
Spurgeon takes the verse apart word by word and stops on two: that it says we know and not we believe, and that things work together, not each one on its own.
“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 passage also appears in bible verses about hope.
- Passage
- Romans 8:28
- Preached
- 18 October 1857
- Place
- London
- Reference
- New Park Street Pulpit, vol. 3
It is one of the most quoted verses and one of the worst used. It gets said at funerals as though it meant that what just happened was good, and Spurgeon spends half the sermon explaining that it does not say that.
He was twenty three when he preached it. What stands out is the method: instead of consoling, he takes the verse and dismantles it term by term, and the comfort comes out of that rather than from something added at the end.
“We know”, not “we believe”
He stops on the fact that Paul does not write I hope or it seems to me. He writes we know, and Spurgeon treats it as tested fact rather than a hopeful posture: it is what people say who have already been through it.
His line for it is short and promises nothing in advance: we have tried it, we have proved it.
“Together”, not each one
This is the turn of the sermon. The text does not say each thing is good. It says they work together. Spurgeon uses the picture of a chemist mixing: any one of those ingredients on its own might be a deadly poison, and combined they heal.
That changes entirely how the verse can be used. It does not license telling anyone their loss was good. It says the loss is neither the last word nor acting alone.
His example is Jacob mourning losses that turned out to be the opposite, and he tells it not as a happy ending but as the case of a man who could not see it at the time.
“Good”, and what kind
He is blunt here: the good the text speaks of is spiritual and eternal, not prosperity. It does not promise the business will recover. And precisely because it never promised that, it does not break when the business fails.
In his own words
“This is not with us a matter of doubt; we have tried it.”
“Any one of those ingredients might be a deadly poison.”
This is our summary. The full sermon by Charles Spurgeon is available at The Spurgeon Library. It is in the public domain: you can read all of it for free.
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