Suffering and Glory in Advent

Scripture — Romans 8:14-18 (NRSV)

For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.

Devotion

Yesterday, the first Monday in the Christian season of Advent, I began a series of reflections based on chapter 8 of Romans in the New Testament. I explained that this chapter, though not often associated with Advent, is actually full of Advent themes. I wrote about Romans 8, “It fuels our hope. It accentuates our waiting. It points to our future inheritance as children of God.”

Central to this inheritance is glory. There will be a time in the future when God’s glory “will be revealed to us” more fully than anything we have experienced in this age (Romans 8:18). To know God’s glory in this way will indeed be a lavish inheritance. But that’s not the whole story. Yes, we will see God’s glory revealed in Jesus Christ, but also we will be “glorified with him” (8:17). Though the idea of our being glorified with Christ might be unfamiliar to us, it certainly sounds like good news. We will share in the very glory of God! Now that’s something worth hoping for in Advent, don’t you think?

But that’s still not the whole story. Yes, there’s ample good news in Romans 8:14-17. We are children of God who are led by God’s own Spirit (8:14-5). As God’s children we are heirs, even “joint heirs with Christ” (8:17) with whom we will be glorified (8:17). But amid the good news about our future we come upon something unexpected and, at first glance, quite unwelcome. Not only will we be glorified with Christ, but also we will suffer with him. In fact, suffering with Christ is a precursor to being glorified with Christ (8:17).

Verse 18 explains a bit more about our suffering. First, this verse refers to “the sufferings of our present time” (8:18). The Greek reads, “the sufferings of our now time.” Notice that we will endure multiple experiences of suffering, but these are not permanent. Yes, we will suffer in this age, but another age will come. In that time, we will be glorified with Christ and suffering will cease. What we will experience in the future is so much more wonderful than the pain of the present that it’s not even worth comparing the two. As it says in The Message, “I don’t think there’s any comparison between the present hard times and the coming good times” (8:18).

Nevertheless, Romans 8 acknowledges the reality of suffering in our lives. Even though we are God’s beloved children, and even though God’s own Spirit dwells in us, our lives in this age still bear the burden of sin. We live as broken people in a broken world and brokenness leads to suffering.

Yet, that’s not the whole story. Back in chapter 5 of Romans Paul wrote of boasting “in our hope of sharing the glory of God” (5:2). Then, as in Romans 8, he brought up the topic of suffering: “And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.” For Paul, suffering, hope, and glory go hand in hand. They are necessarily interrelated realities of the Christian life. Suffering fuels our hope for the future, a future in which we will encounter and share in God’s own glory.

Sometimes Christians focus so much on the hope we have in Christ that we ignore or downplay the reality of suffering, both our own suffering and that of people throughout the world. When I was a parish pastor, I served in a congregation of people who seemed to be doing quite well, at least according to outward appearances. They were flourishing as well-educated, successful upper-middle-class suburbanites. But, in time, many from my church met with me to share their pain: troubled marriages, depression, physical illness, broken families, even attempted suicide. They often talked about how they did not feel free to share their struggles with others in our church. When they risked mentioning their suffering, they were often told things like “It’s not so bad,” or “I’m sure things will work out,” or “Buck up and trust God.” As a congregation, we had much to learn about acknowledging the reality of suffering, both our own suffering and that of others.

Yet we also needed to discover how suffering can lead to hope and to a deeper experience of God’s love (5:3-5). Such hope, far from leading us to deny our pain, actually gives us the freedom to acknowledge it. Additionally, we needed to learn how our suffering could bring us into a deeper relationship with Christ and with each other. Remember that Romans 8:17 says we suffer with Christ, which implies that he suffers with us. Moreover, since we are members together of Christ’s body, we share in suffering together as we “weep with those who weep” (12:15).

In the season of Advent, we rekindle our hope for God’s future, a future that includes our sharing in Christ’s glory. Yet this season also invites us to recognize the reality of our present experience, which includes suffering. Acknowledging the suffering in our lives and in our world augments our hope for the age to come. It also opens our hearts to a deeper relationship with Christ, who suffers with us and calls us to share in the sufferings of others.

Find all Life for Leaders devotions here. Explore what the Bible has to say about work at the unique website of our partners, the Theology of Work Project’s online commentary. Reflection on today’s Life for Leaders theme can be found here: Living According to the Spirit Leads to a New Quality of Life (Romans 8:1–14).

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