A Word in Season: Sufferings and Glory (Romans 8:18)

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How do you measure suffering? Is it the length of time for which you endure something?

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Is it the depth or degree of the pain or distress that you undergo? How do you multiply those together?

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How do you measure the difference between external sufferings or sufferings in the body and internal sufferings, sufferings in our soul and in our mind?

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Whichever way you measure it, this world is full of suffering. And for God's people, there are layers to that experience that are different to those of others.

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In Romans chapter 8 and verse 18, the Apostle Paul, a man who knows about suffering, talks about the sufferings of this present time, the sufferings of life in this world.

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He's just been speaking about the fact that believers are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.

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The fact that God is our inheritance is something to which believers should look forward as those who belong to Jesus Christ.

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But in connection and association with the Lord, there are present sufferings and future glory.

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And the present sufferings are one of the indications that we actually have God as our inheritance and that we belong to the

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Lord Jesus Christ and are united with him. The glory that is to come always follows upon the sufferings of this present time.

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For a believer, the sufferings of this present time include all the realities of life in a fallen world, all the weights and the pains and the sorrows that attend upon this present condition.

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But there are also distinctly Christian sufferings that are added to that. There are layers of experience that belong to those who follow

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Jesus Christ. There's the despising of the world, the disdain sometimes even of those who we love according to the flesh.

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There may be real antagonism and painful persecution all the way up to and including imprisonment and martyrdom for the sake of the gospel.

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And Paul is a man who has faced all those and many more besides. You may know some of the catalogues of suffering that he sometimes is obliged to give to explain just what he's going through.

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And so Paul is a man who knows what he's talking about when he speaks of the sufferings of this present time.

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And Paul, as he considers those, as he draws them all together, as he heaps them all up, as he considers not only what he goes through but the experience of the believers to whom he's writing in Rome.

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And perhaps beyond that, all the sufferings of God's people as God's people in this world.

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He says this, I consider, I reckon, I calculate, I have made a thoughtful and careful assessment and I have reached the sure conclusion that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

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Paul says in effect that he's taken all these sufferings of this present time and he's put them on one side of a scale.

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And on the other side he has put the glory which shall be revealed in us.

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The prospect of being made like Jesus Christ, having the glorious body that he has, bearing the image of the heavenly man.

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And that heavenly man possessing then our sinless souls, the reality of a spiritual body dwelling in the new heavens and the new earth, in the presence of God in Christ, knowing our

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Redeemer face to face and enjoying the smile of God, mediated by him without anything in us to hinder or prevent the glory that we shall see and the praise that we shall render in response.

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And Paul thinks about all of those things and he says now, whatever, for however long and however grievous are the sufferings of this present time, there is no proper comparison between them and the glory which shall be revealed in us.

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Now that doesn't take away the reality of the sufferings now, but it does put them into perspective.

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It's always worth remembering that the first moment of heaven will so swallow up all our present griefs and pains as to make them of no account in our eyes.

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Now it's hard to calculate that now given our present sufferings, but we need to learn to reckon with the heavenly glory in such a way that we can draw the same sure conclusion as the apostle and there is our confidence and our joy.