Experience of Grace #8 - Certain Victory
Description
In Romans 8:28–39, Dr. Kurt Bjorklund unpacks three reasons followers of Jesus can face any hardship with unshakeable confidence: bad things will turn out for good, the best is still ahead, and nothing in all creation can separate you from the love of God in Christ.
Summary & Application
Have you ever watched a game — or re-watched a movie — already knowing the outcome? When your team wins, you can go back and sit through the tense moments without the same dread, because you know how it ends. That knowledge changes everything about how you experience the lows.
That image opened Kurt's message this past weekend in Romans 8:28–39. And it isn't just an illustration — it is the shape of Christian hope. For those who belong to Jesus, the end has already been secured. We know how the story ends.
To get the most out of this passage, Kurt set it in context. Romans is a sustained argument. By chapter 8, Paul has established that every person falls short of God's glory — but that Jesus Christ makes a way for sinners to be justified, declared righteous before God, not because of anything they have done, but because of what Jesus has done. Romans 8:28–39 describes one of the privileges of that new standing: certain victory.
Drawing on a framework from the Puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards, Kurt organized the text around three reasons for hope.
1. Our Bad Things Will Turn Out for Good
"And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose." (Romans 8:28)
Kurt was careful to name what this verse does not say. It does not say bad things are good — bad things are bad. What it says is that God will take those bad things and work something beneficial from them, for those who are currently loving him and orienting their lives around his purposes. In the original language, "those who love him" and "those who are called" are present participles — they describe an ongoing posture, not a one-time past decision.
To illustrate the limits of our in-the-moment perspective, Kurt told an old parable: A man and his son in an ancient village owned a horse — their livelihood. The horse ran away: "How unlucky." It returned with three wild horses: "How fortunate." The son broke his leg taming one: "How unlucky." Soldiers arrived to conscript young men for a foreign war; the son was exempt because of his injury: "How fortunate." Each time, the man said only, "Well, we'll see."
The wisdom of that story is the wisdom of Romans 8:28. We rarely have the vantage point to call anything final in the moment we're experiencing it. What makes this verse stronger than a silver-lining outlook, Kurt pointed out, is the active subject: God is working, orchestrating outcomes for those who love him that are better than what we're presently going through. That is a reason for hope.
2. Our Best Things Are Yet to Come
"Those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified." (Romans 8:30)
Most readers stop at "foreknew" and "predestined" — there is real theological depth there that Romans 9 takes up more fully. But Kurt drew attention to a word at the end of the sequence that often gets overlooked: glorified. To be glorified is to arrive at the moment when God looks at everything that has happened and says, "Now it is as it should be." The best is not behind us. It is still ahead — and Paul uses the past tense because it is that certain.
One author Kurt referenced described a condition called "eternity amnesia" — living as if this present life carries the full weight of what only eternity can hold. The effects are predictable: we expect too much of people, we try to control everything, and we quietly conclude that God isn't good when things don't go our way — because if this life is the whole story, we can't afford for anything to go wrong.
Romans 8 corrects this. As one writer put it: one day, all of our best days lie ahead of us; one day, all of our worst days will be behind us. If that is true — and Paul argues that it is — then no present suffering is the final word.
3. Our Truly Good Things Can Never Be Taken from Us
The third section of the passage reads like a courtroom. Paul poses a series of sweeping rhetorical questions, each expecting the same implied answer.
Who can be against us? — No one who ultimately matters. John Calvin once wrote, "The Gospel acts without threats, and it is a statement of the supreme goodwill of God." God is for you.
Who will bring a charge against God's chosen? — God is the one who justifies. Kurt made this practical: when accusation comes — from someone else or from your own conscience — whatever they say may or may not be true. But God has seen you all the way to the bottom, and he is the one who declares the verdict. That settles it.
Who can condemn? — No one. Christ died. More than that, he was raised. More than that, he now intercedes at the right hand of the Father (Romans 8:34).
