All Things For Good

I was reading in my Bible study yesterday about Romans 8:28-- "And we know that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose." In the past, I'd read the verse and I'd seen in it a promise that God was always working something good out of every situation, even the darkest trials or the most puzzling, seemingly pointless of circumstances. When I felt upset or as if my life was going nowhere, I could take heart and see that God had a plan--a good one. However, this Bible study really had me take a new look at the word "good."

When the author pointed out other verses about what God considers good, such as loving and obeying Him, it caused me to reevaluate exactly what Paul was saying. Of course God has our best interests in mind, but maybe too often we read that verse and think, "Yes, God is going to take this situation and make it something good so that I am happy." But happiness is a shallow type of good--it is like the world's definition of good, where pleasure and wealth and materialism and every other temporary object or feeling you can think of reigns supreme. God wants something greater for us. He wants us to take the trials of life and learn from them. He wants every moment of our lives to draw us closer to Him and form us into the person He wants us to be. He wants every day to have meaning and purpose, not just fleeting, temporary happiness.

The Bible study referred to the story of Joseph and how, though he was betrayed by his brothers and sold into slavery, God used those unimaginably painful circumstances for ultimate good. In the end, Joseph was able to save countless lives because of the important position he rose to in Egypt, one he never would have gained if he had remained in Canaan with his family. The situation was good for Joseph's brothers, too, who came to repent of their cruel deeds.

But this is where I stopped and realized something I guess I'd never fully grasped about the story. Maybe I'd just heard about Joseph so many times that I tended to gloss over a very important fact. What about the good that God had done within Joseph? As the "hero" of the story, we tend to read about him as the victim, the poor boy who was hated by his brothers. Naturally, the hero would then save his brothers' lives and forgive them...right? But could I imagine being in Joseph's circumstances and forgiving my brothers for hating and plotting to kill me? For selling me into slavery, ripping me away from my beloved father and younger brother, sending me into a foreign land with strange people and gods?

Forgiving his brothers for such acts would have been amazing enough for someone who already had a strong character and faith in God. Clearly, God had been working good--moral, character-building, spiritual good--inside Joseph. Then I considered Joseph's childhood, being the spoiled, favored child of his father. Sometimes we read the verses describing Joseph back then, knowing that he is about to be victimized, knowing that he had no control over Jacob's unfair favoritism, and see him as innocent. But Joseph didn't just dream prophetic dreams, he rubbed them in his brothers' faces. This gives us a picture of a spoiled, prideful brat--far from the mature, forgiving man Joseph later becomes.

These thoughts really changed my perspective of Romans 8:28, as well as the story of Joseph. God utilized Joseph's trials to pull him to Himself, to cause Joseph to grow in faith and love to the point that he humbled himself and forgave the men who most deeply hurt him in his life. God used bad circumstances to transform Joseph from an arrogant child to a humble, faithful man. This couldn't be more evident than in the fact that Joseph didn't just forgive and save his brothers' lives. He went the extra mile. He could have very easily forgiven and fed them and then held all but his father and Benjamin at a distance, but he did not. He "kissed all his brothers and wept over them, and after that his brothers talked with him" (Genesis 45:15). He restored his relationship with his brothers--or, since they never had much of a relationship, perhaps the better word would be that he renewed it. For perhaps the first time ever in their lives, they all truly became brothers.

Young Joseph probably thought that the best "good" for his life would be for his strange dreams to come true and lift him to the heights his proud mind aspired to gain. He would have imagined staying with his father and Benjamin, growing up among familiar faces in Canaan, accepting a broken relationship with the rest of his brothers. God had something better in mind.