Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)
I write and speak as quite a novice in the ways of suffering. I know that others have suffered far more, and I know that others have more wisdom on this subject. If you stop reading now and simply pray and soak in the quoted Scripture above, it will by no means be a loss! But perhaps if you read on, you will test what I say and find it to be both true and useful, and if that turns out to be the case, all praise for it will be due to God and not my wisdom.
First, I want to recognize that suffering is real. This passage presupposes the reality of suffering in our lives, and more explicitly in other places of the Bible suffering is actually guaranteed. Psalms gives undiluted voice to the many groanings of our hearts in a great variety of sufferings. God is incredibly realistic in his teachings about suffering and in his portrayal of it.
It is possible that many write off the Bible as cookie-cutter unrealistic because it bids us to rejoice in our sufferings. What could be more unrealistic than that?! If only the Bible knew of my sufferings...
I believe every other system of belief falls either into naive optimism or into hopelessness, while the Gospel of Jesus Christ alone recognizes the depth and gravity of our position as fallen beings and actually addresses it. There are plenty of people running around who believe in the progress of man through the triumph of science or some other method of improving humanity. In each case there is some Utopia held up as ultimate and achievable, and humankind (for the most part) is on its way to achieving it, as long as we can get along and get some things together. These people want to have Heaven now (whether or not they believe in Heaven), which is what some academics refer to as an over-realized eschatology.
Those who believe in an achievable Utopia are the unrealistic ones. (And even if their vision for utopia is not a universal vision encompassing all of mankind, they probably have at least a personal/private vision of utopia. Once such-and-such finally happens, then I will be finally happy. I may still have some problems then, but they will mainly be minor problems that are easily taken care of. And I will be able to basically live happily ever after. This is what I call the Grass-is-greener-on-the-other-side of Graduation/marriage/kids/retirement Syndrome)
A look at the news reveals the folly of utopia. The twentieth century was the bloodiest century of human history. Today there are murders, rape, systematic oppression, wars, and all sorts of evils going on. The twentieth century has revealed that scientific progress does nothing to improve the human condition, but rather just magnifies it! Science may help us to prolong our lives and give us conveniences, but it cannot give us fulfillment or peace, and for one who has no hope, this only means he will have longer to suffer without hope, but at least he will be sufficiently distracted along the way. Indeed, our depravity spreads to fill whatever room there is, and technology has merely served to provide us a bigger room, not a cleaner heart. And beyond news and history, if we look closer in amongst our family and friends, we see suffering in struggling marriages, addictions, sickness, and painful death of loved ones. And perhaps you have suffered. While you will go through seasons characterized by more or less of it, there is nothing in this life that simply takes it away. Suffering is a part of being human in this world.
The other error is to open your eyes and truly recognize the suffering in the world only to conclude that there is no hope. This will lead only to despair. If you are without hope, you will do very little in helping to provide hope to others. You will be miserable. Humans are often resilient and do find hope, but is there possibly an anchor or a true object for our hope that will not fail? Christians dare to answer, Yes! Jesus is our hope.
What you run to when you are having a hard time will tell you the idol that you have set in Jesus' place - alcohol, food, television, friends, Oprah feel-good philosophy, books, sports... Idols are good things (though I don't place Oprah's philosophy in that category) that we have made ultimate, and if we are getting things (peace, hope, happiness, security...) from this substitute that we should rightly get from God, that is good evidence of the idolatry. When you are hit with hard news, do you pray or sink yourself into some distraction? Prayer is the realistic answer. It is our various distractions that are avoidances of reality.
The Christian answer is not a fake and plastic answer. If you have the courage to read the Bible seriously and believe it, it is very blunt and realistic about suffering and the depravity of man. This world is not now as it was created to be. The principle of death and decay and suffering entered the world through the sin of Adam. The physical world around us felt it, as it began to decay and therefore groan. And by our sinful nature we ourselves contribute to the problem as we sin. In sinning we begin to personally unravel in different ways. And when we sin against others, we reap death, not only in ourselves, but in others as well. Everyone does this. No one understands. No one seeks for God. All have turned aside. Together they have become worthless. No one does good, not even one! Sinning creates a vicious circle of futility and personal, social, and societal destruction, and it is truly the terrible and just wrath of God to give us over to this.
But the Bible also tells us that creation was not only subjected to futility, but it was subjected to futility (death and decay as our judgment) in hope! It was subjected by a God who had a greater plan and purpose to bring about, even through what we had meant for evil. I could talk about this all day, but the point I want to emphatically make is this: God tells us to have joy in suffering, but this is by no means an unrealistic perspective that ignores the reality of suffering. Woe to us if we think we are more realistic about suffering than the Author of Reality! This joy is not a fake or plastic joy, but a soul-deep persevering joy. It is not an Osteen-ish overcoming-power-of-smiling type joy, but a Christ-like cross-bearing-and-enduring type of joy. God is not blind to your sufferings, and he knows that they are real. He does not bid you to ignore them, but instead to trust him in them. If we believe the Bible, having joy and suffering are not mutually exclusive.
