Show the World How to Suffer Well

In Romans 8, as the apostle Paul considers the grandeur of God’s salvation, he encourages us to look beyond our tiny private worlds. God’s plan is to put the universe back together again in a brand-new creation through redemption in Jesus Christ. Through faith in Him, we await a “glory that is to be revealed to us” (v. 18), which is “the freedom of the glory of the children of God” (v. 21) and includes “the redemption of our bodies” (v. 23) finally and totally from the grasp of decay and death.

Yet Romans 8 is not all glory. Paul also acknowledges “the sufferings of the present time” (v. 18). In effect, he says, “If you’re in for the glory, you’re also in for the suffering.” There is no “happy-go-lucky” package that the Christian can buy into, and no one who has been a Christian for any length of time will be able to say that the life of faith is trouble-free. Indeed, it’s in the depth of human suffering that we learn to cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom. 8:15). Only there can we discover the reality of God as we encounter His fatherly presence.

One of the challenges we face, then, as those who profess to be followers of Jesus, is that of showing the world how to suffer well. The fruit of excellence that will appear in a maturing Christian is not a lack of sorrow but a hopeful sadness as we look forward to the glory to be revealed.

The Problem of Pretense

Christians ought to experience a joy that is unassailable. We are even instructed to “count it all joy … when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). But the Scriptures don’t describe an emotional inoculation. Such joy is rather that which exists contemporaneously with tears and sadness. It is that strange paradox whereby even in tears, we may know a joy that transcends difficulty. 

Nevertheless, we constantly face the temptation to hide our suffering. When things are difficult, we often want to put our best face forward and pretend that all is well. Many have gotten the idea from somewhere—not from the Bible—that to be a Christian is to be immune to the pangs of life, to fly above the turbulence. So in our witness, we misrepresent the biblical testimony, and we lie about our own experience.

Even in tears, we may know a joy that transcends difficulty.

How often are we tempted, when someone asks, “How are you?” to reply with a “Great!” or “Fine!” when in reality, griefs and anxieties trouble our hearts? How often are we tempted, amidst circumstances of clear turmoil, to say only, “I am blessed,” and to say nothing of the real pain we feel? How unlike Jesus, who wept for Jerusalem (Luke 19:41), who wept at Lazarus’s tomb (John 11:35 ), who agonized in the garden in the hour of His arrest—Jesus, who endured those pains “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2). If we think that we need to prove the power of Jesus by pretending to be above the pain, we’ve gotten Jesus wrong.

One might protest that the Scriptures teach that we ought not to “grieve as others do who have no hope” (1 Thess. 4:13). But this is not a prohibition against all grief. Christians do grieve—but what makes our grief different is the hope we bring to it. Understanding, for instance, that God raises the dead (v. 14) doesn’t change the fact that death is still very real and grievous—and yet, by God’s grace, that fact can turn our eyes to the Lord Jesus and His saving power as we “wait eagerly for adoption as sons” (Rom. 8:23).

“Not Worth Comparing”

Paul reminds us that as we suffer, we can wait for “what no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the heart of man imagined, what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Cor. 2:9). And we can trust “that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

There is a joy set before us that outclasses all of the griefs that precede it. Yet our feelings of grief sometimes need time to catch up with that joy. That is no easy process, and it involves practicing a kind of grief grounded in faith. A worldly optimism is grounded merely in the human will, like the song Charlie Chaplain used to sing:

Smile, though your heart is aching.
Smile, even though it’s breaking.
When there are clouds in the sky,
You’ll get by.

A Christian hope, by contrast, is able to say with the psalmist,

How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
 How long will you hide your face from me?
How long must I take counsel in my soul
 and have sorrow in my heart all the day? (Ps. 13:1–2)

In other words, a Christian can lament because a Christian knows that there is a God who listens and who cares. And in the end, a Christian can say, “I have trusted in your steadfast love; my heart shall rejoice in your salvation” (Ps. 13:5). We can have the confidence to lament fully because we have surety that God is just and will square things in the end. 

A Christian may say, “Even if this trial lasts for all of my life, as it may do”—as a besetting illness may do, as the loss of limbs may do, as the absence of a lost loved one may linger—“it will pale in comparison to the blessings of God in eternity.” As Octavius Winslow writes, “One second of glory will extinguish a lifetime of suffering.”

We can have the confidence to lament fully because we have surety that God is just and will square things in the end.

“In the world you will have tribulation,” says Jesus. “But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33). These words of comfort help us to understand what it means to suffer and sorrow as a Christian. Circumstances can be hard, and grief is real—but God is good and plans for our good. Thus the Christian can hope for pleasures that are not present yet, and may do so patiently (Rom. 8:25). As we do so, we show Christ’s promise written on our hearts, and we may have opportunity to give a reason for the hope within us (1 Peter 3:15).

This article was adapted from the sermon “Our Present Sufferings” by Alistair Begg.