Latest / Reformed Thinking / Rejoicing in Suffering: Christian Hope and the Sanctifying Purpose of God (Romans 5:3–5)

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Rejoicing in Suffering: Christian Hope and the Sanctifying Purpose of God (Romans 5:3–5) · Reformed Thinking

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Welcome to reformed thinking. I want you to imagine that you
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are sitting in a sterile, cold hospital room.
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We have all been in that kind of room.
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It is pretty unsettling. Yeah, the fluorescent lights are
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just buzzing overhead, and the doctor walks in, clips an X-ray
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up onto the light board and points to a completely shattered
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bone in your arm. Right.
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But then he looks at you and says, well, this is wonderful
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news. You should be celebrating.
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Which is an insane thing to hear.
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Completely. I mean, you would look at that
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doctor and think he'd entirely lost his mind.
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It sounds absurd. Because when a bone is broken,
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it hurts. You just want it fixed.
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Spot on. The world looks at a cancer
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diagnosis. Or, you know, a sudden financial
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collapse or the devastating loss of a child.
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And society is a very straightforward verdict on that.
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They call it a meaningless tragedy, yes.
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A random, terrible tragedy. Yet when you open the Christian
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scriptures and look at that very same shattered life, the
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diagnosis is so counterintuitive it almost sounds like madness.
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It really does. It goes against every human
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instinct. So today we're doing a deep dive
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into two incredibly dense theological texts.
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They are both centered on Romans chapter 5, verses 3 through 5.
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This is where Paul drops a massive theological weight on
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us. He does.
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The core subject here is the startling, almost offensive
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Christian command to boast in suffering, and the tension we
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are dealing with today is huge. It is a staggering tension,
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really. Because, I mean, you look around
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and we are living in a secular culture that is absolutely
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drowning in anxiety. People are desperate for any
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possible escape from pain. Any distraction will do for
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them. Yeah, and frankly, even we're in
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the modern church. You see a culture peddling this
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therapeutic seeker, sensitive comfort.
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It basically treats Jesus as a life coach.
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A life coach whose primary goal is to keep you out of the fire.
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Precisely against all of that, the Apostle Pauls words seem
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completely disconnected from reality.
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OK, let's unpack this. How can anyone actually rejoice
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when their entire world falls apart?
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Well, it is the great paradox of the Christian faith, and to
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understand it we have to establish our perspective right
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out of the gate. Meaning we cannot look at this
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through a worldly lens. That is right.
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From a strictly reformed standpoint, what Paul is
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describing in Romans 5 is not Stoic grit.
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He is not telling you to simply bite your.
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Lips or suppress your tears and just, you know, muster up some
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human resilience to get through Tuesday.
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No, not at all. Neither is he suggesting some
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perverse love of physical or emotional pain.
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The ability to boast in the furnace of suffering is the
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logical, inevitable fruit of justification by faith alone.
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So the legal standing comes first, yes?
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If you do not have that bedrock doctrine in place, the command
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to rejoice in tribulation becomes a cruel, impossible
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burden. It will absolutely crush your
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soul. Which makes sense.
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I mean, the Reformed tradition, echoing Paul, insist that we
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cannot even begin to talk about suffering until we have settled
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the legal standing of the believer before a holy God.
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The entire framework of how you interpret your pain hinges on
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that. It depends entirely on whether
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or not you have been declared righteous by the imputation of
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Christ's perfect obedience. I think that is such a critical
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distinction to make early on, because when you read the text
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itself, Paul does not actually start with the pain or the
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furnace. He starts in a very different
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location. Right.
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He starts with the courtroom. Romans 5 verses one and two
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layout this absolute bedrock reality.
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Paul says. Therefore, since we've been
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justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord
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Jesus Christ. He places the believer in a
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legal context long before he places them in the Crucible of
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suffering. Exactly.
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I mean spot on. You have to picture the divine
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courtroom of the universe. The judge is seated.
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The evidence of your sin is overwhelming.
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The penalty is clear. Yeah, but before the sentence of
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damnation could be carried out, the gavel falls and a completely
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different verdict is announced. The courtroom scene is settled
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before the hospital room scene even begins.
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That is the correct sequence. Because without that sequence,
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everything falls apart. It really does.
