“God
Intended It for Good”
Toward the beginning of the Bible, there is a story about the strange way that God works in our world. It’s the story of Joseph and his brothers. You might remember how, early on, Joseph’s brothers become envious and resentful of Joseph for the way their father, Jacob, seems to favor him and for the way Joseph flaunts his favored status. Joseph’s brothers sell him into slavery , and as a result he endures many hardships. But through several fortuitous turns of events he rises to great power in Egypt and ends up saving the Egyptians and many others, including his own family, from a horrible famine. Although he reconciles with his brothers, they harbor doubts about his sincerity. When their father, Jacob, dies, they fear that Joseph will take his revenge, and so they throw themselves at his feet and declare themselves to be Joseph’s slaves.
But Joseph responds, “Do not be afraid! … Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people…. So have no fear; I myself will provide for you and your little ones” (Gen 50:20-21). Many readers have interpreted Joseph’s words as a declaration of God’s providence, a pronouncement of the way God powerfully manipulates events toward the good. They envision a God high in the clouds, pulling invisible strings. According to this interpretation, “everything happens for a reason.” God is a masterful orchestrator, causing seemingly bad events—such as the brothers’ selling Joseph into slavery—only to turn them later to the good.
Personally, I am not persuaded. Such an interpretation seems ultimately to justify evil behavior. It uses the logic that the ends justify the means, that God may cause bad things to happen (like hurricanes or genocide) in order to achieve a good end. But this seems to me like the way of the world, where a desirable end like profit can justify something bad like the neglect of people, where a desirable end like military victory can justify something bad like the collateral damage of innocents. I do not see this ends-justifying-the-means logic in Christ, who forgives unconditionally no matter the end, who gives without expectation of a beneficial return. No, I do not think the favorable outcome of Joseph’s story is the result of a divine puppeteer, who causes things like family separation and unjust imprisonment in order to save many people from a famine. I think the favorable outcome results from Joseph’s choice to live as God lives: with trust, with patience, with forgiveness. Think about it this way: God could have engineered events precisely as they happened in the story, and yet if Joseph had chosen not to forgive his brothers, it all would have been for nought. God did not cause bad things in order to achieve a good end. Joseph chose God’s way in the face of bad things, and God’s way redeemed the situation toward a good end.
To say God was not pulling the strings is not to say that God had nothing to do with the way things turned out. God had everything to do with it! The only difference is, in this interpretation, God is not the cause of everything that happens. Rather God is a call in everything that happens. A call that Joseph heeds. To trust, to be patient, to forgive. In this way, Joseph’s story becomes a picture not of God’s providence—not of God masterfully pulling invisible strings, causing events to align just so—but rather a picture of God’s grace, a picture of God’s gift or possibility hidden in every situation.
One does not have to say that everything happens for a reason or that God is the cause of everything to be able to affirm the even more profound truth that God can use anything for good.
“I
Thank My God”
1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus,
To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are in Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God every time I remember you, 4 constantly praying with joy in every one of my prayers for all of you, 5 because of your sharing in the gospel from the first day until now.
You wouldn’t know it from these opening verses…but Paul’s letter to the Christ-followers in Philippi is written from prison. Of all Paul’s letters, this one is commonly identified as being his “letter of joy.” Eighteen times throughout the letter he expresses his joy or refers to the joy of others.
We see in these opening verses the foundation for Paul’s joy, namely gratitude. “I thank my God every time I remember you” (Phil 1:3). Now, I don’t think Paul is thanking God as an invisible puller of strings, as someone who providentially brought Paul and the Philippians together. I think his gratitude has instead to do with the depth of their relationship, with the love that has drawn them closer to one another and to God.
To put Paul’s gratitude in the simplest terms: when Paul looks backwards, he sees God. In the love that has drawn him and others into community. In the patience and trust that has kept them strong in trying times.
I’m reminded of a line in the Big Book, the book that Alcoholics Anonymous and many other twelve step groups regularly recite. “We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it…. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.” Paul has a checkered past, for sure, but when he looks backwards, he sees not his own shame but God: how has God has changed him, used him, brought him into the abundant life of the gospel and into community with others who are also on the Way. And he is so grateful that even in a place like prison, he can share his joy.
“Grace”
6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work among you will bring it to completion by the day of Jesus Christ. 7 It is right for me to think this way about all of you, because you hold me in your heart, for all of you share in God’s grace with me, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
In these verses, Paul turns from the past to the present. He discerns God’s handiwork in the Philippians; God has begun “a good work” among them (Phil 1:6). He explains that he thinks this way because the Philippians share with him in “God’s grace” (Phil 1:7).
