Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to Romans · About this commentary
Conformed to the Image of His Son
Romans 8:28-30
28 We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose. · WEB
All things work for the called, the chain runs from foreknowing to glory in five unbroken links, and the destination is family likeness.
We know that all things work together for good for those who love God, for those who are called according to his purpose.
The sentence is bounded on every side, and its comfort depends on the bounds. All things — including the sufferings just weighed Romans 8:18, the groaning, the futility itself — work together: cooperate, are woven, by an implied weaver. For good — not for ease, and the good has just been defined by the context as conformity to the Son and final glory, not smooth circumstances. And the beneficiaries are described from both sides of the relationship: those who love God, the human side; called according to his purpose, the divine side that grounds it.
Then the chain, and its first link governs the reading of the whole: for whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers Romans 8:29.
The predestining is said of whom he foreknew — the knowing stands first, and in Scripture's usage the word is relational before it is informational: a knowing of persons Amos 3:2. And what the foreknown are predestined to is stated in the same breath and is often skipped in the arguments: conformed to the image of his Son. The destination of the decree is family resemblance — the marred image of chapter 1 Romans 1:23 remade to the pattern of the Son — that he might be the firstborn among many brothers: firstborn as elsewhere a word of rank and belonging Colossians 1:18, and the purpose of the whole plan a crowded family around him. Whatever else predestination means, in this verse its content is that God has determined his people's destiny of Christlikeness — the verse is aimed at assurance under suffering, and the letter draws no negative inference from it anywhere.
Verse 30 runs the links without a gap: whom he predestined, those he also called. Whom he called, those he also justified. Whom he justified, those he also glorified.
Each link holds the same whom... those also — no attrition between stages, no one lost in the pipeline. And the last verb is the astonishment: glorified, past tense, written of people still groaning in mortal bodies Romans 8:23. From the purpose's vantage the outcome is so certain it can be filed as accomplished — which is exactly the footing the questions of the next verses stand on: if God is for us, who can be against us?
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