Romans 5:1-8
Lectionary Reading: Proper 6 Year A RCL
Since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person– though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us.
I wonder if the title I wrote makes you think, “the guy that wrote this sounds like a jerk! I don’t like him already!” I kinda hope it does because that’s what I would think if I came across that. But the title, aside from getting your attention, was meant to maybe put you in a certain place and then the post will hopefully take you elsewhere.
That first verse in the passage is packed with words rich in meaning in the christian faith: faith, peace, grace, hope, glory. Paul seems to be connecting all these qualities to draw up a silhouette of Christianity. He starts with the concept that our actions are justified not because they follow a written code of law as in the Hebrew religion of Paul’s day, but because they follow the actions of Christ. Our peace comes from knowing that we are called to be like Him. His Spirit has been poured out upon us to guide us in living as Christ lived. And this is only possible because God has made it possible. It is nothing we have earned the right to. Knowing it is all because of Jesus that we receive this grace from God, our hope is to become like Him. Our hope to share in the glory of God is that we would become like Christ.
Paul then reminds us of that the path that leads us to that hope, starts with suffering! He says that we boast in our sufferings! I can’t picture that to mean that we are supposed to brag about our sufferings. But our natural reaction to suffering is to avoid it. To get through it as quickly as we can. unfortunately when we do that we tend to miss the lessons that suffering is there to teach us. So when Paul says that we “boast” in our sufferings, the Greek translation of that is that we are “confident” in our sufferings. Christ our Lord, suffered at the hands of sinful men and endured the cross, scorning its shame and God raised him from the dead to be Lord over all the earth.(loosely Philippians 2) Christ’s glory began with suffering. Because we would never choose suffering, we can be confident by Christ’s example, that the suffering that is upon us will lead us to sharing also in His glory.
Getting to that hope, starts with suffering but we have to resist the knee-jerk reaction to avoid it and get out of it by whatever means possible. Otherwise we go no where and stay stuck in who we are. Dying to ourselves, crucifying our ego, carrying our cross, how can that be pleasant? Of course it is going to be hard and require that we suffer. But I believe that a life of dying to ourselves is the suffering that we are to endure. For if I take on a life of dying to myself, crucifying my ego, serving rather than being served, loving even my enemies, then what circumstances have I not already prepared myself for. If I am living a life of dying to self, sharing in Christs sufferings, then what loss is there to suffer that I haven’t already let go of? That is perhaps why Paul reminds us that we can be “confident” in our suffering. But this suffering has to produce certain things before we get to what we “hope” for. The suffering only produces endurance. It is endurance that then produces character. And it is the character that produces hope.
Sometimes God seems like a jerk! Like He just makes things hard because He can. Why does He even allow suffering at all. If He pours out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit then why make us go through suffering? Why isn’t that enough to transform us to be like Christ? What comes to mind when thinking about these questions is that we are made in His image. We are made with a corruptible nature. So we have to explore the idea that God has a corruptible nature? God gave us free will because God has free will. An idea that is hardly ever expressed but is there for us to ponder is that being made in the image of God, we have a corruptible nature and we have free will to choose what is corruptible, would mean that God has a corruptible nature and can choose what corrupts and yet never does!? God always chooses the way of love. And this way of love means that He is aware of our suffering and rather than take it away, He suffers with us. He has given us free will and we can certainly choose to avoid suffering but by doing so, we avoid becoming like Christ. And God, by the way of love, suffers that as well.
It is in our nature, so I have to believe that God experiences the same thing, that when we see someone we love suffering, we want to stop their suffering. But would that be love! We are called to suffer with them. When our kids, or our friends or our spouse, family, co-workers or whoever are suffering, everything in us wants to go deal with what is causing their suffering for them. But we instinctively know, our interference is not in their best interest. Love is for us to be there with them. To give them our time, our compassion, our encouragement so that they can endure whatever it is they are going through knowing that their character will be immutably forged by the experience. If it is character that produces hope, then to intercept their suffering is to stunt their character. Leaving them with a character that hopes in and expects others to relieve their suffering. Never maturing to the fullness of Christ.
When we let suffering finish its work, our character is shaped to become like Christ in His sufferings. Perhaps “sharing in Christ’s glory” is a life of dying to ourselves! For a life shaped by avoiding suffering means that the best our character can produce, the furthest our love can go, is that we will only take a chance on loving people that seem like they are “a good person”. We risk loving only those that we deem worthy of the risk. But to share in Christ’s glory is to love all, suffer with all, without judgement on who they are. A life of loving like that is to share in His glory!