Romans 5:3-5: suffering produces hope

c. 386–398 · John Chrysostom, Homilies on the Epistle to the Romans 9

How so? It is because they anoint us unto patient abiding. Wherefore after saying we glory in tribulations, he has added the reason, in these words, “Knowing that tribulation worketh patience.” Notice again the argumentative spirit of Paul, how he gives their argument an opposite turn. For since it was tribulations above all that made them give up the hopes of things to come, and which cast them into despondency, he says that these are the very reasons for confidingness, and for not desponding about the things to come, for “tribulation,” he says, “worketh patience.”

1540 · John Calvin, Commentary on Romans 5.3

Tribulation produces (efficiat) patience, etc. This is not the natural effect of tribulation; for we see that a great portion of mankind are thereby instigated to murmur against God, and even to curse his name. But when that inward meekness, which is infused by the Spirit of God, and the consolation, which is conveyed by the same Spirit, succeed in the place of our stubbornness, then tribulations become the means of generating patience; yea, those tribulations, which in the obstinate can produce nothing but indignation and clamorous discontent.

c. 1550–1551 · John Calvin, Commentary on James 1.3

Probation or trial is said by James to produce patience; for were not God to try us, but leave us free from trouble, there would be no patience, which is no other thing than fortitude of mind in bearing evils. But Paul means, that while by enduring we conquer evils, we experience how much God’s help avails in necessities; for then the truth of God is as it were in reality manifested to us. Hence it comes that we dare to entertain more hope as to futurity; for the truth of God, known by experience, is more fully believed by us. Hence Paul teaches that by such a probation, that is, by such an experience of divine grace, hope is produced, not that hope then only begins, but that it increases and is confirmed.

1559 · John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion 3.8.3

Overturning the overweening opinion we form of our own virtue, and detecting the hypocrisy in which we delight, it removes our pernicious carnal confidence, teaching us, when thus humbled, to recline on God alone, so that we neither are oppressed nor despond. Then victory is followed by hope, inasmuch as the Lord, by performing what he has promised, establishes his truth in regard to the future. Were these the only reasons, it is surely plain how necessary it is for us to bear the cross. It is of no little importance to be rid of your self-love, and made fully conscious of your weakness; so impressed with a sense of your weakness as to learn to distrust yourself—to distrust yourself so as to transfer your confidence to God, reclining on him with such heartfelt confidence as to trust in his aid, and continue invincible to the end, standing by his grace so as to perceive that he is true to his promises, and so assured of the certainty of his promises as to be strong in hope.

1654 · John Owen, The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance Explained and Confirmed 8

“We are not only patient under tribulations, and have strength to bear them, but,” saith the apostle, “we glory and rejoice in them, as things very welcome to us.” How comes this about? Saith he, “Tribulation worketh patience” (that is, it sets it at work, for tribulation in itself will never work or beget patience in us); “and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope maketh not ashamed.” It is from hence that these graces, patience, experience, hope, being set on work, do bear up and support our souls, and raise them to such a height under their pressures that we have great cause of rejoicing in them all.

1655–1662 · William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour Part 6. Direction Ninth. The Several Pieces of the Whole Armour of God. Fifth Piece—The

File up thy experiences of past mercies, and thy hope will grow stronger for the future. Experience worketh hope, Rom. 5:4. He is the best Christian that keeps the history of God’s gracious dealings with him most carefully, so that he may read in it his past experiences, when at any time his thoughts trouble him and his spiritual rest is broken with distracting fears for the future. This is he that will pass the night of affliction and temptation with comfort and hope; while others that have taken no care to pen down—in their memories at least—the remarkable instances of God’s love and favour to them in the course of their lives, will find the want of this sweet companion in their sorrowful hours, and be put to sad plunges; yea, well, if they be not driven to think their case desperate, and past all hope. Sometimes a little writing is found in a man's study that helps to save his estate; for want of which he had gone to prison and there ended his days. And some one experience remembered keeps the soul from despair —a prison which the devil longs to have the Christian in. ‘This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope,’ Lam. 3:21. David was famous for his hope, and not less eminent for his care to observe and preserve, the experiences he had of God's goodness.

c. 1714 · John Evans, Commentary on Romans 5.1-5

How come we to glory in tribulations? Why, because tribulations, by a chain of causes, greatly befriend hope, which he shows in the method of its influence. 1. Tribulation worketh patience, not in and of itself, but the powerful grace of God working in and with the tribulation. It proves, and by proving improves, patience, as parts and gifts increase by exercise. It is not the efficient cause, but yields the occasion, as steel is hardened by the fire.