Who can separate us from the love of Christ? — Paul lists seven categories: trouble, hardship, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, sword. A comprehensive inventory. The answer to all of them is the same: nothing.
The theologian Donald Bloesch wrote nearly fifty years ago that in much of modern Christianity, the subjective question — "How am I doing?" — has crowded out the objective one: "What did Jesus do?" The reason our truly good things can never be taken is not because of our spiritual performance. It is because they rest entirely on what Christ has already accomplished.
Paul closes the case in verses 38–39 with one of the most comprehensive statements in all of Scripture: neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
A Question Worth Sitting With
Kurt closed with something honest: would it change your life if you really lived as if that were true?
Many people trust Jesus and yet never quite settle into the assurance that God is genuinely, persistently for them. They carry an undercurrent of fear that one more failure, one more unanswered prayer, one more hard season means God has turned away. Romans 8:28–39 speaks directly to that. Not because life will stop being hard, but because the end has already been promised by the God who did not spare his own Son.
You know how the story ends. Our bad things will turn out for good. Our best things are yet to come. And what is truly ours in Christ cannot be taken away.
For Reflection
When you consider a hard or unresolved situation in your life right now, what would it look like to hold it with the posture of the man in the parable — open-handed, trusting that God may be at work in ways you cannot yet assess — rather than treating your current reading of events as the final word?
Paul's argument in Romans 8:31–39 is grounded entirely in what God and Christ have done, not in how you are currently performing. Where in your life do you most need to shift your weight from your own spiritual track record onto the finished work of Christ — and what might that actually look like in practice?
This post was developed with the assistance of artificial intelligence based on the sermon "Certain Victory" by Dr. Kurt Bjorklund (Romans 8:28–39, June 6–7, 2026). While every effort has been made to faithfully represent the content and intent of the original message, readers are encouraged to engage the full sermon audio or transcript for the complete teaching.
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Billy Graham
"I don't know much about the Bible — which was an understatement — but I know this: we win in the end."
John Calvin
"The Gospel acts without threats, and it is a statement of the supreme goodwill of God."
Donald Bloesch
"Among modern Christians, it is not the justification of the ungodly — which was the basic motif of the Reformation — but the sanctification of the righteous that is given the most attention."
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Have you ever watched a game or a movie when you knew the outcome versus watching it without knowing? If you’re watching a game in real time, you experience the highs and the lows—the stress of each moment. But if you go back and watch a game where you already know your team won, those lows don’t feel so low. The same thing happens with a movie. The first time, you think, “Oh no, this is so stressful.” But the second time, you say, “I know how this ends.”
Today we are in Romans 8:28–39, a section of the Bible in which we are told that people of faith—Christians—have certain victory. We see this in verse 37, which says that you are “more than conquerors”—you are an overcomer. This is actually where we get the word “Nike.” In the original language, “Nike” means overcomer, a conqueror. You are somebody who has victory ahead of you.
Billy Graham once said, “I don’t know much about the Bible”—which was an understatement—“but I know this: we win in the end.” What he was saying is that you may get caught up in all kinds of debates about what the Bible says, but in the end there is this unblemished promise that says there is victory for people who are in Christ.
Romans is a sustained argument, and what that means is that when you jump into chapter 8 without context, you might get the wrong idea. Let me set a little context. Romans argues clearly from the first chapter that everybody is sinful and falls short of God’s glory. But it argues that Jesus Christ makes a way for people to be justified—to be considered righteous before God—not because of what we do, but because of what Jesus has done. When we believe in Jesus, acknowledge our sin, and recognize him as Savior, we receive a new legal status: we become justified. Romans 8:28–39 describes one of those benefits. We live with certain victory. We know how the movie ends as we’re living our lives.
I’d like to show us why living with certain victory matters in the midst of our lives, using an outline from the Puritan pastor Jonathan Edwards. He is most famous for his sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” but on this passage he had what he called “reasons for hope.” I’ll discuss them in my own words, but the framework is his.
