Posted on 09/13/2010 12:01:42 PM PDT by pastorbillrandles
Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ:By whom also we have access by faith into this grace wherein we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God.And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: 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 which is given unto us.(Romans 5:1-5)
True Christians rejoice, and they have good reason to do so. The Holy God has taken the initiative to save us from His own wrath! Because of the cross,we have been elevated from being justly the condemned rebels that we were, guiltily awaiting the Righteous judgment of God, to adoption as His own dear sons and daughters.
Our justification by Jesus answers to everything, past, present and future.All of the sins of the past were dealt with by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Today, we who believe are at peace with God, and consequently we know the “Peace of God that“, as a present reality.
And as for the future, God’s gift of the justification of our life before Him in Christ, opens up to us the destiny of being restored to the Glory of God that we all have fallen short of. We shall be perfectly restored, utterly saved, we will become what we were originally intended to be when God created us.When we see Him we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is!
This is our hope, that is our confident expectation. We don’t ‘wish for this’, nor is this just a high ideal. The Christian has a hope, ‘the hope of Glory’, that is grounded in the very faithfulness and veracity of God. He that raised up Jesus from the dead will also quicken our mortal bodies.
That is why we can even rejoice in the midst of the tribulations we encounter here in the meantime. No longer do trials and tragedies and setbacks make us instinctively feel we are being punished by God, as they once did. The guilt has been answered for, therefore the fear is gone.
Now that we are Gods dear children through Jesus, we see trials differently than we did before. From the position of justification, we can actually glory in tribulation, because of a new knowledge.
We glory in tribulation knowing…What is the context for this new knowledge? It is that we are not condemned by God as sinners ,living in the futility of the curse. We now know that God our Father uses trials and tribulations to purify our souls, to qualify our faith, and verify our salvation.
As James tells us,
My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations;Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience.But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.(James 1:2-4)
Tribulation worketh patience. For the Christian, the pressures of life, serve us, they work endurance into our souls.We can rejoice because we know that rather than being a foretaste of the deserved judgment, our trials are being used of God, to conform us to His Image.
Once, a woman was pregnant and didn’t realise it, all the way to the time of labor. When the pains came upon her she didn’t know what was happening and almost died of the pain. When they were able to tell her at the Emergency Room, that she was in fact pregnant and delivering a child, she was able to go through it, because she saw the purpose of each pang.
Pain is almost unbearable without some discernible purpose to it, but we can go through anything if we know God is using it for His glory and our good.
patience works experience…
Rejoicing in God, even through trial and temptation, actually prove our faith to be genuine. We know by experience, that we are Christians every time we successfully endure, with joy the pressures God allows us to go through.
Experience works hope…The word for experience here means ‘full proof’. It means that which is tried to see what a thing is made of. As we go though our trials ,in faith and rejoicing, we realize that we really have become christians and this intensifies our hope all the more.
And Hope maketh not ashamed because the Love of God is poured out on us by the Holy Ghost…
To the christian, every serious trial, a setback, death of a loved one, persecution, only serves to further divorce us from this world, as we realise that our real home and hope, is in the Age to come.
We know in a deeper way, that this life with all of its trials is as bad as it will ever get for us, and is being used by God to prepare us for the better things we have been saved for.
This hope of Glory, will not disappoint us, because it’s ground is the Love of God. God loved us freely when He sent Jesus to die for us sinners. He loved us when He justified us, and His love is why we heard and believed the gospel.
Upon believing, it was His love which moved Him to give us the Holy Spirit to live in us, and to pour out the Love of God, diffusing it into our very consciousness, thus even through trial and tribulation we rejoice!
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