Heaven: Where God Will Bring Good Out of Bad (A Study of Romans 8:28)
Lesson Overview
Heaven: Where God Will Bring Good Out of Bad with Randy Alcorn
This standalone message is given by Randy Alcorn, founder of Eternal Perspective Ministries and author of Heaven and If God Is Good. It is an exposition of Romans 8:28, “we know that for those who love God, all things work together for good,” worked out through the whole flow of Romans 8. Alcorn’s aim is to help believers trust that God will bring good even out of the worst suffering. Use this overview to review the key points after watching the full video, ideally with an open Bible.
The Honest Question
Alcorn begins by admitting that as a young Christian he wanted to believe Romans 8:28 but was not sure he did: how can “all things work together for good” be true in a world so full of suffering and evil? He affirms that Scripture itself raises the problem of evil (as in his book If God Is Good), and that it is right to ask the question, as long as we listen to the answers Scripture gives rather than making ourselves, our culture, or our professors the authority. He commends the Bereans, who searched the Scriptures to test what they were taught.
A Testimony of Trust
He opens with the account of Scott and Janet Willis, who in 1994 lost six of their children in a highway accident. Interviewing them fourteen years later for If God Is Good, Alcorn was struck that Janet said she now had a far greater understanding of the goodness of God than before the tragedy, and Scott said he had a stronger view of God’s sovereignty than ever. If they could come to trust God’s love and sovereignty after such loss, Alcorn asks, can we?
Living in the Middle of the Story
Alcorn frames life with an image from his own novel-writing. Every good story has a wonderful beginning and a redemptive ending, but for the ending to be redemptive, many things must go wrong in the middle, and we live in the middle. So to have the right worldview, we must look back to Eden and forward to the new earth, interpreting present life under the curse in light of the beginning, the end, and the promises of God. That is walking by faith, not by sight.
Born to Rule Through Suffering
Working through Romans 8:16-17 (“heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified”), Alcorn argues that God’s original plan, that humans made in His image would rule the earth to His glory, was never abandoned. Christ came not to scrap that plan but to fulfill it. From Daniel 2 and 7 he shows an everlasting kingdom in which not only the Messiah reigns but “the saints of the Most High” receive and possess the kingdom forever.
Why must we suffer first? Because, he argues, rulers who have grown up in ease and always gotten their way become tyrants. God builds servant-leader character through suffering, preparing us to rule well on the new earth. The “in order that” of the passage marks purpose: we suffer with purpose.
This is why, he says, the health-and-wealth (prosperity) gospel is a heresy. It promises that everything should go well now, yet Paul left Trophimus sick, told Timothy to take wine for his stomach, bore a thorn in the flesh, and endured beatings, imprisonment, and hardship (2 Corinthians 11). The trouble-free life we crave, Alcorn warns, is exactly the kind that would make us least like Christ.
The Weight of Glory and the Groaning Creation
From Romans 8:18, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed,” and 2 Corinthians 4:17, the “light momentary affliction” preparing “an eternal weight of glory.” Alcorn acknowledges that afflictions do not feel light or momentary, but sets them on the scale against eternity.
He then expounds Romans 8:19-23, the creation “subjected to futility” and groaning “in the pains of childbirth,” waiting to be set free when God’s children are revealed. The whole creation fell under humanity’s sin and will rise under humanity’s redemption. He stresses that biblical “hope” is not a wish but a blood-bought certainty. Reflecting on a monk seal he encountered while snorkeling, and on the eyes of hurting animals, he observes that the creation is under a curse it was never meant to bear, and that God did not make the world this way; our sin did, and He will redeem it.
New Earth, New Bodies: Not Non-Earth, Not Non-Bodies
Alcorn drives home a favorite point: we await resurrection, not a disembodied existence like the Greek philosophers imagined. A “spiritual body” means a body under the control of a righteous spirit, still a real, physical body, as Jesus proved by eating and inviting the disciples to touch Him. A new body is still a body, just as a new earth is still an earth, the way a “new car” still has wheels and an engine. He notes the many “re-” words of Scripture (redeem, restore, renew, reconcile, resurrect), all pointing back to what was lost in the fall, and forward to something even greater than the pre-fall world.
All Things Means All Things
Returning to Romans 8:28, Alcorn insists the “all things” that work together for good is not limited to minor setbacks; the whole chapter is about suffering, so “all things” includes the very worst things: the accident that paralyzes, the child who dies, the spouse who deserts. His illustration is his mother’s chocolate cake: tasting each raw ingredient (flour, baking soda, raw egg, bitter chocolate) is unpleasant or sickening, but a trusted cook combines them in the right amounts, at the right temperature, for the right time, into something wonderful. Not each thing by itself is good; all things work together for good, under God’s sovereign hand, and not always now but eventually. It requires faith.
He weaves in Joni Eareckson Tada, who as a teenager prayed to be able to end her life after her diving accident and could not, and whose disability God used to reach millions, and who met even a later cancer diagnosis as a new avenue of ministry. He quotes her line, “God permits what he hates to achieve what he loves.”
Joseph, Good Friday, and the Scarred Hands
Alcorn’s clinching biblical example is Joseph, who told the brothers who had betrayed and sold him, “you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good” (Genesis 50:20). God is not the author of evil, yet the worst thing anyone can do to us is still within His hand and not beyond what He can work for good. Believing this transforms us; disbelieving it leaves us with a permanent victim mentality, as though God were not sovereign over demons and evil people.
He argues that God’s love would be mere warm feelings if He were not also all-knowing and all-powerful, so Romans 8:28 holds love and sovereignty together. His supreme proof is the cross: the worst day in history, the torture of the innocent Son of God, we call Good Friday, because we see in retrospect what God accomplished through it and the resurrection. He closes with the assignment to list the worst things and the best things that have happened to us, then ask which of the best would never have come without the worst (offering his own jail time from abortion-clinic protests and his diabetes as examples), and with the image of the risen Jesus stretching out His scarred hands and asking, “do these look like the hands of a God who does not care?”
Key Terms
Romans 8:28: the promise that God works all things together for good for those who love Him.
Walking by faith, not by sight: interpreting present suffering in light of Eden and the new earth.
The prosperity (health-and-wealth) gospel: the teaching Alcorn calls heresy, that God intends ease and health now.
The weight of glory: Paul’s image (2 Corinthians 4:17) of eternal glory far outweighing present affliction.
The groaning creation: Romans 8’s picture of a cursed creation longing for redemption.
“You meant evil, but God meant it for good”: Joseph’s words (Genesis 50:20) capturing the theme.
Verses to Know
Romans 8:16-18, heirs with Christ, suffering in order to be glorified. Romans 8:19-23, the groaning creation awaiting redemption. Romans 8:28-30, all things working together for good, foreknown and predestined. Romans 8:37-39, nothing can separate us from the love of God. 2 Corinthians 4:17, the eternal weight of glory. Genesis 50:20, you meant evil, but God meant it for good.
Takeaway
Alcorn argues that because God is both perfectly loving and fully sovereign, Romans 8:28 means the worst thing that ever happens to a believer will be woven by God into eternal good, that present suffering is preparing us to reign with Christ on the new earth, and that the scarred hands of the risen Jesus are the final proof that God can be trusted even in the darkest suffering.