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And that verdict of justification changes the very
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nature of the universe. For the believer, justification
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means that the holy righteous judge of all the earth has
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looked at the Sinner. Applied the finished atoning
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work of Jesus Christ to their account.
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Right, and declared them legally righteous.
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Because of that specific legal declaration, the hostility
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between God and the believer has completely ceased.
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War is over. The war is done, the text says.
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We have peace with God, and we have to be clear here, this is
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not a subjective feeling of tranquility.
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It is an objective legal reality.
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You're no longer an enemy combatant against Heaven.
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No, the wrath of God that you rightly deserved has been fully
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absorbed by the sun on the cross.
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Wow. So therefore, when you step into
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the furnace of affliction, you were stepping into it as a fully
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reconciled child of God, not as a condemned criminal awaiting
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execution. Which is a massive paradigm
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shift. It is which makes sense of the
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very next phrase Paul uses where he talks about having access by
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faith into this grace in which we stand.
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That word stand is key. It really catches my attention
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every time I read it. It speaks to a permanent fixed
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position. Yes it does.
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Because, you know, we naturally tend to think of Grace as a
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subscription service. We think we step into grace when
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we read our Bibles in the morning.
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And then we assume we slip out of grace when we lose our temper
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and traffic or fail a moral test.
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Right, but Paul is saying the believer does not visit Grace
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occasionally based on their performance.
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They stand in it permanently. What's fascinating here is that
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this permanent standing in grace radically alters the meaning of
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all future affliction. How so?
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Well, if you stand permanently in grace, then whatever happens
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to you, no matter how agonizing it is, happens entirely within
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the sphere of that grace. That the believer does not
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experience pain in a vacuum. Never the secular mind views
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suffering as random chaotic chance, and the natural guilty
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conscience views suffering as divine retribution.
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They assume God is finally paying them back for their
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secret sins. Right.
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But for the justified believer, suffering is fundamentally
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reinterpreted. It is no longer a sign of
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judicial condemnation. So it is not God's penal wrath
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raining down on you. Not at all.
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Because Christ exhausted the penal wrath of God on the cross.
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Your suffering is now the fatherly discipline governed by
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a sovereign Lord. I really like to think about
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this using a relational analogy. Imagine you were lying strapped
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to a table in a dark room and a person walks in, takes a sharp
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scalpel and starts cutting into your chest.
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That sounds horrific. It does now.
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If you believe the person holding that knife hates you and
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wants to destroy you, that physical action is a violent,
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terrifying attack. You would fight it with every
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ounce of strength you have. Your mind will interpret the
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physical pain as pure malice. But let's change the scenario.
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If the room is brightly lit and you know the person holding the
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knife is a skilled, specialized surgeon who loves you.
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A surgeon who is trying to remove a malignant tumor that
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will otherwise kill you? Yes.
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Your interpretation of the event shifts completely.
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The physical pain of the scalpel is identical in both scenarios.
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Your flesh still screams. But your mind processes the pain
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differently. Exactly.
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I mean, that is right. The harsh action is a necessary
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medical procedure. The pain is no longer an act of
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hatred, it is an act of severe saving love.
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That analogy captures the theological reality perfectly.
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If you are outside of Christ, suffering should terrify you.
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Because it is a foretaste of a very real, impending judgement.
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Right. The knife is indeed a weapon of
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justice for the unbeliever, but if you have been justified by
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faith alone, the surgeon scalpel is solely for your
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sanctification. The Westminster Confession of
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Faith is incredibly helpful here, isn't it it?
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Is specifically in his chapter on Providence.
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It teaches that God, the great Creator of all things, directs,
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disposes, and governs all creatures, actions and things.
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From the greatest to the least. Yes, by His completely wise and
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holy Providence, He governs our greatest trials to the praise of
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His glory. Because God is completely
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sovereign over the furnace. And because He is completely
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reconciled to you in Christ, the fire is only permitted to burn
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away your dross. It will never consume you.
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The surgeon never slips, and because that peace with God is
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utterly secured by the surgeon, your posture toward worldly pain
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undergoes A staggering shift. A massive shift.
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You move from absolute terror to something entirely different,
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Paul says in Romans 5, verse 3. Not only that, but we rejoice in
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our sufferings. Which is a heavy command.