Second, our suffering with joy is linked in the passage above to a knowledge. We know that suffering produces endurance produces character produces hope. Our suffering is not senseless. We are being molded by our difficulties and circumstances. We are being made into better people. We are being chiseled by pain into the image of Christ, and oh my, how much there is to be chipped away at on me! Romans 8:28 is an anchor to hold onto. Our sufferings are not outside of this. God is using our sufferings ultimately for our good and his glory.
This takes a higher view of God's sovereignty than many do. Some are unwilling to say that God is sovereign over our sufferings. But this paints a picture of a rather weak and helpless God. When the earthquake happened in Haiti, did God not know it was going to happen? If he did know, was he just powerless to stop it? Every tragedy could be measured the same way. (Of course, atheists will take suffering as an argument against God, but when they recognize suffering and evil in order to say it is not right, they presuppose the existence of a real Right and Wrong, a real way that things should be. And where can that standard come from but from God? Some theologians like Gregory Boyd actually capitulate to these objections and say that God limits his knowledge of the future. The evidence against this view is not the topic of this post, but suffice it to say that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of the view that God's knowledge of the future is complete.)
As an example, when Job suffers, he attributes it to God, and he is said not to have sinned with his lips. But it was Satan who was afflicting Job, right? Satan was doing it, but what Satan meant for evil, God meant for good. Romans 8:28 says that God does things for a purpose. If we are suffering, God could have prevented it, but instead he allowed it. Whatever God allows, he allows for a reason. God has purposes in our sufferings. This is a truth that may take a lot of wrestling and a lot of Scripture-searching and even a lot of tears to come to grips with, but I am convinced that it is the truth, and indeed, the truth sets us free, even when it hurts.
So what can we know of God's purposes in our suffering? A more general question: what can we know of God's purposes? An even more general question: what can we know of God? I think the same principles govern the answers to all three questions. Our knowledge of God can be true, though it will never be exhaustive, and the infallibly reliable source of our knowledge of God is his self revelation in Scripture. The same is true of our sufferings and their purposes. There is so much that we simply are not going to know, at least for now. However, we can have answers that are true, if not exhaustive, as long as they are tied to Scripture. Part of that knowledge is given here in Romans 5. More is given in Romans 8.
God is producing in us a hope. But it is not a hope for that substitute utopia. It is not a general and directionless hope. It is a hope that is tied fiercely to Scripture. It is a hope in God, and it is a hope that takes him at his Word. That is really what I would call faith, and taking God at his Word calls attention to his infinite goodness, love, and inexhaustible riches as the Giver of all good things and the Keeper of promises! Calling attention to these things gives God the glory! When the cry of our hearts is no longer primarily, "God make me happy", but rather, "God be glorified", we will rejoice in his wisdom to do that by whatever means he deems best. Often, God will get more glory from us when we have the kind of hope in him that comes only through suffering. And our happiness will then be the best kind because it will not be the kind that we would have invented for ourselves, a kind of happiness that would necessarily include the minimization of all suffering, but will rather be the happiness that only the God who created us can give. He knows us better than we know ourselves, and he himself is better than any other thing we could grasp for, and therefore this knowledge is a grasping by faith at this truth: God knows best how to give himself to us.
Knowing these things doesn't make suffering easy, but it is a pathway to celebrating God's glory! Walking that pathway, we can find joy even with tears in our eyes.
Third, it is both good and bad to compare sufferings. Let me start with the bad. When I am suffering, it will be very easy for my eyes to be focused on me and my own situation. If I compare my sufferings with those of other people, it would be bad to conclude that their suffering is lesser and therefore unimportant. How horrible if my suffering should actually be an occasion for a subtle form of pride! It would be profoundly unloving for me to see where another is suffering and to call it fake or small or unimportant. We must fight the temptation to rationalize why our suffering is real and rationalize why someone else should just get over it. We ought to recognize the reality of universal suffering - that everyone goes through it. Or else, we will cut off our own legs from ever being able to walk over to someone else to put our arms around them. To magnify our own suffering in order to downplay everyone else's will leave us in a deeply lonely place, unable to be helped and also unable to be a help.
However, when I am in a place of difficulty, and I am preaching the truth to myself, comparing my sufferings can be a good thing. It is healthy for me, at least, to realize how blessed I am. There are people in the world who do not have food, shelter, water, a livelihood, health, and plenty of other things. I am filthy stinking rich in comparison to most of the world. And not because I earned it, but because of who I was born to. When I went to Haiti, I saw overwhelming devastation of all sorts. One of the things that sticks with me is a man who lost two children, but rejoiced that his third was alive! In Haiti, especially in the worship services, I saw that suffering and joy were not mutually exclusive. And the relative bigness of some of their sufferings in comparison to mine allows me sometimes to take a deep breath and know that it's not the end of the world. It is good to be invaded by realities bigger than the small world I allow myself to be focused on when I am focused only on myself.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. (Romans 8:18) What is coming for us is so much bigger than what we are going through now. The glory that is to be revealed to us is going to be awesome in the strongest sense of the word. Take everything you are going through right now and place it on a scale against God's eternal glory, and it is not even feathers!
