a possible misunderstanding
A good way to review what we saw two weeks ago in Romans 5:3–5 is to clear up a possible misunderstanding. Paul wants to help us see God’s merciful purpose in our trials, so that when they come we don’t lose our balance and think that God has turned against us. On the contrary, God is so merciful in what he does with tribulations that we should rejoice in them, says verse 3. “We rejoice in our tribulations.” Because we know something! So what is it that we know that helps us rejoice in trouble instead of murmuring and complaining or even accusing God?
The answer is given in three effects that problems have on God’s people. Effect #1 (verse 3b): “tribulation produces perseverance.” Threats to our faith give occasion for our faith to press forward in difficult times. Effect #2 (verse 4a): “perseverance produces proven character.” When your faith moves forward in difficult times, it proves to be genuine and real. Tribulations test faith as fire tempers steel. It makes it stronger and shows that it is not lead that seems hard but that it melts in the furnace of affliction. Effect #3 (verse 4b): “Proven character produces hope.” If your faith perseveres and proves that it is hardened steel and not molten lead, then you have more hope. Why? Because you see and feel that you are real. Your faith is not false.
But now here is the possible misunderstanding. It might sound from the end of verse 4 that hope is first the product of being tested by tribulation. He says, “Character tested hope.” So hope is what comes only from the other side of the fire. But this would be a deadly misunderstanding.
The fact is that no one would be able to persevere in faith if we did not first have the hope that God is for us and will bring us forward. In fact, that is at the very heart of the faith that is being tested. What gets us through tribulation is hope. First we don’t get hope by producing perseverance and proven character. First we have hope, and only then can we endure the test to the glory of God.
Why do I say this? Well, look at verses 1–3 to see how Paul has prepared us for the tests of the tribulation. Three things. First (verse 1), since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. We do not find peace with God first by passing the test of perseverance. We pass the test of perseverance because we have peace with God and know that we are justified, accepted, forgiven, loved, and secured in Christ. Second (verse 2), we stand firm in grace before we meet tribulation: “also through faith we have been brought into this grace in which we stand.” We do not enter tribulations staggering in our own power, but standing in the power of grace. This is the work of Christ before we face the test so that we stand firm in the test. And grace will certainly keep us firm if we are truly children of God (Romans 14:4). Third (verse 2b), “and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Here is the jubilation of the hope of glory before verse three introduces the tribulations.
Tribulation brings hope and is endured by hope
So this clears up our point from two weeks ago. Tribulations not only bring hope, as verse 4b says (“proven character brings hope”); tribulations are endured with the hope we already have in them, because of what Christ has done for us by justifying us and putting us in the power of grace and giving us the hope of glory.
So how do we put all this together? Without looking at any other text, I would be inclined to say: The Christian life begins with hope through Christ’s work for us and in us and then continues with more and more hope as we experience more and more of God’s preserving and refining grace. God. through the tribulation. Enduring tribulation does not create the first hope, but refines the first hope and makes that hope abound more and more.
But let’s look at another text that teaches this. Look at Romans 15:13. Notice the spiral nature of hope. “And may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” So how does hope work in the Christian life? We begin with the God of hope. He fills us with joy and peace. How? “In believing.” In believing what? In believing all that Christ has done and all that he promises to do for us. In other words, our joy and peace increase with what we believe the God of hope is for us in Christ. Joy and peace are sustained by hope. But then the verse says that God fills us with joy and peace “so that you may abound in hope.” So here we have more hope coming from the fruit of hope. Hope brings our joy and peace. And our joy and peace bring more and more hope.
That’s the clarification from two weeks ago. Tribulation produces perseverance, perseverance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope, not the first hope, but more and more hope and a stronger and stronger hope. We start with hope. And we go from hope to hope.
God’s love is poured into our hearts
Now what I promised to dwell on today is the promise in verse 5 that this hope will not disappoint us: “Hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us. ” I said last time that there is another threat to our security. One was that our faith can be false, and the fire of tribulation is a gift to test and show ourselves that we are real. The other is that the object of our faith may be false. What if we survive the tribulation with proven faith and growing hope, and it turns out that hope was built on sand? We thought God loved us, but it turns out he didn’t.
That’s what Paul addresses in verse 5. He says that God has provided a remedy for this kind of doubt and concern. He calls it the outpouring of God’s love into our hearts. He took the phrase “love of God” in verse 5 (“the love of God has been poured out in our hearts”) to refer primarily to God’s love for us, not our love for God. I’m basing it on the way that verses 6–8 relate to this verse that I’ll show you in a moment, but you can see there that verse 8 says, “God demonstrates his own love for us.” I think that’s the key to the phrase “love of God” in verse 5.
Two weeks ago I emphasized that Paul’s remedy for doubt about God’s love for us is not primarily an argument about it, but an experience of it. How can we know that God loves us? How can we know that his love is real and that we are not waiting for a mirage? Answer: God gives a self-authenticating experience of God’s love. When it happens, you recognize it as God’s love. So we are talking here about an experience of God’s love. This is the subjective basis for our assurance that God’s love for us is real.
So I want to say at least three things about this experience of this text, but today I will only have time to say two of them. So we’ll stay with him next week.
1. This experience of God’s love is poured out through the Holy Spirit.
“The love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” Whatever else we say about this experience, let this be said: it is decisively not the work of man, but the work of God. it is supernatural. It is not ultimately in our power. It is not the product of mere circumstances. It is not due to a good family of origin. It is due to the Holy Spirit. You don’t make it happen. The Holy Spirit makes it happen. it’s your job
There is something deeply wrong when we have become so naturalistic and psychologized that we think that a person from a traumatic and abusive background cannot know God’s love experientially. We give the impression that knowing God’s love is really a matter of good manners. But when we take this so far as to obscure the main and glorious truth that knowing God’s love experientially is the sovereign, supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, we have taken it too far. To balance things out, consider this: Isn’t it also likely that many healthy, well-adjusted, productive adults from confident families mistake their own natural sense of well-being for God’s love and are therefore worse off spiritually than others? they? the broken person who, beyond all expectation, has tasted God’s love by the power of the Holy Spirit?
That is the first thing to notice about this experience: it is supernaturally given to us by the Holy Spirit, not by man and not by ourselves or whatever trance or regimen we devise.
2. The second thing to say about this experience is that it has a real and objective content.
Another way of saying it is that this Spirit-driven experience is mediated by historical fact. There is a knowledge component to this experience and there are real facts behind the knowledge.
The ultimate reason for this is that Christ would not be glorified by an experience that is not based on the knowledge of Christ. And we know that the Holy Spirit is sent into the world to glorify Christ (John 16:14). If the Holy Spirit works like an electrical impulse and simply causes us to have a happy buzz in the middle of the night with no thoughts of Christ filling our heads, then Christ would be no more honored than he by a vivid heroin high. The ultimate reason that the experience of God’s love is mediated (or delivered) through knowledge of Christ’s historical work on the cross is that the experience is meant to bring us joy and glory to Christ. But Christ would get no glory unless our experience of God’s love is a response to…