You’ve heard it said, “No Pain / No Gain”.
A person can suffer in this life and they can endure and improve their character, but it will not save them. The only way that produces any saving, lasting value is through Jesus Christ, our Lord, when we understand the text!
Reading Romans 5:1-5, and talking about how suffering produces endurance, character, and hope.
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. 2 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. 3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 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.
All of us receive the gift of grace from God, by faith. In these verses, Paul was talking to the Christians there in the church in Rome, who had never seen Jesus crucified, nor did they set eyes on the risen Christ – although it’s possible that some of them may have seen the empty tomb if they were in Jerusalem for Pentecost and heard the Gospel that Peter preached. Perhaps after being baptized into the faith, they went down and looked at the empty tomb themselves before returning home to Rome.
But, the Gentile Christians who were there in Rome, receiving Paul’s letter, surely hadn’t seen any of these evidences before.
For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. (2 Peter 1:16)
So, most people who were putting their faith in Christ in those early days of the Christian church, were doing so second-hand, based on the Message they were told by the people who were there to see Jesus, as Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8,
For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, 4 that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, 5 and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. 6 Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.7 Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8 Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.
Paul was telling the Corinthians – there are people who are still alive and you can go and ask them about what they witnessed!
But most people were receiving Christ by faith – having never seen these things themselves. You and I fall into this same category today.
But, even those who DID see Jesus live, die, and rise again first-hand still received grace and justification by faith like anybody else.
THAT is how we receive our salvation – by being justified by faith. Only through our Lord Jesus Christ can we have peace with God. And, I’m not talking about a physical relaxing when I say “peace”. It is a peace that surpasses all understanding. Because it is a peace that Christ made with God by Jesus’ atoning sacrifice. He died the death that we should have died. But, because He spilled His blood for our sins, that blood was an acceptable sacrifice to God and it satisfied the wrath of God – a propitiation for our sins, as we read in Romans 3:25,
Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith.
That is peace. Because of our unrighteousness, God’s wrath would burn against us, but because of our faith in Christ and God’s grace, we instead of eternal peace with God.
This peace, in turn, brings about a relaxation from our anxieties, though that’s not what we are primarily talking about here in Romans 5,
Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, 2 through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
So we should be rejoicing and realizing that God’s glory is going to come and all this evil in the world will be laid to rest while our lowly bodies will be transformed to be like His glorious body – that’s what Paul is writing about in verse two.
But then he says this in verse three:
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings
Did you catch that? Not only should we be rejoicing in the hope of our future, but in our SUFFERINGS of our present time.
…knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame
So, we’re talking about a suffering that actually produces something. Now, a person who lives in this world who does not know Christ, they can easily say, “Yeah… I can suffer and produce something. That’s not something unique to Christians. No pain / no gain, right?”
When we work out at the gym and we tear those muscles up, it may hurt at the beginning, but you’d know that the “suffering” you feel is producing a stronger body. But that’s just a worldly suffering with a worldly conclusion it doesn’t produce anything eternal.
Anybody can go through something tough that might improve their character, but it will not save them.
Similarly, a person who experiences joy has their joy end at the conclusion of the experience. That temporary joy has no lasting value. Sure, there would be happy memories, but it wouldn’t save them from death.
So, what is it that suffering produces in the life of the Christ-follower?
It makes us more like Christ, Himself.
We are enduring something that Jesus Christ also endured. That’s why we can rejoice – because we know that Jesus suffered as well. He didn’t just die, He suffered and died. Therefore, He sanctifies and verifies suffering itself.
We have debates all the time on whether or not any person should have to suffer. We have diet pills so that people won’t have to suffer through the aches of dieting in order to improve their appearance. We try to find shortcuts so that nobody will have to suffer through anything.
But, God in Heaven left His throne and came to this earth, taking on flesh and He suffered. He experienced hunger pains, the torture of death, and evening suffering in His spirit as He watched the people that He loved turn their backs on Him, deny Him and betray Him.
Since He suffered these things, we can know that there is a process of sanctification that happens through suffering. So, when we suffer, we are being made more like Christ. Every aspect of life, from conception to physical death is verified and sanctified because Christ went through those things.
When we are born, when we go through growing pains, when we care for the sick, when we are sick ourselves, when we are rejected by those who reject the Gospel, we do things that Christ Himself did. And by going through those things, we are being made more like Christ. This has an eternal, lasting value.
What can this world do to us when God is with us and we are being made more and more into the likeness of Jesus every day?
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