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The Greek verb used here for rejoice is kochumatha, and from
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what I understand this word means to boast, to exalt, or to
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glory. In that is correct.
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Furthermore, it is written as a present indicative in the Greek
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for those of us who are not language scholars.
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What does that mean practically? It denotes A habitual, ongoing
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disposition. It is not a fleeting emotional
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high you get after a really good worship song at church.
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So it is the settled, continuous posture of your life, yes, But
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honestly, how do you do that without just plastering a fake
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hypocritical smile on your face when your life is falling apart?
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That word, Couch Amantha, is an absolute scandal to the natural
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mind. To boast in the very thing that
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is tearing your earthly life apart requires a supernatural
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perspective. You're not boasting about how
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strong you are. No, and you are not faking a
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smile. You are glorying in what God is
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accomplishing through the pain. We must contrast this biblical
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boasting with the idols of our modern age.
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On one side you have the secular viewpoint, which treats
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suffering as an evolutionary hiccup or just bad luck.
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And secularism offers no hope, only a nihilistic, grim
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perseverance until the grave. Right.
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And on the other side, you have the prosperity theology that
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infects so much of the vegetable church today.
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Prosperity preachers teach that suffering is a sign of weak
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faith, unconfessed sin, or a failure to claim your divine
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right to health and wealth. Both of those modern idols
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completely fall apart when they hit the text of Romans 5.
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They absolutely do. Paul does not say.
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We boast in spite of the suffering, as if we are ignoring
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it. And he certainly does not say we
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boast because we can rebuke the suffering away with our words.
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No, he says. We most inside the tribulations
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themselves. And the word Paul uses for
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sufferings or tribulations there is Philipsis.
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When you look at the historical context of that specific word,
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it paints a very vivid, almost suffocating picture.
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It is a heavy word. Phillipsis literally means
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crushing physical pressure. In the ancient Greco Roman
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world, it was the specific term used to describe the heavy,
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massive stone slab that was lowered onto olives or grapes in
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a press. That is a brilliant historical
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detail. Picture a massive wooden beam
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pressing a huge stone down into a VAT of olives.
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The stone would grind down, squeezing every ounce of liquid
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out of the fruit until only a pulverized, broken husk
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remained. And that is the word Paul
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chooses to describe the Christian experience of
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suffering. Yes, the sheer weight of a
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fallen world pressing against the soul.
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It encompasses severe persecution, chronic physical
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illness, the sudden grief of losing a loved one.
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Or even the daily groaning of living in a body that is
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decaying and failing. Right.
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It is the crushing pressure that makes you feel as though your
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very life, your joy and your breath are are being squeezed
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out of you by a massive stone. Here's where it gets really
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interesting. Paul tells you to boast inside
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the Olive press. Inside the press itself.
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When the stone is coming down, when the pressure is at its
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absolute maximum and you feel like you were being pulverized,
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that is where the boasting happens.
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Yes, but I have to push back here on behalf of the listener
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because the natural human reaction to that is outrage of.
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Course it is. Why does God use a press at all
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if we are legally justified? If the surgeon truly loves us,
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and if he is sovereign over all things, why couldn't he just
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grant a spiritual maturity instantaneously?
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That is the big question. Why not just bypass the crushing
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weight entirely and impute maturity as the exact same way
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He imputed righteousness to us? That is the most natural
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question of the human heart, and the answer brings us back to the
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unsearchable wisdom of God's Providence.
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How so? The Westminster Standards teach
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that while God could certainly operate without means, He
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ordinarily chooses to use secondary causes and ordinary
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means to accomplish His will. So he ordains these intense
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squeezing pressures deliberately.
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Yes, to weaken our fleshly corruptions.
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Yeah, You see, even after justification, we still battle
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indwelling sin. We still harbor idols of
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self-reliance, intellectual pride, and a deep seated love
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for the comforts of this dying world.
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Right. The natural man reacts to the
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olive press with bitterness, rage and a demand for an easier
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life. But the justified man reacts
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differently. Because they are equipped by the
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indwelling spirit of grace, God uses the press to expose how
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fragile our earthly saviors are. Oh, that is good.
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When your health fails, you realize health makes a terrible
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God. And when your finances collapse,
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you realize money cannot secure your soul.