The flip side of this comparison - and it's so lopsided that it's apparently not even worth the comparison - is a very sobering reality. Some humans will die and enter eternal damnation separated from Christ in hell. God's wrath will rightly visit them for eternity. Millions slip unexpectedly over this waterfall into eternity every year, and none of our sufferings compare to the sufferings of hell. When I believe I am suffering here and now, it is good to consciously bring before my mind that I really deserve an eternal suffering that is a trillion trillion times worse than this, but that by God's grace alone I have been saved. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah!
Since suffering is ultimately a consequence of original and ongoing sin, I think our sufferings can be taken as a clue to the seriousness with which God takes sin, and our sufferings are occasions for repentance. They remind us that God's wrath is real, and therefore we should take the reality of hell seriously, to avoid it ourselves and to have urgency in warning others (within the context of the whole Gospel).
While the earthquake in Haiti may not have been God's specific judgment on Haiti for a specific sin committed, it is nevertheless evidence of God's judgment on sin, and our response should be repentance, not an investigation into the sins of Haiti. When the Tower of Siloam fell on some unsuspecting folks and Jesus was asked about it, his instructions were simple: repent.
Fourth, our God knows suffering as an insider. This is more comforting than anything I have said thus far, I believe. God did not exempt himself from the sufferings of his children, but he allowed himself to undergo them all. He is a High Priest who can sympathize. He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. He was homeless, mocked, betrayed, spit on, deserted, rejected, laughed at, and crucified. Physically and emotionally Jesus suffered greatly.
Yet there was a suffering far greater than these. Spiritually, Jesus was separated from the Father; he cried out, "Why have you forsaken me?" Jesus had known perfect fellowship with the Father from eternity past; for the first time that fellowship was broken, as my sins were laid on his back, and he bore God's terrible wrath toward my sin in my place. I deserved crucifixion and worse, but he took it. He deserved blessings and fellowship, which were rightfully his all along, but he gave those up to shoulder the cross, and I got those blessings and that fellowship, instead. That is what the Gospel is about! But oh, the suffering Jesus endured! It is a suffering that we cannot comprehend, and it is one that bids me to silence in the presence of our holy God.
And now Jesus is resurrected. He is alive. He is at the Father's right hand. If we are in him, because he has been raised, we receive forgiveness and justification. The price has been paid. Jesus knows us intimately, he formed us, and he has placed his Spirit within us. He pours his love into our hearts through the Spirit! I do not believe that the great martyrs of old and today were extra-super-spiritual or full of superhuman strength. I think that they had grasped to the heart this magnificent truth: God loves us! Oh, that we might really know that!
Some people have a hard time believing God would send people to hell. I have the hardest time believing he's not going to send me. I understand - though not as much as I ought - God's wrath. I have a harder time understanding his grace and love. I am so deserving of eternal suffering, but I believe he foreknew me, predestined me, justified me, and that I will one day reach glory. Each step is not dependent on my works or inherent goodness but on the gracious gift of a persevering faith that produces works. My boasting is eradicated by the blood of Jesus!
Let yourself be understood by Jesus. Let yourself be known by Jesus. Let yourself be comforted by Jesus. He does love you, and he does understand you. Many people feel alone in their sufferings. They are unable to be comforted because they believe no one understands. No one has gone through the exact same things. If you get in a habit of shutting people out who try to comfort you because you don't believe they understand, you may end up hardening your heart to the love of any other in general, and you risk shutting out the God who actually understands perfectly and who stands there by your side to comfort you and give you joy in suffering.
Finally, one of God's purposes in suffering is the spread of the Gospel. We are filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions. Christ's sufferings on the cross were sufficient to pardon sinners, but what is lacking is a very real portrait of that to the nations in each generation. As the Church we are the Body of Christ, indwelt by the Spirit. Just as Christ suffered bodily on the cross, his Body now suffers for the same ultimate purposes - that Christ would be glorified through the purchase of sinners into his family. Christ went to the cross for the joy that was set before him - many sons coming to belief. We find real joy, too, when we count our lives as nothing compared to knowing Christ, and in so doing, proclaim the Gospel which is the power of God for salvation to all who believe. It is the mark of true believers when, having given up everything, they deny that they have given up anything because they really have caught the Philippians 3:7 logic. And the spread of the Gospel through sufferings and deaths of saints should not hold up only those very visible actions of self-denial but the thousands of smaller daily dyings to self that serve as the necessary foundation. May Christ be our treasure! Soli Deo gloria.
We will be able to rejoice in sufferings when we get ourselves caught up in bigger realities than our own lives, namely the glory of God.
To summarize, you can suffer with joy because God is in control and he loves you. Wiser men and women may have written a far more helpful account, but it is my hope that this will have been of help to you. Thank you for sticking with me in such a long and meandering pondering on a deep and heavy subject.
