So the encouragement and comfort here in Romans 8.28 doesn’t amount to a kind of Stoic resignation. It is a call to recognise the truth of what Paul says elsewhere: that we are called to hard work, knowing that God is at work in us. That work, it seems, takes place not least through suffering with the Messiah in order to share his ‘image-bearing’ human ‘glory’ (8.17, 29).
