“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.”. (Romans 8:28-29, RSVCE).
Scripture tells us that our faith in Jesus Christ makes us “new creations”, that “all things have become new” (see 2 Corinthians 5:17). Yet we know that we are still our old selves in many ways, still marred and distorted by sin. Trimming away all the “excess” – those fleshly “solutions” to life’s problems that we’ve concocted – so that the image of Christ might appear in us is the “good” that St Paul is referring to the the verses above.
Like a sculptor, God uses the very challenges and difficulties we face to reveal to us what needs to go – what needs to be relinquished and surrendered to Him if we are truly to resemble Jesus and become our genuine selves in Him, and not the pseudo selves we’ve fashioned from our brokenness.
Michaelangelo is reported to have said about his sculpture that his sole work was to remove the extraneous material which “trapped ” the beautiful creation within the stone. Using hammer and chisel, he labored to liberate that form, that image which he envisioned had always existed but required his help so that it might emerge.
We likewise are held hostage to sin and brokenness. The true beauty and goodness intended and envisioned by our Artist Creator is trapped inside our fallen selves. When we become new creations in Christ, the Divine Sculptor, the Holy Spirit, begins the process of forming us through his ongoing work to resemble Jesus, “the firstborn”, so that we might resemble our elder brother and become one of his “many brethren”.
Like Michaelangelo’s stone “prisoners” in Florence, we feel the painful work of the process of freeing us so that we might be beautiful creations. Stone is inert; it cannot consent to this sculpting, but we can. St Bernard of Clairvaux once said, “To consent is to be saved.” God knows what he is doing, for his is a work of Love Himself.
We are asked to consent in trust to the suffering, the “blows”, which are necessary for making us truly new and pleasing to God. We are asked to “lose our lives”, to carry our own cross in love, obedience and trust as Jesus did: “Not my will, but yours be done”.
This is the good that God is about in everything which he allows in my life. This is how everything works together for good, for I have been “called according to his purpose”.
Lessons From Love School 
This verse has been one of the most challenging yet also one of the most misused verses in the Bible. Many a well meaning person has tried to use this verse to comfort the grieving whether it be the death of a loved one or some other loss. It’s very hard to get our heads wrapped around what this verse is trying to convey. There will always be a mystery around what God is doing and how He moves, “For we live by faith, not by sight.” (2 Corinthians 5:7)
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Yes. Only faith can allow us to believe that our God can take the worst thing imaginable – the torture and Crucifixion of his own Son – and turn it into an unimaginable blessing for the whole world. Some day, we will see the beautiful pattern He was weaving through our suffering and we will marvel. In the meantime, we suffer in this fallen world. But He walks with us through the valley, “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”.
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Isn’t it amazing and comforting to know that what we experience as pain, loss, grief, and sorrow on this side of heaven can be used by God for higher and deeper purposes, making us more like Jesus? It is truly mysterious and beyond our human comprehension. What a wonderful way to envision the creative process, simply freeing what God has already hidden within the stone, on the blank canvas or musical score, or in whatever we may be called to do. Thank you for creating with words and encouraging us in our journey to be fully freed and all that we can be in Christ!
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