Watson’s All Things for Good
Thomas Watson understood the words “work together” in Romans 8:28 to be medicinal in their reference. Thus the original title of the sermon series, “A Divine Cordial,” in 1663. It would not be an exaggeration to claim that no one in church history excelled Watson in sheer frequency of profound, relevant illustrations from nature and everyday life. There are often half a dozen on a single page.
As to the book itself, it would be amiss to approach this book as a Puritan “theodicy,” or as an answer to the problem of evil in philosophical terms. Rather, it is pastoral. Watson addressed the shattered pieces of life such as a genuine Christian would seek to put them together. That is no strike against the author’s depth. There are different kinds of depths. Those which are legitimate to contemplate (Deut. 29:29), being freely given by the Spirit (1 Cor. 2:12), are for the believer’s practical good.
This summary of the book will be divided into these six sections: 1. God as the efficient and end cause of Romans 8:28; 2. God’s use of the believer’s sin for good; 3. Two goods worked are immediate and ultimate; 4. All things toward our love for God; 5. The causes and cures for unbelief in this truth; and 6. Difficulties.
God as the Efficient and End Cause of Romans 8:28
Our whole system of doctrine will either enable us to believe the Apostle’s words or else hinder us. The Calvinistic system inherited by Puritans like Watson is at home with it. God does not start causing all things to work together for good to those who are called once they are called (as if the only call is the external-gospel call to begin with). Watson stresses that the deeper effectual call is an “unchangeable call.”1
This is because calling follows election; and since election is from eternity, God’s gracious providence that precedes the temporal functions of the call works both toward and through the call. Our response to the call does not determine election, as Paul makes plain in the following verses (8:29-30). That being the case, we are not surprised that all of the events prior to hearing and believing the gospel worked in perfect concert with God’s gracious providence following conversion.
God does not simply use afflictions. He causes them (cf. Ruth 1:21). This is not just true of his use of Assyria to punish Israel, but it is true of his more fatherly discipline of us (cf. Heb. 12:5-11). Divine sovereignty is the efficient, or ultimate, cause, yet divine glory is the end cause. A subordinate cause to God’s glory is the good of the believer. Affliction sanctifies, such that the believer will call it “good” (Ps. 119:71). The story of Luther is mentioned, that he could not understand many of the Psalms until he was in affliction. I must say that this has been my own experience.
God uses all the best things and the worst things—albeit in different ways and for different reasons, respectively—for the good of every believer. Watson is careful to qualify this embedded Theodicy lest his reader infer that God needs anything in the nature of evil in order to bring about the best of all possible worlds.
The end cause is the answer to Why, and so Watson calls his third section: Why All Things Work for Good. He begins by treating the highest of all secondary causes as if it were wrapped up in God himself. It is because “the near and dear interest which God has in his people.”2 The covenant of grace roots all other imagery of relationship between God and his people. This is why the “all things for good” cannot fail. Given this eternal root, the Lord is to us a Physician, Father, Friend, Husband, and Head in relation to a body. And yet unlike the earthly exemplars of these, his highest interests now cannot be severed from ours, nor wander in opposite directions.
When he does get to the glory of God, it comes at the end of the chapter. Nothing we do contributes to God’s glory; though I have often heard the distinction between God’s intrinsic glory (to which we add nothing) and God’s extrinsic glory (to which we still add nothing that he has not decreed). The latter of these comprise that theater of God’s glory in which he communicates his excellencies to the creature. Watson draws the distinction between the “strict sense” of bringing glory as opposed to the “evangelical sense,” the latter of which we are given to do in three ways: (1) When we aim at His glory … first in our thoughts, and the last in our end … (2) by being fruitful in grace … (3) when we give the praise and glory of all we do unto God.3
Now how does this chief end of both God and man relate to all other ends of things working for our good? God is glorified more to the degree that we bear more fruit (cf. Jn. 15:8). This is the lone connection Watson makes. He is content to say that if God has so ordered all things for our good, so we ought to order all of our thoughts, feelings, and actions for his glory. He treats the relation between our good and God’s glory as one of moral reciprocation (which of course it is that too) and does not address the metaphysical connection between God’s glory increasing in proportion to our good, or vice-versa.
