No wonder that the apostle was not ashamed of the gospel; for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believes (Rom. 1:16). Justified by faith we have peace with God; we received and have access by faith into this grace wherein we were placed and stand; and we boast in hope of the glory of God. This expressly covers, with blessing unmistakably divine and wholly undeserved by us, the entire past, present, and future, for every believer.
Can the Spirit add more? This is just what the text before us does. God in Christ alone accounts for it all; and His love, through Hint Who died and rose again, finds its joy in blessing us to His own glory. He delights in blessing man, and can afford to bless him righteously and according to all His heart through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.
How are you treating such a God and such a Savior? Does His goodness lead you to repentance? or according to your hardness and impenitent heart are you treasuring up to yourself wrath in a day of wrath and revelation of God's righteous judgment? After the sin of man, yea when it rose up to its climax against His Son sent and come in love, God has answered this crowning sin by His own grace, so far exceeding, that, instead of judging all the guilty world which crucified Jesus, He is reconciling every one that believes, howbeit hitherto His evident and proved enemy, by the death of His Son. And why not you? Is it a small thing in your eyes, that though He declares you “lost” in yourself, He is willing to save you by grace through faith (Eph. 2:8)? Oh! hear the word of reconciliation; for so He calls the gospel (in contrast with the law, however holy, just, and good in itself, which must condemn the ungodly). He has commanded His ambassadors for Christ even to beseech, Be reconciled to God. Man cannot himself become meet for His presence in light; but God made Christ Who knew no sin to be sin for us that we might become God's righteousness. Neglect no more so great salvation. Beware in that case lest the worst befall you.
The Holy Spirit never uttered, never wrote, a word to sanction doubt, but to produce faith in God and His Christ. Let no one glory in men. For all things are yours (if you believe), whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ's, and Christ is God's (1 Cor. 3:22, 23).
It is therefore not only in His counsels going on to glory through redemption that He blesses and we boast, but in His ways through this wilderness world. Sometimes the believer is at his wits' end: difficulties so thicken. We do not know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession with groanings unutterable; and He that searches the hearts, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because He intercedes for saints according to God. But we do know that, to those who love God, all things work together for good.
So in our text the apostle, after saying that “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God,” adds “And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also,” and explains clearly how it is: “Knowing that tribulation worketh patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that was given to us.” It is the path of trial into which we are ushered when we are no longer slaves in Egypt, God's judgment being staid by the blood of the Lamb.
Are we then to murmur because, while Christ is on high, we see not yet all things subjected to Him? He is crowned with glory; but Satan is still the god and prince of the world, and hence the enmity to all who have faith, and the greater in proportion to their fidelity.
In Rom. 5:3-5 the true way of God is briefly traced in the discipline of the soul, full of profit for all exercised thereby. It all supposes and follows our justification by faith. There may be, as there was of old, a shirking of God's will; but He knows how to deal with His children when refractory; and as of old, so now He chastens whom He loves, and scourges every son whom He receives. Nor is discipline the only end of God. He tries us, as He did Abraham; and blessed is the man that endures temptation, for after being proved he shall receive the crown of life which He promised to those that love Him.
So the apostle Peter says, that ye greatly rejoice in the salvation ready to be revealed in the last time, though now for a little while, if need be, put to grief by various temptations, that the trying of your faith, more precious than gold that perisheth, might be found unto praise and honor and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ. But in our text the apostle dwells on the present fruit for the soul. “We glory in tribulations also, knowing that tribulation worketh patience” (or endurance) &c. This is hindered if we question our justification and so our peace be unsettled. But starting on our pilgrim journey with assurance of faith, we interpret the tribulations by the light of redemption, and confide in Him Who justifies the ungodly man (Rom. 4:5), having raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead, Who was delivered for our offenses and was raised again for our justification. Our acceptance of tribulation at His hand works out endurance or patience on our part.
Again, “patience [works out] experience.” It is not yet the experience of what is within, which is formally and fully discussed in a later part of this Epistle from chap. 5:12 to chap. 8. inclusively. Here endurance works out what God is along the road; which is missed just so far as we allow impatience. And this “experience” works out “hope.” In quietness of spirit and the proof of what God is toward us, let the world and present trials oppose as they may, we learn to have our eyes habitually above. Hence it is that the hope of the glory of God which was accepted as a truth becomes more influential, consolatory, and cheering practically. Nor does it, whatever its heavenly brightness, put us to shame, for the blessed reason, that the love of God has been and is shed abroad in our hearts through the Holy Spirit given to us.
No greater power of enjoying Himself than this, we may boldly say, could our gracious God give to the believer. Our blessed Lord, in the days of This flesh, had the Spirit given Him, and so without blood. The Holy One of God, He needed no sacrifice as He had no sin. The Spirit of God descending and abiding on Him was the sign and witness of His personal perfectness, as He walked here below. Him, the Son of man, God the Father sealed. We receive the Holy Spirit because in Christ we have redemption; as, in the type of the O.T., the oil followed the blood on the sons of Aaron, already washed in the water, the high priest alone being anointed without blood (Lev. 8:12); afterward, he and they together (ver. 23, 24, 30). This was a beautiful shadow, though of course not the very image. Christ is the truth. If the love of God, spite of our imperfect condition, has been thus shed abroad in our hearts in virtue of redemption, what surprise can there be that, when risen or changed at the coming of Christ, we should share with Him God's eternal glory? Even this hope does not make us ashamed because of His love pervading the heart. W. K.