Scripture: Romans 8:18
The Bible never speaks despondingly about the future. If it has a becoming sense of the magnitude of the task of life, that is only the reverence of a great artist, nerving himself to accomplish some far-reaching design. The struggle and the stress are prophecies that the final consummation will be something greater than heart has conceived. Apostles and prophets alike, quickened by the spirit of inspiration, look across the ages to the last result, and never hesitate to declare that that result will amply compensate for all the toil and suffering. “I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed to us-ward.” (NKJV)
“I consider,” says the Apostle, as if he had deliberately weighed the one against the other, and had come to this conclusion, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (LEB) In the groans of Nature, the groans of Humanity, the groans of the Spirit of God within us, he detects tones which prove them to be groans of travail, of the birth-pangs which precede and foretell the advent of a new, purer, happier life; and he declares that, when this wondrous birth of time arrives, all groaning and pain shall be forgotten in the joy of the new better man, the new better humanity, that has come into the world; and, finally, rising into a wildly enthusiastic fervor, he sings of the Divine fatherly Love which is ever at work for our redemption, as a Love from which nothing can separate us, neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution, neither famine nor nakedness, peril nor sword, in the present age, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor any other and new creation into which we may pass in the ages to come.
The Apostle does not say, “I know,” for this might imply that he had fully experienced or realized both the sufferings and the glory. At the time of which he speaks he had not done this. He had not drained to the bottom the cup of earthly sorrow, and he had but tasted the cup of heavenly joy. But neither does he say, “I think or conjecture that the suffering is not worthy to be weighed with the glory”; for this would imply less than he had realized. Although he knew not the whole, he knew a great deal of the suffering, and not a little of the glory too. If “I know” would have been too strong, “I think” would have been too weak. “I consider (some translations use the word reckon)” is the language of faith, which is partly knowledge and partly anticipation; which accepts its present experience: which neither stands still upon the earth, content with the bare facts of life or husk of things, nor stares vaguely into heaven in mere passive expectation; but it is a pilgrimage between earth and heaven.
Faith is the journey of the soul between the realized and the unrealized. It is ever leaving the actual behind and reaching forth to the ideal, never satisfied until it finds in the ideal the Eternal Seal.
It is a mathematical sum. “I consider,” he says. And it must be admitted that no man that ever lived was more capable of working out this sum than this Apostle. On the one hand, he has given us, in the eleventh chapter of his Second Epistle to the Corinthians, a sketch of his own sufferings, such as, perhaps, the experience of no other mortal man could match. On the other hand, he had held personal converse with the Lord Jesus Christ; he is able to tell of “the abundance of his revelations.” Already he had been “caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” Who, then, was so fit as the Apostle Paul, in the wonderful contrast of his unparalleled life, to put the two together, and to decide the contrast?
In sufferings, who has come up to the Apostle? In revelations of the things which God has prepared for them that love Him, who has been equally honored? When he wrote of the sufferings of this present time, he was not reclining on the couch of luxury and imagining the lot of the afflicted. He was in and surrounded by those very sufferings. In perils from his own countrymen, and in perils from false brethren, he was working with his own hands for his daily bread in the wealthy and dissolute Corinth. He bore about with him that thorn in the flesh, which, however difficult it may be for us to assign its nature, we know was the messenger of Satan to buffet him: which, with all his zeal, all the wonders and signs of an Apostle wrought by him, rendered his bodily presence weak, and his speech contemptible. Day by day he entered deeper than other men into that inward conflict between the good which he would do but could not, and the evil which he would not do but did. Of a character wonderfully susceptible and habitually introspective, he had, besides, his spiritual faculties penetrated and intensified by the abiding and indwelling Spirit of God, given him for his apostolic work. Mighty was He that wrought in him—weak and frail the earthen vessel by which that energy must be sustained. We hear him speak of bearing about death, of daily dying; we hear him crying out, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Truly, in sufferings, without and within, but One ever surpassed him—that Divine Master whom he followed, and of whom he says in his fervor that he fills up that which is lacking of His sufferings for the sake of the Church which is His body.
Adapted and modified from James Hastings, ed., The Great Texts of the Bible: Romans VIII-XVI
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Roland Ledoux is Pastor of the outreach Ministry, Oasis Bible Ministry, specializing in Teaching, Encouragement and Intercession (both prayer and needs) since the early 1990s. He and his wife Sue, live in Delta, Colorado and have been married for over 50 years. They enjoy two adult sons, a grandson and a great grandson. He has been ordained since 1986. Fundamental Full-Gospel, Non-denominational. To learn more about Roland visit his website.
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