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The press destroys our idols and forces us to cling exclusively
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to Christ. It exposes what we are actually
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leaning on. So the pressure is not random,
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it is highly targeted, which means the crushing weight does
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not destroy the believer, instead it triggers a divine
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cause and effect chain reaction in the soul.
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A chain reaction of grace. Let's look at the logical flow
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of verse 3 into verse 4. Paul writes.
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Knowing the tribulation produces perseverance and perseverance
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character and character hope. There is a clear progression
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there. Let's look at the very first
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link in this golden chain. Pressure produces perseverance.
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The Greek word Paul uses here is hoopamoni.
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A magnificent word. When I hear perseverance, my
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mind immediately goes to white knuckling my steering wheel
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while sitting in terrible traffic, just surviving until it
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is over. Is that what Paul means?
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Not at all. Hoopamoni is far more active
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than just white knuckling your way through a bad afternoon.
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OK, it is often translated as patience or endurance, but we
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must be careful not to define it using our modern English
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understanding. It is not a passive helpless,
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it's resignation. Is not sitting in the corner
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crossing your arms and just waiting for the storm to pass
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over you. Exactly.
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Hoopa money means a steadfast abiding under a heavy load.
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It is the spiritual stamina to remain under the trial without
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seeking sinful, unbiblical escapes.
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When the intense pressure hits, the flesh wants to numb the
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pain. Right.
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People turn to substance abuse or they distract their minds
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with endless hours of entertainment.
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Or they've run away from a difficult marriage.
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Or they abandoned the local church because the relationships
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are too hard. Yes, they try to slip out from
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under the stone, but Hoopa Moni is the grace fueled
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determination to stay under the crushing weight because you know
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the Lord of the press is at work.
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So staying under the load is actually an active form of
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obedience. It is.
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It is a deliberate choice to remain in the position God has
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placed you rather than looking for an emergency exit.
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That is spot on. If we view this through the lens
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of Reformed theology, we can tie this directly to what we call
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the third use of the law. Explain that for.
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Us The law of God no longer condemns the justified believer.
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That is the first use. The law has no authority to
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sentence you to hell. Because Christ took that
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penalty. Right.
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But the law still guides the believer.
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It shows us how to live a life that pleases our Father.
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So when we are sitting in the furnace.
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The third use of the law directs us to respond to affliction with
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grateful, patient obedience. We.
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Continue to love our neighbor. We continue to gather with the
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Saints on the Lord's Day. We continue to pray even when it
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physically and emotionally hurts.
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This entirely refutes antinomianism.
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The false teaching that because we are saved by grace, our moral
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conduct and our reaction to suffering do not matter.
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Yes, grace does not make us passive.
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Grace fuels our act of perseverance under the load.
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And as we abide under that load, the chain reaction moves to the
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next link. Perseverance forges proven
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character. The word Paul uses for character
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there is Ducky MO. I really love the metallurgical
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analogy used in the ancient world for this concept.
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Think about a silversmith refining raw ore.
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It is a great picture. When gold or silver goes into a
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blazing fire, the fire does not create the precious metal.
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The metal is already there in the rock.
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Right, the fire just does its. But the fire does is melt the
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metal so that all the impurities, all the worthless
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Ross, rise to the surface where the silversmith can skim it
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away. The intense heat burns away
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everything that is not genuine, leaving only the pure substance
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behind. And that is the precise
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background of Dokima. Yes, in the ancient Greco Roman
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world, this word described a metal or a coin that had been
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rigorously tested in the fire and found to be genuine.
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It was authentic. It was not a cheap counterfeit.
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When a coin was stamped documos, it meant it had survived.
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The furnace proved its and was ready for circulation.
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So when God puts you in the furnace and you persevere by His
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grace, the result is that your faith is proven genuine.
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The dross of your hypocrisy, your shallow motives, and your
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fair weather religion is burned away.
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What is left is a sturdy, battle tested, authentic character.
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You are not just a theoretical Christian anymore, you are a
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tested Christian. If we connect this to the bigger
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picture, this specific link in the chain absolutely refutes
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modern mysticism. How does it do that?
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Well, there are entire movements today built on the idea that you
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can reach elevated states of spiritual maturity through
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secret knowledge or ecstatic emotional experiences.