1. Our Bad Things Will Turn Out for Good
The first reason for hope is this: if you believe in Jesus Christ, you can say that your bad things will turn out for good. We get this from Romans 8:28.
Sometimes Romans 8:28 is quoted in an unhelpful way. Someone is going through something awful, and another person says, “Hey, Romans 8:28—all things work together for good!” And in the middle of suffering, that can feel dismissive.
Here is what the text actually says: “And we know that in all things, God works for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.” Notice several things. He says “all things”—not some things, not all things for other people, but all things. God works for the good, and “good” simply means something beautiful or beneficial. God will take the bad things that happen in your life and work good out of them.
Notice also what this does not say. It does not say your bad things are good—bad things are bad. But it says God will take those bad things and bring about good in the midst of them.
Also notice that this promise is not for just anyone. It is for those who love God and are called according to his purpose. In the original language, those are present participles, meaning he is describing those who are currently loving God and currently living according to his purpose. It isn’t mere belief alone. He is saying: if you are orienting your life around the things of God, then he will take even the hard things in your life and bring about good.
Some of you are sitting here thinking, “You don’t know my situation. You don’t know the things I’ve been through.” And that’s true. But these are not my words. These are the words of God through the Apostle Paul, and he says that all things—God works in all things for good to those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
Sometimes it’s hard for us because we can only see our own perspective. There’s an old story about a man and his son who lived in an ancient village. They had a horse that was their lifeline—it helped them till their field, get around, and live. One day the horse ran away. The neighbors gathered and said, “How unlucky you are.” The man simply said, “Well, we’ll see.” A few days later the horse came back and brought three wild horses with it. The neighbors said, “How fortunate you are!” Again: “Well, we’ll see.” Then the man’s son tried to break one of the new horses, got thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors said, “How unlucky.” The man said, “Well, we’ll see.” Shortly after, soldiers came through to conscript all able-bodied young men for a foreign war. The son could not go because of his injury. The neighbors said, “How fortunate!” And the man said again, “Well, we’ll see.”
The wisdom of that story is: wait and see. We tend to think we can assess good and bad in the moment, but we don’t know how the outcome will unfold. What makes Romans 8:28 even better is that it isn’t just saying, “Maybe there’ll be a silver lining.” It is saying that the God of the universe is orchestrating outcomes—for those who love him and are called according to his purpose—that are better than what we’re currently going through. That is a reason for hope.
2. Our Best Things Are Yet to Come
The second reason for hope is this: our best things are yet to come. This comes from Romans 8:29–30:
“For those God foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; and those he justified, he also glorified.”
When most people read this, they immediately focus on foreknowledge and predestination. That’s a worthy discussion—Romans 9 addresses it more fully—but what often gets overlooked is the word “glorified.” To be glorified is to arrive at the day when God will take everything that has happened here and say, “Now it is as it should be.” Your best things are still ahead of you.
One author described a condition he called “eternity amnesia.” We don’t live as if the best is yet to come. Because of that, we load this present life with all the weight that eternity promises, saying “I need that now.” When something feels broken in our lives, it feels devastating because we think, “This is it, and if it doesn’t happen here and now, I have no hope.”
He said that because of eternity amnesia, we live with too much focus on ourselves; we ask too much of others, expecting the people in our lives to make our lives feel like eternity. He also said it causes us to be controlling, or to live in fear—because if you believe it all depends on what happens here and now, you will try to control everything. And it causes us to say “God isn’t good” based on what we’re experiencing in the present.
Romans 8 teaches us that our best things are yet to come. As one writer put it: one day, all of our best days lie ahead of us; one day, all of our worst days will be behind us. Another said it this way: “The Christian has the best of both worlds—we have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.”
3. Our Truly Good Things Can Never Be Taken from Us
The third reason for hope is found in Romans 8:31–39, where the Apostle Paul asks a series of sweeping rhetorical questions, each expecting an implied answer.
Verse 31: “What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?” The implied answer is: no one. Yet sometimes we have a suspicious view of God’s goodness when things don’t feel like they’re going our way. John Calvin once wrote, “The Gospel acts without threats, and it is a statement of the supreme goodwill of God.” God is for you.
