Sermon: Sunday, 3rd November, 2024
Speaker: John Johnstone
Scripture: Romans 5:3-11
There are times when God’s message to us can be surprising and even counterintuitive. Such a teaching comes in verse 3 when God calls us to rejoice or glory in our sufferings. That might not be an easy thing for you to hear. We rejoice more intuitively in the things we heard about last Sunday, such as justification and peace with a holy God and adoption into God’s family and the grace God pours on us, not just at conversion, but all through our lives. These truths put a spring in our step. We rejoice in them. But what does it mean for us to rejoice in suffering? Has Paul lost the plot here? Of course not. This is God’s Word.
And this teaching is also conveyed by Christ himself: ‘Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.’ (Matthew 5:11-12).
James says: ‘Consider it pure joy, my brothers whenever you face trials of many kinds…’ (James 1:2)
Peter also gets in on the act: ‘Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.’ (1 Peter 4: 12-13)
1. The problem of suffering
We all need to have a good and robust theology of suffering because to varying degrees we all suffer. There is no ‘get out of jail free’ card for the Christian. We live in a fallen and broken world and we are broken people. How is it possible to rejoice in our suffering? It is not that we rejoice that bad things are happening to us. But we rejoice in what God is doing within us through suffering. Through suffering, God brings us to maturity and to a place of greater dependence upon him.
Speaking personally, and I am sure many of you will agree with me, we often learn the most and grow closer to Christ in the school of suffering. I don’t always like being in this school, because there is so much I don’t understand when I am there; however, we know our suffering is not meaningless but is actually producing something: ‘… suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.’ (Romans 5:3-4)
Suffering produces perseverance. This means the ability to keep on going while under pressure. Even from a secular point of view, a skilled football manager will learn longevity in the job through experiencing the highs and the lows. His resolve is tested through an injury crisis and a financial crisis, but if he can keep going in these conditions, then he will emerge all the stronger. That’s the kind of thing which suffering does for us. We experience bereavement and illness and persecution and disappointed hopes and unhappiness and these things are far from easy. We often come to an end of our own resources, and all we can do is cry out to God for help. Our grip on the things of this world loosens and we find ourselves in the place of prayer more.
It does not always happen that way. Christians who lack an understanding of suffering might just keep on asking, ‘Why me?’ and never get past that question. They might end up becoming angry towards God, and praying even less. Suffering, even in Christians, can make us bitter. But Paul reminds us here that it can also make us better, if we respond to it in a godly way.
We’re never given facile answers to suffering in the Bible. But we are given some helpful answers. Our perseverance produces character. In other words, we are those who have been tested and passed the test, by depending on God. We learn to trust in him in the darkness. God can even use evil circumstances for our good. In fact, that is what is happening to us in suffering. And even those trials which seem at first to challenge our hope in God often end up strengthening our hope in him, as we experience his presence with us in our suffering as well as his sustaining grace. ‘But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I shall come forth as gold.’ (Job 23:10) It is in the crucible of suffering that God burns away our impurities, refining and purifying us.
Even Jesus himself learned through his suffering: ‘Son though he was, he learned obedience from what he suffered…’ (Hebrews 5:8)
Again and again, I go back to the picture we are given in John 15: ‘I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.’ Friends, often our suffering has a pruning effect in our lives. We become more humble and compassionate and understanding through suffering.
We often receive more empathy and wisdom to help others in their suffering. When Abraham is tested on Mount Moriah in Genesis 22, he grows in faith. When Peter denies Christ and is then later restored to usefulness, I believe he was strengthened, though at the time, these things were unspeakably hard. God always has a loving purpose in our suffering – it’s just that we don’t always see it at the time.
2. The problem of doubting God’s love for us
Can we really be certain that God loves us? How can we be sure that if we hope in Christ, our hope is not misplaced? These are important questions. How do we know that our hope in Christ is not an elaborate fantasy?