c. 1714 · John Evans, Commentary on Romans 5.1-5

That which worketh patience is matter of joy; for patience does us more good than tribulations can do us hurt. Tribulation in itself worketh impatience; but, as it is sanctified to the saints, it worketh patience. 2. Patience experience, v. 4. It works an experience of God, and the songs he gives in the night; the patient sufferers have the greatest experience of the divine consolations, which abound as afflictions abound. It works an experience of ourselves. It is by tribulation that we make an experiment of our own sincerity, and therefore such tribulations are called trials. It works, dokimen—an approbation, as he is approved that has passed the test. Thus Job's tribulation wrought patience, and that patience produced an approbation, that still he holds fast his integrity, Job ii. 3. 3. Experience hope. He who, being thus tried, comes forth as gold, will thereby be encouraged to hope. This experiment, or approbation, is not so much the ground, as the evidence, of our hope, and a special friend to it.

1745 · Philip Doddridge, The Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul 25.5

Think with yourself, “it is thus that God is making me conformable to his own Son; it is thus that he is training me up for complete glory. Thus he kills my corruptions; thus he strengthens my graces; thus he is wisely contriving to bring me nearer to himself and to ripen me for the honors of his heavenly kingdom. It is, if need be, that ‘I am in heaviness,’ (1 Pet. 1:6) and he surely knows what that need is better than I can pretend to teach him, and knows what peculiar propriety there is in this affliction to answer my present necessity, and to do me that peculiar good which he is graciously intending me by it. This tribulation shall ‘work patience, and patience experience,’ and ‘experience a more assured hope,’ even a hope which ‘shall not make ashamed,’ while the love of God is shed abroad in my heart, (Rom. 5:3,5) and shines through my affliction, like the sun through a gentle descending cloud, darting in light upon the shade, and mingling fruitfulness with weeping.”

1871 · David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on Romans 5.3-4

3, 4. we glory in tribulation also; knowing that tribulation worketh patience—Patience is the quiet endurance of what we cannot but wish removed, whether it be the withholding of promised good (Ro 8:25), or the continued experience of positive ill (as here). There is indeed a patience of unrenewed nature, which has something noble in it, though in many cases the offspring of pride, if not of something lower. Men have been known to endure every form of privation, torture, and death, without a murmur and without even visible emotion, merely because they deemed it unworthy of them to sink under unavoidable ill. But this proud, stoical hardihood has nothing in common with the grace of patience—which is either the meek endurance of ill because it is of God (Job 1:21, 22; 2:10), or the calm waiting for promised good till His time to dispense it come (Heb 10:36); in the full persuasion that such trials are divinely appointed, are the needed discipline of God's children, are but for a definite period, and are not sent without abundant promises of "songs in the night."

1871 · David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on Romans 5.4

hope—"of the glory of God," as prepared for us. Thus have we hope in two distinct ways, and at two successive stages of the Christian life: first, immediately on believing, along with the sense of peace and abiding access to God (Ro 5:1); next, after the reality of this faith has been "proved," particularly by the patient endurance of trials sent to test it. We first get it by looking away from ourselves to the Lamb of God; next by looking into or upon ourselves as transformed by that "looking unto Jesus." In the one case, the mind acts (as they say) objectively; in the other, subjectively.

1886 · Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeon's Sermons, Volume 32 (1886) 1904

"Tribulation works patience," says the Apostle. Naturally it is not so. Tribulation works impatience and impatience misses the fruit of experience and sours into hopelessness! Ask many who have buried a dear child, or have lost their wealth, or have suffered pain of body and they will tell you that the natural result of affliction is to produce irritation against Providence, rebellion against God, questioning, unbelief, petulance and all sorts of evils! But what a wonderful alteration takes place when the heart is renewed by the Holy Spirit! Then, but not till then, tribulation works patience!

1901 · Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeon's Sermons, Volume 47 (1901) 2750

3-5. But we glory in tribulations, also, knowing that tribulation works patience and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us. Beloved, it is a mark of great Grace to be able to acquiesce in tribulation and to accept it with patient resignation at the Lord's hands. But it is a sign of a still higher state of Grace when we glory in tribulation— when we welcome it and say, "Now, the Lord is about to elevate me to the upper class in His school—to teach me some deeper Truths than I have learned before—to give me a closer acquaintance with some mystery of His Kingdom than I have previously had—to work in my heart some new Grace which has never been there before."

1909 · Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans 5.2-4

Tribulation worketh patience, ‘and patience experience.’ That is a difficult word to put into English. There underlies it the frequent thought which is familiar in Scripture, of trouble of all kinds as testing a man, whether as the refiner’s fire or the winnower’s fan. It tests a man, and if he bears the trouble with patient persistence, then he has passed the test and is approved. Patient perseverance thus works approval, or proof of the man’s Christianity, and, still more, proof of the reality and power of the Christ whom his Christianity grasps. And so from out of that approval or proof which comes, through perseverance, from tribulation, there rises, of course, in that heart that has been tested and has stood, a calm hope that the future will be as the past, and that, having fought through six troubles, by God’s help the seventh will be vanquished also, till at last troubles will end, and heaven be won.

