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“If you’re able, please stand.” Reading Rom. 5:1–11. “Thanks be to God.”
Jyl Bonaguro is a sculptor based in Chicago. Her favorite material to work with marble from from Carrarra, Italy. The same source of marble that was used for Michelangelo’s “David.”
But the only way to get from a block of marble to a sculpture like “David” is the slow, arduous task of taking your tools—hammer, chisel, sandpaper, rasp, now drills with specialized bits—and blow-by-blow, rub-by-rub, rasp-by-rasp, begin to shape that unformed marble into something recognizable, beautiful, intentional.
It is a perfect blend of natural beauty (the marble itself) and human intentionality—but also a bit of surprise. It’s common to see the final product come out very different than the artist imagined.
Jyl Bonaguro described the process in an interview, “This is labor. Yes, this is art, but you have to really work for this. It’s not easy on the body....You need the time, the tools, the space, and a certain level of strength if you’re going to do a lot of the work yourself, which is what I do. You’re making noise. You’re creating dust. It’s a completely different experience.”[1]
The reason to reflect a minute on sculpting is that this is what God is doing in our lives. He takes us where he finds us. And then over the days and years and decades, he shapes us just like a scupture. But he doesn’t use a hammer and a steel chisel. He uses suffering.
Joni Eareckson Tada:
Suffering has inspired and forged more sculptures than one can count. And not just the bronze kind that rest on pedestals in village squares. Suffering fashions us into a ‘holy and blameless’ image of Christ (Eph 1:4), much like a figure sculpted out of marble.
Joni Eareckson Tada, When God Weeps[2]
We won’t ever fully understandour suffering, but today’s sermon will help us understand at least part of what suffering is for.
If you’re not a Christian, today’s sermon is an invitation. It’s an invitation to know the Great Sculptor of your life. Knowing him will help you make sense of suffering that can feel so unnecessary and wrong.
Our series is Better than you think from Romans 1–5. The gospel is “better than you think.” Why? Today’s answer is, because it enables us to rejoice EVEN in our suffering.
We’re in the middle of Romans 5. In Romans 1–4 Paul explained in detail how it is that we can be justified by God. Declared righteous by faith. Now he’s telling us what is true “since we have been justified by faith” (v. 1).
Sermon: Rejoice even in suffering. (1) Our unexpected rejoicing, (2) our transformational suffering, and (3) our certain hope.
Prayer – TFC and our churches and the coming 1–2 years
Read Rom. 5:3. Clearly the verse is tied to what comes before—“Not only that...” Remember the argument of 5:1–2.
In verse 2 we “rejoice” for something very good: Future Glory!
“Rejoicing” in something good is a very natural thing. When you get the promotion, win the lottery, come from behind to win the championship, the girl says, “Yes!”, the boy likes you—it’s a very normal thing to lift your hands and cry out, “Yes!”
No one accuses you of living in denial and perhaps even suffering from a neurological break if you rejoice in something obviously good.
But the “rejoicing” we’re talking about today is completely un-natural. That’s why when it occurs we know it’s something super-natural.
Sometimes if you obey what these verses are telling you, people will tell you you’re living in denial. Your therapist might accuse you of being emotionally bound up or confused.
And sometimes that’s true!
But these verses are speaking to something deeper. A kind of a joy on the other side of the pain. A joy in the midst of the pain. The circumstance is still there, or the consequences of it, but you’re able to find joy and “rejoicing” in it.
God doesn’t call us to an illogical or delusional faith. But he does call us to a deep-thinking faith. A faith that sees past superficial realities to things that are deeper and truer.
Thinking rightly about suffering is part of this.
A masochist stands up and says, “I love pain. I love to suffer.”
People that have deep psychological problems don’t feel pain and are kind of indifferent to their pain or the pain of others.
Pain is a good thing. It’s given by God. It tells us that something is wrong and needs attention. Our hand feeling the hot stove tells us to get our hand off the stove.
Of course, our perceptions of pain are sometimes imperfect, but in general, pain is God’s warning system that tells us we need to deal with something urgent.