God’s Use of the Believer’s Sin for Good
This may be the most difficult concept among Watson’s four suggested “worst things” God uses—the other three being affliction, temptation, and desertion. God uses our sin for our eventual good. Perhaps no one would doubt that God used Abraham’s follies in Egypt, David’s adultery and murder, Peter’s denial of the Lord before the cross and of the gospel in Antioch, or Paul’s persecution of the church. These are all at a safe distance. It becomes more difficult and embarrassing to think of redeeming sins so near. But it is not the sin itself which is redeemable: not the inherent qualities of sin that come with us into glory.
Parallel to this he compares the “contrary wind” of Acts 27:4, which would keep Paul from his destination, to the temptations that seek to blow us off course. The wind of God’s Spirit “makes use of this cross-wind, to blow the saints to heaven.”4 Some may wonder how a contrary wind could in any sense “blow us toward” our destiny. Certainly God overcomes it; but how are our obstacles overcome by it?
Watson also means the sins of others. This is worth some thought, as one of the cardinal sins in our day is self-righteousness. Indeed this is a real sin, but our age has distorted it into the sin of considering that there is any evil in others at all. Here we see that God brings good through our view toward the sins of others in nine ways, but which we will reduce to: 1. praying for, and doing good to, sinners; 2. increased thanksgiving and appreciation for grace; 3. increased hatred toward sin’s nature; and 4. turning back inward to war against one’s own sin.
More surprising however is that God means to bring good out of our own sin. The very thought of it brings to mind the objection of Romans 6:1—“Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound?” Now since we know how Paul responds, and with what gospel remedy, we are led on by Watson to the goods brought out. If we are true believers, then sin makes us weary of this life and more eager for Christ. He lists six duties that naturally follow the true sense of our sin: 1. self-searching, 2. self-abasing, 3. self-judging, 4. self-conflicting, 5. self-observing, and 6. self-reforming.
“But let none ABUSE this doctrine.”5 This is Watson’s follow-up to Romans 6:1. There is the qualification that “if” one is a true believer, and the words are already contained in Romans 8:28, namely, “for those who love God … for ithose who are called according to his purpose.” The difference lies in those who now look for good in God out of sin as opposed to those who will go looking for the good in the sin. The promise is for those of the former description, not for the latter.
Two Goods Worked Are Immediate and Ultimate.
The first immediate good worked out is the effectual calling itself. Christians who are not Reformed will even talk about all of events God brought together to lead them to Christ. It is as if most of our Evangelical brothers and sisters believe in a comprehensive Providence over their lives, leading to their decision, so long as God does not effect the decision itself. Be that as it may, Watson focuses our attention on this part of the passage. All things work together for good to those who are called. This is the sovereign, inward calling of God, whereby he draws the elect to himself. The reason why the Scriptures often speak of our wretched condition before coming to Christ is to increase our wonder at the gracious Providence of God. Though there are ordinary means of opening our ears—the Spirit and the Word6—yet the methods surrounding these vary.
Among the chief greatest goods worked out by God for us is the assurance of our salvation. The sense of being deserted by God for a season is evidence that we belong to him: “The Lord cannot be said to withdraw His love from the wicked, because they never had it.”7 To miss the Lord while he may be found is to begin to seek him, and so assurance begins to build. With this sense, he says, comes also an inquiry into the cause of God’s departure. Have I sinned? If so, how?
Watson’s chapter on the WHY of all things for good was surprising. He does not address the relationship between God’s glory and our good, but rather moves on from covenant blessings to a series of lessons to be learned from God working out our good. So although he went in a different direction, we can still say that these “inferences”8 are among the immediate goods for the believer. Simply reflecting on this reality makes us ascribe the work to wise Providence and not to chance or fate. It causes us to compare the happy lot of the Christian versus the misery of those for whom all things are rotting. It bridles our discontent and births thanksgiving.
All Things Toward Our Love for God
Three chapters are given to the believer’s love toward God. So much of the practical effects of Romans 8:28 are for our assurance of God’s love toward us. So why so much focusing on the other direction? The first answer must be this: these are words from the text itself. The blessing of all things for good is specifically for those who love God. So is the function of Godward love purely evidential? Even if so, this is what makes it so pastoral. It does what a good sermon is supposed to: i. e. to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.