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Or finding some spiritual bypass around the pain of ordinary
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life. Yes, but God does not deal in
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spiritual bypasses. He uses the ordinary, painful
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daily means of the furnace to stamp the image of Jesus Christ
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onto your character. You do not become like Christ
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simply by listening to a theology lecture.
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Or reading a massive commentary, as helpful as those things are.
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Right. You become like Christ when your
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theology is violently tested in the Crucible of real world
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affliction and you find that the promises of God hold firm.
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That is when real maturity happens.
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That brings us to the climax of this entire sequence in verses
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four and five, that proven, tested character, that document
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it becomes the empirical evidence that your faith is
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real. You can look at your own life
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and see the proof. You see that you did not abandon
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Christ when things got dark, and that evidence inevitably
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generates an indestructible hope for the future.
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The word Paul uses for hope is elpis.
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I think we really need to contrast this heavily with how
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the modern world uses the word hope there.
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Are completely different concepts.
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When a secular person says hope, they usually mean a fragile
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wish. They mean crossing your fingers
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like I. Hope it doesn't rain tomorrow so
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we can go to the park. Or I hope my team wins the
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championship. It is a psychological coping
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mechanism based on a highly uncertain future.
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The biblical concept of Elpis is the exact opposite of a fragile
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wish. Biblical hope is the ironclad
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objective certainty of future glory.
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It is a confident expectation directed toward the completion
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of all that God has promised. Yes, when you have been crushed
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by the olive press and God's grace has sustained you to abide
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under the load. And you see the genuine
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character forming in your soul. You receive experiential proof
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that God is faithfully holding you, and if He is holding you in
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the furnace today, you have absolute, objective certainty
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that He will hold you all the way into eternity.
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So what does this all mean when Paul says in verse 5 that this
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hope does not put us to shame? That is a weighty phrase.
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Because people get put to shame all the time.
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People put their hope in a political candidate and that
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candidate loses and they feel embarrassed.
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Or they put their hope in a startup company, it goes
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bankrupt and they feel foolish. What makes this hope immune to
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shame? It carries a massive
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eschatological weight. To be put to shame in the
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biblical sense is not about blushing or feeling socially
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awkward at a party. It means arriving at the final
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judgement of the universe and discovering that you trusted a
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lie. Which is a terrifying thought.
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It is the ultimate humiliation of building your entire
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existence on a foundation that collapses when the storm of
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divine justice hits. Worldly hopes will always,
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without exception, leave you humiliated in the end.
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If your hope is in your wealth, the stock market will eventually
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crash or you will die and leave every penny behind for someone
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else to spend. If your hope is in your health,
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the grave will finally claim your body.
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If your hope is in politics, the empires of men will eventually
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turn to dust. Because those objects of hope
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are finite, they will put you to shame at the final judgement.
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But the Christian hope is anchored in the finished work of
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Jesus Christ. It is anchored in the eternal,
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immutable God. Therefore, when you stand before
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the judgment seat, you will not be disgraced.
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You will not find out that the Gospel was just a clever myth
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invented by a few guys in the 1st century.
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You will be vindicated. Your hope will be fully
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realized. Yes, and we can be utterly
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confident that this hope will not fail, because God does not
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just leave us with an objective historical fact.
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He provides an internal subjective witness to match our
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objective justification. This is the transition in the
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second-half of verse 5. Paul says hope does not put us
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to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts
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through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
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The imagery there is breathtaking.
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The love of God is poured out into the human.
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Heart, it is a flood. The Greek syntax here is so
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telling and I want to unpack it without getting dogged down in
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academic terminology. The verb Paul uses is
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ekachehtai. Written in the perfect tense,
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yes. That means it describes a
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completed action in the past that has permanent continuing
21:52
results in the present. It is not a temporary filling.
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Think about a massive dam breaking.
21:57
The water crashes into the valley below.
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That is the past action, but the valley remains entirely flooded
22:03
today. That is the present result.
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Meaning the pouring out of God's love already happened, and the
22:08
reservoir of your heart remains entirely full.
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It is not a tiny trickle of love that you have to constantly ask
22:14
God to replenish. No, it is a massive,
22:16
overwhelming flood that absolutely saturates the
22:20
affections of the believer. This raises an important
22:23
question though. How do we actually experience
22:25
this flood of love on a practical level?