During the pandemic, our family—three boys at home and a friend of one of our boys staying with us in the basement—faced the toilet paper shortage many of you remember. When I finally found some, it was single-ply, which was not how we normally operated. Once the regular supply ran out, the single-ply made its way into the family supply. Our houseguest eventually asked, “So why do I get the single-ply?” He later reflected that he felt singled out for the inferior product. My reaction was something like: you’re living here, eating our food, using our supplies, and you think I did this to you on purpose? But that’s exactly how some of us look at God—as if he has done all these things for us and yet this one thing means he’s against us.
Verse 32: “He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” The logic is this: I gave you my Son. If I gave you my Son, don’t you believe I will give you all things? The way we know the true value of something is by what it cost someone else. God is saying: I gave you my Son—you can know that I am for you.
Verse 33: “Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies.” Sometimes we will feel as if there are charges brought against us—sometimes legitimately, because we do something wrong. Someone says, “You messed that up,” or we say it to ourselves. What does this text say? No one can bring a charge against those God has chosen.
Whenever you hear that voice of accusation—from someone else or from yourself—here is what you can say, at least internally: “What you’re saying may or may not be true, but the things that are actually true about me are far worse than even what you think. But God has seen it all the way to the bottom, and he is the one who justifies. Therefore, who can bring a charge? Only God. And if I am right with God, it doesn’t matter what you say or even what I say about myself.”
Verse 34: “Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus, who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us.” Paul moves from charges to condemnation, building the case that there is no one who can ultimately condemn God’s people.
Verse 35: “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?” Seven words painting a comprehensive picture: nothing and no one will separate you from the love of Christ. The first words speak to life’s general hardship; then come physical threats like famine and nakedness; then danger from other people. Whatever threat you name, the answer is the same: it will not separate you from the love of Christ.
The theologian Donald Bloesch wrote nearly fifty years ago: “Among modern Christians, it is not the justification of the ungodly—which was the basic motif of the Reformation—but the sanctification of the righteous that is given the most attention.” He was saying that the Reformers focused on what Jesus had done for the ungodly; but in modern Christianity, the attention has shifted to how the believer is doing. The subjective question—“How am I doing?”—has become more dominant than the objective question: “What did Jesus do?” The reason your truly good things can’t be taken from you is precisely because it is not based on you or me—it is based on what Jesus has done.
Paul then closes with this affirmation in verses 37–39: “In all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Conclusion
Would it change your life if you really lived as if that were true? I think it would. There are many people who became followers of Jesus because they heard a presentation about God, heaven, and hell, and decided they’d rather go to heaven. And yet they live without an assurance that God is for them. This passage drills into that and says: there is nothing in this world that can separate you from the love of God—not the evil of people, not the evil of situations, not the brokenness of our world. Nothing.
If you know how the story ends, you can say with confidence: our bad things will turn out for good, our best things are yet to come, and our truly good things can never be taken from us. But if you don’t know how it ends, you cannot live with that assurance and hope.
Some of us gathered today may say, “I don’t know if I am a believer. I’ve been around it. My parents believe; someone else believes.” My hope is that as you hear this, you would say, “I wish that were true. I wish I could live saying the best is yet to come, my bad things can turn out for good, my truly good things can never be taken.” Maybe for you today is a day to take a step of faith and say, “God, I trust. I believe that Jesus is Savior.” Or maybe it is simply a day to say, “I am going to investigate this,” because if it is true, it changes everything about how you live.
And if you do believe, and yet it feels as if you can never get out from under the hardship and darkness of this life—God is not done. These words are not human words. They are the words of God to you in the midst of the bleakest part of your game, your movie, your life. The end has been promised by the God of the universe, and that can give you the courage to keep going and say: whatever I am facing today, this is not the end of the story. My bad things will turn out for good. My best things are yet to come. And my truly good things can never be taken from me. That is where we find hope.
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