1910 · Charles Haddon Spurgeon, Spurgeon's Sermons, Volume 56 (1910) 3203

And experience, hope. What God has once done, He may do again. And as He has shown us so much favor, we may reasonably hope that He will show us some more, and that He who has given us Grace, will give us glory. 5. And hope makes us not ashamed. Our hope brings us courage—no longer are we trembling and diffident, but we feel like children do towards a loving father—we are happily, restfully at home with our God.

1938 · William R. Newell, Romans Verse-by-Verse 5

Verses 3 and 4: And not only so, but we also exult in the tribulations [which beset us]: knowing that tribulation is working out endurance: and endurance [a sense of] approvedness [by God]; and [the sense of] approvedness works out a state of hope—So now we find that not only does the believer look back to peace made with God at the cross; at a God smiling upon him in favor; and forward to his coming glorification with Christ, but he is able also to exult in the very tribulations that are appointed to him.

c. 1714 · John Evans, Commentary on Romans 5.1-5

Though we are counted as the offscouring of all things, and trodden under foot as the mire in the streets, yet, having hopes of glory, we are not ashamed of these sufferings. It is in a good cause, for a good Master, and in good hope; and therefore we are not ashamed. We will never think ourselves disparaged by sufferings that are likely to end so well. Because the love of God is shed abroad. This hope will not disappoint us, because it is sealed with the Holy Spirit as a Spirit of love. It is the gracious work of the blessed Spirit to shed abroad the love of God in the hearts of all the saints.

1754 · John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on Romans 5.5

Hope shameth us not - That is, gives us the highest glorying. We glory in this our hope, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts - The divine conviction of God's love to us, and that love to God which is both the earnest and the beginning of heaven. By the Holy Ghost - The efficient cause of all these present blessings, and the earnest of those to come.

1871 · David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on Romans 5.5

(The Holy Ghost is here first introduced in this Epistle.) It is as if the apostle had said, "And how can this hope of glory, which as believers we cherish, put us to shame, when we feel God Himself, by His Spirit given to us, drenching our hearts in sweet, all-subduing sensations of His wondrous love to us in Christ Jesus?" This leads the apostle to expatiate on the amazing character of that love.

1894 · Handley C. G. Moule, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (The Expositor's Bible) 13

Justified therefore on terms of faith, we have peace towards our (τὸν) God, we possess in regard of Him the "quietness and assurance" of acceptance, through our Lord Jesus Christ, thus delivered up, and raised up, for us; through whom we have actually (καὶ) found our (τὴν) introduction, our free admission, by our (τῇ) faith, into this grace, this unearned acceptance for Another's sake, in which we stand, instead of falling ruined, sentenced, at the tribunal. And we exult, not with the sinful "boasting" of the legalist, but in hope (literally, "on hope," ἐπ' ἐλπίδι, as reposing on the promised prospect) of the glory of our (τοῦ) God, the light of the heavenly vision and fruition of our Justifier, and the splendour of an eternal service of Him in that fruition. Nor only so, but we exult too in our tribulations, with a better fortitude than the Stoic's artificial serenity, knowing that the tribulation works out, develops, patient persistency, as it occasions proof after proof of the power of God in our weakness, and thus generates the habit of reliance; and then (δὲ) the patient persistency develops proof, brings out in experience, as a proved fact, that through Christ we are not what we were; and then the proof develops hope, solid and definite expectation of continuing grace and final glory, and, in particular, of the Lord's Return; and the hope does not shame, does not disappoint; it is a hope sure and steadfast, for it is the hope of those who now know that they are objects of eternal Love; because the love of our (τοῦ) God has been poured out in our hearts; His love to us has been as it were diffused through our consciousness, poured out in a glad experience as rain from the cloud, as floods from the rising spring, through the Holy Spirit that was given to us.

1909 · Alexander Maclaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture: Romans 5.5

We go to the rainbow’s end, and we find, not a pot of gold, but a huddle of cold, wet mist. There is one man that is entitled to say: ‘To-morrow shall be as this day, and much more abundant.’ Who is he? Only the man whose hope is in the Lord his God. If we open our hearts by faith, then these three lines of sequence of which we have been speaking will converge, and we shall have the hope that is the shining apex of ‘being justified by faith,’ and the hope that is the calm result of trouble and agitation, and the hope that, travelling further and higher than anything in our inward experience or our outward discipline, grasps the key-word of the universe, ‘God is love,’ and triumphantly makes sure that ‘neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.’

c. 357–378 · Basil of Caesarea, Letters 140.1

Expect tribulation after tribulation, hope upon hope; yet a little while; yet a little while. Thus the Holy Ghost knows how to comfort His nurslings by a promise of the future. After tribulations comes hope, and what we are hoping for is not far off, for let a man name the whole of human life, it is but a tiny interval compared with the endless age which is laid up in our hopes.