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Because the agent of this action is the Holy Spirit.
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Right. But we must define the Spirit's
22:33
ministry biblically, guarding against the wild excesses of our
22:37
current day. Operating from a strict
22:39
cessationist view, we must reject the chaotic ecstatic sign
22:43
gifts claimed by modern charismatic movements.
22:46
The pouring out of God's love is not about speaking in
22:49
unintelligible noises. Or falling backward onto a stage
22:52
during a concert. Or receiving new extra biblical
22:54
revelations in your mind. The Apostolic Sign gifts ceased
22:57
with the foundation of the early Church.
22:59
The Spirit's work in Romans 5 is the quiet, striking, internal
23:03
application of the objective truths of the Word of God to
23:06
your human heart. I want to make sure I'm tracking
23:08
with you. Are you saying the Spirit takes
23:10
the historical reality of the cross, something that happened
23:13
2000 years ago, and makes it intensely personal in the moment
23:17
of suffering? Precisely.
23:18
The Holy Spirit takes the completed, objective redemption
23:21
purchased by Christ and presses its reality upon your soul.
23:25
He bears an internal witness with your spirit that you are
23:28
adopted. Picture a believer sitting in a
23:31
hospital waiting room waiting for test results.
23:34
Their mind is racing with panic. The very real scenario.
23:37
In that moment, the Holy Spirit illuminates the scriptures they
23:41
have read and heard. He brings to mind the covenant
23:45
promises. Granting a supernatural
23:47
persuasion that the God who sent his son to die for them is not
23:50
going to abandon them to the flames of this trial.
23:52
It is the subjective assurance that matches the objective
23:56
justification. The panic subsides and a
23:58
resolute peace takes over. That is the flood of love.
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And when you step back and look at the whole passage, the
24:04
Trinitarian beauty here is undeniable.
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It is on full display. You have peace with God the
24:09
Father, secured by the blood and righteousness of God the Son,
24:13
and the assurance of that love is applied internally by God the
24:16
Holy Spirit. The entire Godhead is active and
24:20
engaged in the salvation and the sanctification of the believer.
24:24
You are held by the Trinity. That Trinitarian reality
24:27
guarantees that the Golden Chain cannot be broken.
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Every single link, from the initial crushing pressure to the
24:33
perseverance to the proven character.
24:36
To the unshakable hope, and finally to the flood of divine
24:39
love. It only makes sense because the
24:41
believer is united to the Savior.
24:43
The Christian life is a cruciform life.
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That means it takes the shape of the cross.
24:48
We really need to talk about union with Christ here, because
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Jesus himself endured the ultimate literal, crushing
24:54
pressure. He endured the ultimate lipsis
24:56
on the cross. The greatest pressure ever
24:58
experienced. When he was in the Garden of
25:00
Gethsemane, the pressure was so intense he sweat drops of blood.
25:04
When he hung on the wood, he was crushed by the full, unmitigated
25:08
wrath of God against the sins of his people.
25:10
He was placed in the Ultimate Olive Press.
25:13
And we must maintain a strict theological boundary here to
25:16
avoid serious error. Christ's suffering was uniquely
25:20
atoning. He was absorbing divine wrath to
25:23
satisfy divine justice. Your suffering as a believer is
25:27
never atoning. You are not paying off your sin
25:30
debt when you get sick or when you face persecution.
25:33
Christ paid it all. But through your vital
25:36
covenantal union with Christ, your suffering conforms you to
25:40
his image. Because you are united to him,
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you must walk the path he walked.
25:45
The path of the Christian is cruciform.
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It is humiliation before exaltation.
25:50
It is the cross before the crown.
25:52
If the captain of our salvation was made perfect through
25:54
suffering, as the writer of Hebrews tells us, how could we
25:57
possibly expect to inherit the Kingdom without passing through
26:00
the same refining fire? That is such a crucial
26:03
distinction. Our suffering is not paying off
26:06
a debt. It is shaping us into the
26:08
likeness of the sun. It is.
26:10
But let's bring this down to the ground level for a moment.
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When a listener is in the absolute thick of the trial,
26:14
when the pressure feels unbearable, their mind is
26:16
spinning and their Bible reading feels dry.