Paul’s words paint a very different picture of life than the one that predominated back then (and predominates still today). The popular picture of life (then as now) is that each person makes plans and then either achieves them or doesn’t. Of course there are twists and turns along the way, but we like to think we’re in control and our lives are either a success or a failure.
But Paul’s words suggest that our lives are God’s work, that we are dependent on grace. And grace is just a religious word for “gift.” What Paul is saying, I think, is that at every turn in our lives there is always a divine possibility. Even in the worst of circumstances, such as your brothers selling you into slavery, God is there, desperate to turn a bad situation toward the good. Not with a flick of the divine wrist and a tug of some invisible string, but with a call to choose life: to trust (rather than despair), to be patient (rather than hurry and worry), to forgive (rather than seek revenge). God’s grace—God’s possibility—is always there for us to choose.
“Harvest”
8 For God is my witness, how I long for all of you with the compassion of Christ Jesus. 9 And this is my prayer, that your love may overflow more and more with knowledge and full insight 10 to help you to determine what is best, so that in the day of Christ you may be pure and blameless, 11 having produced the harvest of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ for the glory and praise of God.
If grace looks backwards with gratitude for how God has used the past or can use the past, it looks forward with hope toward growth. Paul’s prayer for the Philippians is that their love would grow and that they would yield a “harvest of righteousness” (Phil 1:11), which is to say their growth would bear fruit.
It’s worth drawing a contrast here. The typical worldview—namely, that we are in control of our lives—tends to look backwards with regret and forward with fear. There’s regret for what has been lost in the past and fear for all the ways things could go wrong in the future. But a worldview of grace, which sees God’s gift around every turn, looks backward in gratitude and looks forward with hope toward growth. Everywhere it looks, grace sees God’s possibility.
“For
Christ”
12 I want you to know, beloved that what has happened to me has actually helped to spread the gospel, 13 so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to everyone else that my imprisonment is for Christ; 14 and most of the brothers and sisters, having been made confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, dare to speak the word with greater boldness and without fear.
15 Some proclaim Christ from envy and rivalry, but others from goodwill. 16 These proclaim Christ out of love, knowing that I have been put here for the defense of the gospel; 17 the others proclaim Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely but intending to increase my suffering in my imprisonment. 18 What does it matter? Just this, that Christ is proclaimed in every way, whether out of false motives or true; and in that I rejoice.
Yes, and I will continue to rejoice….
Paul’s words here make me think of the therapeutic tool—you may have heard of this before—that distinguishes between “got to” and “get to.” It is a little trick to help reorient our attitude. Imagine that you are with you are with your family on a road trip, and you hit traffic. There’s no way around it. You’re going to be stuck in the car for an hour longer than you expected. The typical reaction is, “Oh man, we got to wait here in traffic for another hour. What bad luck.” But if we change the “got to” to “get to,” it becomes something like: “We get to spend an hour longer together. We could talk, we could play a game, we could learn more about what’s going on in each other’s lives.”
Now, I’ll confess, I’m suspicious of tools like this. They seem like trite mind-tricks; in theory they might sound great, but in practice they can be quite difficult. Does anyone really expect a group of people cooped up in the same car to rejoice at being stuck in traffic for an hour longer? But I have to admit, even if this tool is more difficult in practice than in theory, it hits upon the solid rock of the gospel. It hits upon the thing that Paul is hitting upon in today’s scripture, namely grace. It hits upon the fact that God’s gift—God’s possibility—is hidden within every moment of our lives, waiting to be chosen, received, cherished, celebrated. It hits upon the “good work” that God is doing in us and in our world, if you would believe it.
Paul may not have known the “got to”/“get to” trick. Instead, he has his own phrase: “For Christ.” “My imprisonment is for Christ,” he says—“I get to be here, for Christ”—and I imagine he would say the same for anywhere else he was. “This is for Christ.” Which is to say, God’s grace is here. God can do something great here, if I believe it.
Our circumstances may seem far removed from Paul, who wrote his letter from a dungy Roman prison. But the truth is, life can get to feeling like a prison wherever we are, particularly when we’re in a “got to” mindset. Paul’s strange joy in today’s scripture could perhaps serve as a spark for us wherever we are, a reminder that our faith is in a God whose grace—whose gift, whose possibility—can redeem the darkest of situations. And so we can look back not with regret but with gratitude, and we can look forward not with fear but with hope for growth, because we like Joseph have faith that God is doing a good work among us—if you would believe it.
Prayer
You lived in God’s grace,
Giving thanks for what was,
Even as you looked forward with hope toward what could be
…
May your example
And the example of others like Paul
Inspire us to look for God’s gifts
Wherever we are
And to trust that God can redeem
Anything. Everything.
Amen.
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