He defines love as “an expansion of soul, or the inflaming of the affections, by which a Christian breaths after God as the supreme and sovereign good.”9 To have a taste for God, and to cultivate it, this is a grace. This is one of the goods worked out from all things. It is not that our love causes God. It is that our increased capacities to love God evidence his love for us;10 and since it is inherently good, it is more than evidence only.
Love and affliction come together in this. If we are looking for more evidence of grace, then consider two individuals that undergo the same bad circumstances in life. Watson says, “The same affliction converts one and hardens another. Affliction to one is as the bruising of spices, which cast forth a fragrant smell; to the other it is as the crushing of weeds in a mortar, which are more unsavory.”11 So it is not only at the point of conversion, but as the true Christian progresses: how does he or she tend to come out on the other side? Do they value God more or are they more needy for the things of this world? In the heart that becomes more familiar with God in suffering, it is because God himself has been there residing and bearing fruit. It is not just that God is ordering events on a path called the Christian life, but it is that God is also ordering the thoughts and affections inside the Christian person. So he works all things together, both within and without.
The Causes and Cures for Unbelief in this Truth
How many Christians would have to admit that we do not believe God for “all things working together for good” as we ought? For instance, “God does not bring his people into troubles, and leave them there.”12 It is a rare thing to wait upon the Lord in troubles. So we might say that sinful anxiety is the most immediate cause, in other words, that cause most at the surface during the trials that most clearly challenge the belief.
Another cause is obvious enough. We seem to understand, on the surface, that there must be pain to break our allegiance from this world. But to cross-pollinate with another Puritan, Burroughs, we want to “be our own carvers.” So let us call this second cause “self-reliance” or “independence” or, to be ironic, “autonomous sanctification.” Watson looks at God as physician and says, “God does not deal alike with all; He has trials for the strong and cordials for the weak … If God does not give you that which you like, He will give you that which you need. A physician does not so much study to please the taste of the patient, as to cure his disease.”13 Our disbelief in Romans 8:28 needs no more complex cause than this. We understand suffering in general, but why this suffering? God must take things, but why this thing?
Perhaps underneath these more obvious causes if the more brutal fact that we have not learned to love God as we ought to have by this point in our lives: to treasure him above that which we are now losing in exchange for him. So “all things for good” must mean “all things” in exchange for “one thing” (cf. Ps. 27:4) that is the “good” and that one thing we lack (cf. Mk. 10:21). Paul’s word FOR is only blessing to those for whom his word GOOD is an infinite gain. Here then is the cure for unbelief underneath its causes: to learn to love God in this way. Loving God is supernatural gift to be sure, but it must also be a lifelong lesson. Otherwise, why is there such a verse? And why is it so hard to believe and apply for most genuine Christians? Watson seems to agree. Knowledge is grounding for love: “We cannot love that which we do not know.”14
Difficulties
Where do we draw the line between that which is sure to use for our good and that which he does not? In Watson’s discussion of temptation, he makes a distinction between “falling” as opposed to “running” into temptation: The former is madness, and yet involves intentionality, such that the one who runs into it cannot expect to get good out of it. The latter positions the saint closer to being the victim of the devil. No one could disagree that the good brought out of it is in spite of the moral lapse, not in the lapse itself. The difficulty lies in the definition. How intentional of a “running” are we talking about here? Saul falling on his sword is an example of running, but then was David’s sin with Bathsheba and plot to kill Uriah not all the more calculated? If Watson chooses to root the difference between “running” and “falling” in sovereign grace, he certainly does not say so, as the section ends with no resolution.15 If what makes the difference between “running” and “falling” is not the degree of calculation, then what? This brief point seemed to raise more doubts than would have been there otherwise.
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1. Thomas Watson, All Things for Good (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1998), 111.
2. All Things for Good, 52.
3. All Things for Good, 64.
4. All Things for Good, 39.
5. All Things for Good, 51.
6. All Things for Good, 106.
7. All Things for Good, 40.
8. All Things for Good, 55.
9. All Things for Good, 66.
10. All Things for Good, 102.
11. All Things for Good, 110.
12. All Things for Good, 15
13. All Things for Good, 52.
14. All Things for Good, 66.
15. All Things for Good, 38-39.
