Hope in Pain?
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1 Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with our God through Jesus Christ.
2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory.
3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance,
4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Hope in Pain?
There is a short story that I came across this past week. It is about a man trying to get across a busy street. “But when he steps off the curb a car comes screaming around the corner and heads straight for him. The man walks faster, trying to hurry across the street, but the car changes lanes and is still coming at him.
So the guy turns around to go back, but the car changes lanes again and is still coming at him. By now, the car is so close and the man so scared that he just stops in the middle of the road. The car gets real close, then swerves at the last possible moment and stops next to the man.
The driver rolls down the window. It's a squirrel. He says, "See, it's not as easy as it looks."”(1)
Life is not easy. It can be challenging to navigate life at times.
We go to the doctor because we’ve not been feeling quite right. The doctor runs some tests and gives us that dreaded word, “you have cancer.”
We get a call in the middle of the night from a family member. They tell us that someone important to us has died in a car accident.
With the cost of everything on the rise, we wonder how we are going to make it. How am I going to put food on the table.
Paul in this section of scripture highlights two different themes. He takes about hope and he talks about pain. We like hope, it helps us keep moving forward. No one wants to experience pain, at least no one that I know.
Have you ever been in a situation where you needed some hope?
I have a picture that I have hanging on my office wall at work. It was a photo that I came across and had printed on a canvas print. It is the picture of the side of a building. On that building some one sprayed some paint and with the paint they wrote “Never lose hope.”
I like that, I need that reminder. My patients need that reminder. Throughout my office I have reminders of hope. I believe we need to be reminded about hope.
Life at times can seem hopeless. When we are going through those painful times it is easy to lose hope. Some situations can seem totally hopeless.
In a broader sense, without Christ we were facing a hopeless situation. Sin had so damaged the image of God that we were created with that we didn’t even realize that we were separated from God. Once we became aware of God and His desire to have a relationship with us we discovered that we couldn’t get to God based on our own righteousness. God’s solution was for Jesus to come and take our sin upon himself so that we could be reconciled to God.
Paul in our Scripture this morning is writing about the results of justification that Jesus has provided for us and he completes his thought by writing about the hope that is ours. Paul writes there in verse 1:
1 Therefore, since we have been made righteous through his faithfulness, we have peace with our God through Jesus Christ.
We have been justified through faith. Justified or justification is one of those $100 theological words that we don’t use in our everyday language. A simple way of remembering what it means is the phrase “just as if I’d never sinned.” When we come to faith in Jesus our relationship with God is totally changed. We are justified, which is more than just being forgiven.
When we forgive someone we accept that they are sorry for what they did to us and we forgive them. We are choosing to not hold against that person whatever it was that they did to us. We can still recall what they did, but we choose not to hold it against them, we forgive them.
Before we come to faith in Jesus we are at a state of war with God because of sin. Sin separated us from God and there is a war going on in our lives between us and God. There is a constant battle going on in our lives for who is going to reign supreme, it is either self or God.
When we come to faith in Jesus, God not only forgives us, but He justifies us. “The war is over. Hostilities have ceased. Through the work of Christ all causes of enmity between our souls and God have been removed. We have been changed from foes to friends by a miracle of grace.”[1] Paul wrote in his letter to the Ephesian church:
8 You are saved by God’s grace because of your faith. This salvation is God’s gift. It’s not something you possessed.
9 It’s not something you did that you can be proud of.
This justification is a gift from God. We can’t earn it, we can’t buy it, we can’t work for it, it is a free gift from God. And because of that free gift the state of war that has been going on in our lives between us and God has been settled. God looks at us just as if we had never sinned in the first place. I don’t know about you, but that should get us just a little bit excited!
Paul continues in that first verse this line of thought by writing “we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” The war is over we have “peace with God.” The Hebrew word used for peace is shalom. When we think of peace we naturally think of the absence of conflict. One writer put it this way:
It conveys the positive notion of wholeness, health, and well-being. Completeness is at the heart of the meaning of šālôm—“peace.” Debts that are paid are šālôm; vows that are fulfilled are šālôm. Conflicts that are resolved result in šālôm.