John Stott: ‘What is the ultimate ground on which our Christian hope rests, our hope of glory? It is the steadfast love of God. The reason our hope will never let us down is that God will never let us down. His love will never give up on us.’
‘… God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.’ (Romans 5:5) This is a wonderful verse: We’re not told God’s love drips slowly or trickles into our hearts. It floods our hearts. God is lavish with his love when we are converted and then on through our lives. The term ‘poured out’ is the same used for the Holy Spirit being poured out at Pentecost and speaks of God’s abundant giving. The channel of this love is the Holy Spirit himself, who assures us of God’s love. Christians are the objects of lavish divine love. You might feel this is too touchy-feely, and too subjective. What about the times when we don’t feel this love? What exactly is this love spoken of here? There are different ways we show love to one another. We show love by spending time with someone or through helping them or by telling them we love them. We might buy them a present. How do we know God loves us?
Paul goes on to explain the dimensions of this unmatched love: ‘You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless, Christ died for the ungodly.’ (Romans 5:6) Christ did not die for us because we were deserving of such a sacrifice, or because we were attractive or had great potential. Not at all. In fact, we were powerless to help ourselves and were in a moral mess. We were ungodly (verse 6) and sinners (verse 8) and were even God’s enemies (verse10). That’s quite a situation to be in.
John Murray: ‘The marvel of God’s love is that it was to the ungodly.’
To put it bluntly, God loved me in spite of me. Surely, our state of lostness and rebellion amplifies God’s love for us.
John Stott: ‘The more the gift costs the giver, and the less the recipient deserves it, the greater the love is seen to be. Measured by these standards, God’s love in Christ is absolutely unique.’
Do you want proof that God loves you? ‘Christ died for us.’ (Romans 5:8) What further proof do you need? Paul explains how the love of God is so much greater than human love in verses 7-8. Rarely will someone die for someone they respect, though at times a person will lay down their lives for a loved one. God’s love is so extraordinary in that he gives himself to those who are his enemies. This is a different order of love altogether.
If we’re honest, there are times when Christians doubt the love of God. Perhaps you are in a long period of suffering just now and doubt his love for you. Or perhaps you have fallen into sin and feel guilty and feel like you are going backwards in the Christian life. Either way, the solution is to look once more at the cross, where God demonstrates his love for us. It is a sacrificial love, dying for us.
3 The best is yet to come
In Christianity, when we hear the word ‘salvation’ we usually think about when we became Christians, and rightly so. But in the Bible, there are past, present and future elements to our salvation. We have been saved, on the day we were born again; we are being saved now, which means God is at work in us now making us more like Jesus (sanctification); and finally, there’s a sense in which we will be saved, at the end of time, when we will receive our new bodies and souls and be perfect for evermore. The next few verses (9 and 10) look forward to our future salvation, with utter confidence. Why with such confidence? Because Paul argues that if God has already done such a great thing for us in saving us, of course he is going to complete the task. The Lord always completes what he begins. We even see that in the very first chapter of the Bible,
‘Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!’ (Romans 5:9) Here’s the good news again – we are justified right now in God’s sight, through Christ’s blood. So, logically, if God has already accepted Christ’s death on our behalf (and he has), then on the Day of Judgment, we can be assured that no wrath will fall upon us. Our future is secure.
‘For if, while we were God’s enemies, we were reconciled to him through the death of his Son, how much more, having been reconciled, shall we be saved through his life! (Romans 5:10) Again, we need to follow the flow of logic here. If God has already done the difficult thing by reconciling us to himself while we were enemies, then of course he will do the comparatively easier thing and complete our salvation by giving us new resurrection bodies, like those of Christ. We are united to Christ by faith and so his resurrection power will be given to us.
What a salvation! No wonder (verse 11) we can boast in God. Think of the dimensions of his love, dying for us while we were still sinners. Think of the fact that enemies have brought into the very family of God and have a spectacular resurrection to look forward to. Let’s rejoice in God for what he has done, for what he is doing, even in our suffering, and what he will do on the Last Day.