1605–1610 · Johann Arndt, True Christianity 2.50

For, whereas, in other afflictions, our patience, humility, devotion, and charity, are principally exercised; in these spiritual trials of the conscience, our hope is eminently proved and tried, whether it be sincere or not. In this probation, though a man be perfectly despoiled of all his grace, yet shall he at last triumph in that “hope which maketh not ashamed.” And though the soul that is thus tried, be sometimes ready to fall into impatience, murmuring, blasphemy, or the like; yet there remains, as it were, some gentle breath of hope, arising from the ground of the heart, by the power of the divine Spirit, which contradicts and opposes those unholy suggestions. When this combat is over, all his transgressions are forgiven, and his sins are covered and he himself is like “a brand plucked out of the fire” (Zech. 3:2); “or like a piece of an ear taken out of the mouth of the lion.” Amos 3:12. Now this impatience being involuntary, and being opposed with sighs and groans unutterable, is by no means to be called despair; considering withal, that this is the sharpest conflict, the severest trial of the Christian's hope; and these are the “unutterable groanings” which St. Paul mentions.

1605–1610 · Johann Arndt, True Christianity 2.49

As the grain is exposed to all the vicissitudes of wind and weather, before it comes to maturity, and, whenever it becomes ripe, is the sweeter and better upon that account: so is it with the cross. He that bears it with patience, and waits for the end of it, shall reap “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” Heb. 12:11. For St. Paul affirms, “that hope maketh not ashamed” (Rom. 5:5); for when it is founded upon divine grace, as upon a firm rock, it continues immovable in adversity.

1655–1662 · William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour Part 6. Direction Ninth. The Several Pieces of the Whole Armour of God. Fifth Piece—The

This hope fills the afflicted soul with such inward joy and consolation, that it can laugh while tears are in the eye—sigh and sing all in a breath. It is called ‘the rejoicing of hope,’ Heb. 3:6. And hope never affords more joy than in affliction. It is on a watery cloud that the sun paints those curious colours in the rainbow. ‘Rejoice in hope of the glory of God, and not only so, but we glory in tribulations,’ Rom. 5:2, 3. Glorying is rejoicing in a ravishment —when it is so great that it cannot contain itself within the Christian’s own breast, but comes forth in some outward expression, and lets others know what a feast it sits at within. The springs of comfort lie high indeed when his joy pours out at the mouth. And all this joy with which the suffering saint is entertained, is sent in by hope at the cost of Christ, who hath provided such unspeakable glory for them in heaven as will not suffer them to pity or bemoan themselves for those tribulations that befall them on the way to it. Dum mala pungunt, bona promissa unguunt—while calamities smite with oppression, the gracious promises anoint with their blessings. Hope breaks the alabaster box of the promise over the Christian’s head, and so diffuseth the consolations thereof abroad the soul, which, like a precious ointment, have a virtue, as to exhilarate and refresh the spirit in its faintings, so to heal the wounds and remove the smart which the Christian’s poor heart may feel from its affliction, according to the apostle in the aforementioned place: ‘Hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts,’ Rom. 5:5.

1754 · John Wesley, Explanatory Notes on Romans 5.3

We glory in tribulations also - Which we are so far from esteeming a mark of God's displeasure, that we receive them as tokens of his fatherly love, whereby we are prepared for a more exalted happiness. The Jews objected to the persecuted state of the Christians as inconsistent with the people of the Messiah. It is therefore with great propriety that the apostle so often mentions the blessings arising from this very thing.

1820 · John Tillotson, Works, Volume 4: Sermons LV-LXXXIV 77

“Blessed is the man that endureth temptation (meaning the temptation of persecution and suffering); for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.” And this consideration was that, which kept up their spirits from sinking under the weight of their greatest sufferings. So St. Paul tells us, (2 Cor. iv. 14. 16.) “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus, shall raise up us also by Jesus. For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.” The sufferings of their bodies did but help to raise and fortify their spirits: nay, so far were they from fainting under those afflictions, that they rejoiced and gloried in them. So the same apostle tells us, (Rom. v. 2, 3.) that in the midst of their sufferings they rejoiced in hope of the glory of God; and that they gloried in tribulations, as being the way to be made partakers of that glory: and (Heb. x. 34.) that they took joyfully the spoiling of their goods; “knowing in themselves, that they had in heaven a better and an enduring substance.”