We have peace with God because of the justification we received by Jesus. In Christ we are complete, that is we are made whole. Before Christ we were broken people. When we come to faith in Christ we are at peace with God, we have shalom, completeness. It is only because of what Jesus has done for us that we can enjoy this peace, this wholeness, this completeness.
This peace with God is not about some type of feeling that we have about God, it is a reality that we live out. We are at peace because we’ve been reconciled to God. That word reconciled means:
to cause people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement[2]
Reconciliation is about restored relationships. It is peace with God. We have been reconciled to our Creator. We have no reason to fear death. We can approach God with confidence.[3]
Sin is at the root cause of the broken relationship with God. God took the initiative to the sin problem and through Jesus we can have that relationship restored. “At incalculable personal expense, God sought to reconcile his rebellious creation to himself and to one another. God’s dying love makes it possible for humans truly to love one another.”[4]
This peace that we receive from God is not just for me, it is for all of us. This peace is meant to be experienced in community, in the Church. The writer to the Hebrews wrote:
14 Make every effort to live in peace with everyone and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord.
Holiness and peace go hand in hand when you look beyond the idea that peace is just the absence of conflict and see that it is also completeness or wholeness. Our relationship with each other should be marked with peace, completeness and wholeness.
Paul doesn’t stop with justification and peace with God but he goes on in verse 2 to write about grace. Paul writes:
2 We have access by faith into this grace in which we stand through him, and we boast in the hope of God’s glory.
Paul says that we have “access by faith.” We didn’t gain access to grace because of who we are or what we’ve done. We gain access because of Jesus. It is only because of Jesus that we gain access to the grace of God. Paul says that we’ve gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. Both of the verbs that Paul uses here indicate that this is a present reality for us as Christians. It is not something that we hope for the future, but it is reality today. We have gained access and we stand firm in that grace.
This doesn’t mean that God overlooks our shortcomings. No He can never overlook sin in our lives. The reality is that God through His love and grace that he accepts us just the way we are but He loves us to much to leave us where we were at. God’s grace sets us free to enjoy this new life that He gives us through Jesus.
“The grace Paul has in mind is the God-given ability to be and do what we could never be or do on our own. Grace brings us into the realm of God’s rule. As we choose to live under his sovereignty, we find ourselves empowered to obey him. We are not left as God found us. We increasingly become new creations.”[5]
2 Corinthians 5:17 “17 So then, if anyone is in Christ, that person is part of the new creation. The old things have gone away, and look, new things have arrived!”
It is through this grace that we are empowered by the Holy Spirit to live in obedience to God. Without God we were unable to live a life of obedience to Him. Each day we are invited to take up our cross and follow Jesus. That is daily saying no to our self-will and saying yes to God’s will in our lives.
Paul doesn’t stop there with grace, he goes on and writes in the later part of verse 2:
Romans 5:2 (CEB)
2 we boast in the hope of God’s glory.
Paul is moving our attention from the here and now to the future. “Our confident expectation for a future share in the reality of God is not based on our status or human achievement, but solely on the grace and power of God.”[6] Our hope is not based on who we are or what we do or what we accomplish. Our hope is in what God has already done for us and what He is doing for us today and what He will do for us. We will one day share in that glory through Jesus Christ.
Back in verse 23 of chapter 3 Paul wrote:
23 All have sinned and fall short of God’s glory,
That was us before we came to faith in Jesus, before we were justified and reconciled to God. When we were still sinners, we all sinned, we all fell short of the glory of God. But, now that we have been justified, we have peace with God, we have gained access by faith into this grace we can now rejoice or boast in the hope of the glory of God. Our relationship with God has totally changed. We were at one time separated from God by sin, but know we have become sons and daughters of God because of what Jesus did for us. We know have hope for the future!
Let me just say one more thing about hope. ““Hope” here and in the rest of the New Testament is a special term. It is not a word suggesting uncertainty (as, “Well, I hope I can make it.”) It is instead a word of confident expectation. Christian hope is a sense of certainty that brings us joy, even if present circumstances are painful.”[7]
That is important to understand about hope because of what Paul writes next. Look there at verse 3:
3 But not only that! We even take pride in our problems, because we know that trouble produces endurance,
4 endurance produces character, and character produces hope.
