28"All things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose." The verse is worn smooth by handling, and it is sometimes offered too quickly to grieving people as though it explained what it does not. All things work together, under a purpose fixed before any of it happened, toward a good he defines a verse later: 29"to be conformed to the image of his Son."
That purpose runs along an unbroken chain of five links: foreknown, predestined, called, justified, glorified. The last is written in the same past tense as the first, as though it has already happened. For readers who had not yet seen their own glorification, that is remarkable confidence. Whatever the church has debated about how the links connect, the one holding this verse hears the same thing: the outcome was settled before the story moved.
Then Paul asks questions whose answers he already knows. 31"If God is for us, who can be against us?" Opposition will come, and none of it can overturn what God has settled. 32"He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?" "Did not spare" echoes what God said to Abraham on Moriah, when he stopped Abraham's hand and provided a ram (Genesis 22:16). This time God provided no ram. He gave his own Son in the place where his hand once stayed. If God has given the costliest gift there was, nothing smaller will be withheld.
33"Who shall bring any charge against God's elect?" The answer is that God himself justifies. The one judge with standing has already ruled in the believer's favor. 34"Who is to condemn?" And the one person who could condemn is at the right hand of God, praying for us. No one is left to bring the case.
Then comes the question the chapter has been building toward: who can separate us from the love of Christ? Paul answers with the worst things he can imagine: 35"tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness." These were live possibilities. Within a decade of this letter, some of its first readers would face that sword under Nero. Paul is promising what holds however hard the road becomes.
37"In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us." The verb is a stronger compound than the ordinary word for winning.
Then a longer list, every category he can think of: 38"Neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come." Height and depth, and everything else in creation, join the list. Nothing that has ever existed or will exist has standing to try.
Every item on Paul's list is something people fear, and he names them plainly because his answer can bear the weight. Ask which item on Paul's list is hardest for you to believe is powerless, and read that line aloud.
Prayer
Father, thank you that everything we face works under your purpose toward the good of becoming like your Son. Thank you that you did not spare your own Son, and that having given him, you will withhold nothing we need. When hardship makes us feel separated from your love, remind us that nothing in creation has that power. Keep us more than conquerors through him who loved us. In Jesus' name, amen.