Love Poured Out

“Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 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.”

Romans 5:3-4

“Not only that…” is a continuation of what Paul just said in the previous two verses. In verse 2 he stated, “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.” In this verse he expresses that he rejoices in the hope of the glory of God. This glory is manifested in the gospel that we have received. Because of the work of Christ, we can be forgiven and one day we will receive our glorified bodies and God will dwell among his people forever. This is something to rejoice about.

If he ended there it would be completely understandable, but he continues saying that we not only rejoice in the hope of God’s glory but that we also “rejoice in our sufferings”! This takes a little bit of unpacking. How do we rejoice in suffering? This can be taken the wrong way. Paul is not a saying that we should rejoice in suffering itself. Sin and the pain it causes is a part of the fall and is not something that in itself we should be glad about. However, we can see God working out his purposes in the midst of our suffering and rejoice in what God is doing in our lives through these circumstances.

Notice that the suffering is not an end in itself. God uses suffering in our lives to produce endurance. When we learn to endure hardships, it builds within us the ability to be steadfast and unmovable. It not only gives us that ability to persevere, but it also humbles us and shapes our character. We learn to cry out to Jesus and rely on the strength of the Holy Spirit rather than our own strength. This in turn produces a godly character in us as we humble ourselves consistently before God. This character in turn gives us a deeper hope. This is not the naïve hope of the new believer but the deep, tested hope of a seasoned saint who has endured hardship and has learned through experience the goodness of God.

This hope does not put us to shame. It is hard for us to accept, but even our struggles and our besetting sins that we must put to death regularly are assigned by God to us for our good and for his glory. God knows everything and his hand of providence is guiding both human history and our individual lives. This means that the circumstances that we face and the trials that we endure were previewed and permitted by God for his sovereign purposes. We don’t rejoice in the suffering itself, but we have hope and we do not live in shame because we know that God has willed it for his purpose in our life.

We know that “because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” God knows everything about you, the good and the bad. God knows the things you struggle with and the things you worry about. He knows the challenges that you face and the pain that you feel. He knows all of that and he loves you. His love has been poured out in you through the Holy Spirit. It is one thing to not be known and be loved, but God fully knows you and what you are going through, and he loves you. Because he loves you, you never have to live in shame. You can trust his good purposes in your life. In this we rejoice!