5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Christianity is not “pie in the sky when you die.” It’s not just some future promise while we live in a world with problems and heartaches today. That is not what Paul is advocating here. He’s not suggesting that we develop some type of martyr complex. Paul understands that we live in a world with real problems but they are not insurmountable by the power of God at work within us by the Holy Spirit. Jesus recognized that we would face trouble in this world. He said to the disciples:
33 I’ve said these things to you so that you will have peace in me. In the world you have distress. But be encouraged! I have conquered the world.”
That world trouble or tribulation “means “pressure,” and while most people would testify to the unpleasantness of pressure, believers are able to rejoice in the unpleasantness. This is not because they flippantly ignore it or psychologically block it out with loud exclamations of “Praise the Lord” but because they know what is going on and welcome it.”[8]
Paul points out next a sequence or chain of events that leads to hope in the life of a believer. He writes:
that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.
That word perseverance means to “abide under.” That means for the believe we abide with Christ when things are going good and also when things are not going good. We face the temptation to toss in the towel when life gets rough and we’re under a lot of pressure. We are tempted to give up. To persevere is to not give up.
Perseverance produces character. Now some of you are characters, but that is not what Paul is writing about. Character that Paul is writing about as one writer commented: “incorporates the idea of the approvedness that comes from passing through a trial. Paul, writing to the Philippians, used the same word about Timothy: “But you know his proven character” (Phil. 2:22), referring to the stability which the young man had exhibited in the fiery furnace of evangelistic endeavor with Paul. The people in the church at Philippi were in a position to recognize the type of man he was by the way he had come through his ordeals.[9]
It is out of that approvedness of character that final link and that is that character produces hope. This hope Paul writes:
5 This hope doesn’t put us to shame, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
Yes we may experience times of loss and suffering. We may face difficulties. Our hope is not in the here and now. Our hope is in the God who loved us and redeemed us. Paul said “hope does not put us to shame or it does not disappoint us.” Why? Paul answers our inevitable why question by writing: “because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
Because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit, “the moment we believe, floods our hearts with these expressions of God’s eternal love, and by these we are assured that He will see us safely home to heaven. After you receive the Spirit, you will sense that God loves you. This is not a vague, mystical feeling that “Somebody up there” cares about humanity, but the deep-seated conviction that a personal God really loves you as an individual.[10]
Bishop William Willimon wrote:
It’s because of the working of the Holy Spirit in his life that Paul is able to say that even amid our times of pain we have hope. Our hope is based, not in ourselves and our powers of endurance, but in our conviction that we are not left alone with our anguish. The Holy Spirit is there with us. Through the Holy Spirit we are given powers of endurance, resilience, and maybe just plain old grit whereby we surprise ourselves by our ability to move through our times of pain with hope, dignity, and strength.
Perhaps then, because of the gift of the Holy Spirit, and even though we know it can be a risky thing to say, we are able to say that Paul knew what he was talking about when he said we know that trouble produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. [11]
Hope in Pain?
Is this hope that Paul wrote about a present reality for you today? Do you live in that hope today?
(1) ALPHA - Fun Page (theparticle.com)
[1] MacDonald, William. Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments. Ed. Arthur Farstad. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995. Print.
[2]"Reconcile." Merriam-Webster.com. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 21 May 2016.
[3] Greathouse, William M., and George Lyons. Romans 1–8: A Commentary in the Wesleyan Tradition. Kansas City, MO: Beacon Hill Press of Kansas City, 2008. Print. New Beacon Bible Commentary.
[4] Ibid
[5] Ibid
[6] Ibid
[7] Richards, Larry, and Lawrence O. Richards. The Teacher’s Commentary. Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1987. Print.
[8] Briscoe, D. Stuart, and Lloyd J. Ogilvie. Romans. Vol. 29. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc, 1982. Print. The Preacher’s Commentary Series.
[9] Ibid
[10] MacDonald, William. Believer’s Bible Commentary: Old and New Testaments. Ed. Arthur Farstad. Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1995. Print.
[11] Willimon, William SPIRIT POURED ON PEOPLE IN PAIN Ministry Matters™ | June 12, 2022 Trinity Sunday