26:19
Which happens to all of us. How do they tangibly hold on to
26:22
this invisible reality of God's love?
26:24
You look to the visible word in the Reformed tradition.
26:27
We recognize that God has given us the ordinary means of grace
26:30
to sustain us. The preaching of the word is
26:33
primary. Yes, but God also gave us the
26:35
sacraments, specifically the Lord's Supper.
26:38
When the pressure is blinding you and you are struggling to
26:41
feel the flood of God's love, you gather with the Saints on
26:44
the Lord's Day. You watch the minister take the
26:47
bread and physically break it. You see the visible
26:50
representation of the body of Christ that was crushed for you.
26:53
You watch the wine poured out, representing the blood of the
26:56
new covenant shed for the remission of your sins.
26:58
In the Lord's Supper, God condescends to our weakness.
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He gives us something we can see, touch and taste to
27:05
physically seal the covenant promises to our hearts.
27:08
When you receive those elements by faith, you are receiving the
27:11
tangible seal of the very love that the Holy Spirit has flooded
27:15
into your heart. It anchors your wandering,
27:17
panicked mind back to the objective historical cross.
27:21
That changes everything. It takes us from the realm of
27:24
abstract theology right into the practical, breathing life of the
27:27
local church. As we draw this deep dive to a
27:30
close, we need to apply this to the listener in three specific
27:33
ways. Head, heart and hands.
27:37
Let's start with the head. This requires intellectual
27:39
repentance. We have to stop viewing our pain
27:42
through a secular lens. If you are judging God's love
27:46
for you based on your current physical comfort, the size of
27:49
your bank account, or the ease of your circumstances, you are
27:52
thinking like an atheist. You must repent of that idolatry
27:56
and view your pain strictly through the lens of a justified
27:59
standing. And to the heart of the weary
28:01
St. Listening right now.
28:02
If you are in Christ, God has not forgotten you.
28:05
The fire you are walking through is not designed to destroy you,
28:07
it is meticulously designed by a loving father to forge your
28:11
character. The pain is agonizing, yes, but
28:14
it is not penal. The wrath has been exhausted.
28:16
The surgeon is at work and the hope being forged inside you
28:20
will never, ever put you to shame at the final judgement.
28:23
Finally, for your hands, this demands practical obedience.
28:26
Stay under the load. Do not run to unbiblical
28:29
escapes. Do not drown your sorrows and
28:31
alcohol. Do not abandon your family when
28:33
things get hard. And do not listen to the false
28:36
promises of prosperity preachers who tell you that God's main
28:40
goal is your immediate earthly comfort.
28:43
Practice Hoopa Moni. And just as importantly, look
28:46
around your local church. When you see a brother or sister
28:49
being crushed in the olive breasts, go to them.
28:51
Bear their burdens be the hands and feet of Christ, pointing out
28:55
the objective truth of the Gospel to them when they are too
28:58
weak to remember it themselves. I must also issue a clear
29:01
warning based on the first use of the law if there is anyone
29:05
listening to this who is outside of Christ.
29:07
Who has never repented of their sins and trusted in the imputed
29:10
righteousness of the Savior? This golden chain of hope does
29:13
not belong to you. Outside of Christ there is no
29:15
fatherly discipline. There is only a fearful
29:18
expectation of judgement. The.
29:19
Crushing pressures of this life that you are experiencing right
29:22
now are not sanctifying you. They are a prelude to the just
29:26
wrath of a holy God. Do not trust in your own
29:28
strength to get through the fire.
29:30
Repent today. Flee to the Savior who is
29:32
crushed in the place of sinners, so that you might have true
29:36
peace with God. Amen.
29:38
We started this deep dive talking about a shattered bone
29:40
on an X-ray and how the world looks at a shattered life and
29:43
sees only meaningless tragedy. But Romans 5 completely flips
29:47
the diagnosis. If you are justified by faith,
29:51
the worst things that happened to you are actively being
29:53
hijacked by a sovereign God to produce an unshakable eternal
29:57
glory in your soul. Which leaves you with this final
30:00
thought to consider. If God is taking the most
30:02
agonizing, crushing pain in your life and weaponizing it to forge
30:06
your eternal character, then what possible weapon does the
30:09
enemy have left to use against you?