Because one day these things will be over and we will be with God. He has risen from the dead in victory over the grave and he has given you and me a hope that transcends the worst things that could happen to us in this world. Jesus has died on a cross in love for us. And this is our hope, that sin will not have the last word, that suffering will not have their last word, that the affects of sin in a fallen world will not have the last word. And that goes on in the next few verses to talk about God’s love in Christ, dying on a cross for us. You put your hope in this or that in this world, and you will often find yourselves put to shame.īut if you put your hope in God, you will never find yourself put to shame because God has poured out is love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. You put your hope sometimes in people, they let you down. If you put your hope in a sports team, they’re going to let you down. You put your hope in a lot of things in this world, you’ll be put to shame. And our hope does not put us to shame, verse five says. We have hope that suffering will not be the end of the story. Endurance produces character, and character produces hope. We rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and suffering produces endurance. And that character produces hope, and this is the word that was used back up in verse two. God forms our character even through the fire of suffering. We grow to know the grace of God like we’ve seen in 2 Corinthians, chapter 10, his strength in our weakness. And we grow to know the comfort of God like we’ve seen in 2 Corinthians, chapter one. It’s a call to endurance, but that endurance produces character. Growing In the Comfort of God Even in The Midst of Pain That’s a good way to describe life in a world of suffering. The Bible calls them in Revelation chapter one to patient endurance. I think about Revelation, chapter one written to suffering brothers and sisters in the first century. This is a picture we see all throughout the Bible. Why? Because we know that suffering produces endurance. So in light of that, verse three of says, “Not only that, we rejoice in our sufferings.” We rejoice in the hope that one day we will be with Him. We’ve been reconciled to God and we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Now we have peace with Him and we rejoice in Him. So how is it possible to have joy in that?Īnd the Bible says right before this that by faith we’ve been justified before God. We are called to endure knowing that our hope in Christ will not put us to shame.Īll throughout Scripture we see suffering men and women who are experiencing the effects of sin and hurt and pain in a fallen world, sometimes directly due to sin in their lives, sometimes not, in a Job-like away, not directly due to sin in our lives. Romans 5:3–5 Reminds Us that even in the midst of pain of suffering, we see God refining us. No, that’s not at all what the Bible’s talking about here or anywhere else. Like verse three, “We rejoice in our sufferings.” That does not mean when we go through suffering, hurt, pain, we just kind of put a smile on our face, pretend the pain isn’t real and try to gloss over at all. I in no way want to take these verses lightly. What an otherworldly picture of suffering pictured in Romans 5:3–5. “Not only that, but 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.”
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