So, the Bible isn’t calling us to that kind of wrong-headed thinking about pain or suffering. But it is calling us to thinking that isn’t always obvious.
Paul says here that “since we have been justified by faith...we rejoice in our sufferings” (Rom 5:1, 3).
Now, what are these “sufferings”? If we trace the 45 times this word (Grk. thlipsis) is used in the New Testament, we can see a variety of types of “suffering” that it can refer to:
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. (James 1:27)
Any of these types of suffering could fit what Paul is talking about in Romans. The key aspect is that it’s something that lasts a while.
But sometimes that single event is part of a whole series of one-off events during a season of our lives. You get through the first one or two okay, but then at some point, you ask, “What are you doing, God?”
Other types of “suffering” are prolonged. And that’s where this passage can be really helpful.
So, now we can get the basic picture. “Since we have been justified” (Rom 5:1) God is calling us to embrace our sufferings and even rejoice in them! (Rom 5:3).
Read Rom. 5:3–5.
Now the picture is filled out a bit. But the doesn’t end the sentence there. We “rejoice in our sufferings, knowing” something. Because of something we KNOW about sufferings, we rejoice in sufferings.
What is it that we know? Well, in these verses we can know suffering does good things for us. It causes us to grow in truly important and even necessary ways.
We can rejoice in our sufferings because we know the RESULT of our suffering is something good.
Yes, we will pray for the suffering to end. We will pray for the disease to be healed. For the circumstance to change.
But in the middle of the circumstance and the suffering, before it has changed, we “REJOICE” in it, “KNOWING” what it will “produce.” It will produce Christian growth, Christian character, positive change.
But there’s a process involved. Like sculpting out of marble that requires time and energy and even strength, God’s sculpting always involves a PROCESS.
And honestly, WE HATE PROCESS! We want instant! We want the single-dose pill for character, not the process that may involve decades or a lifetime!
Paul pulls back the curtain and reveals some of the process.
Paul identifies three steps in this process:
FIRST, “suffering produces endurance” (Rom 5:3).
Paul tells us that going through these “afflictions” or “sufferings” “produces” something in us. It is painful, yes. But it is pain that is “producing” something. God doesn’t waste our pain. That’s good news! He “produces” something good in us.
“Sufferings produce endurance” (Grk. hupomonē). “Endurance” means to “hold up in the face of challenging or painful circumstances.” It implies something long-lasting. We don’t call a 100m sprint an “endurance sport.” It’s over in 10 seconds! “Endurance sports” are sports like distance running or cycling, swimming long distances in open water.
Some of you have run cross country or done a Spartan race or even a half- or full marathon.
You train for these sports by putting up with increasing amounts of pain. You get used to a 3-mile run, so you increase it to 4. Then 5. Then 6. You build from there.
Every time you jump to a new distance or greater speed, there’s suffering involved. The “suffering” in the training “produces the endurance” you need to run the race.
Paul is saying that suffering in our life does that. It increases our ability to face hardships.
Before you’re trained by the suffering, when you suffer, you complain—early, loudly, and often! You cry out, “This is wrong and needs to stop!”
But eventually the suffering produces endurance in you. You can face more hardships without complaining. You can maintain your inner peace. You can extend grace and love to the people in your life.
But the goal is more than “endurance.” More than simply the ability to weather the storm.
SECOND, “endurance produces character” (Rom 5:4).
“Character” (Grk. dokimē) is a rare word in the New Testament, used only 7 times, and all in Paul. It’s related to words that have to do with “testing” and “proving.” That’s why some translations use the phrase “proven character” (NASB, CSB).
“Character” is that quality where you’ve been tested and your character was shown to be solid. You faced a hardship but you didn’t buckle. You were tested but not broken.
If we go back to the idea of chiseling a sculpture out of marble, “character” is where we stop obsessing about God’s hammer and chisel. And we embrace what he’s doing.
Joni Eareckson Tada speaks of this dynamic as “yielding to the chisel”:
Yielding to the chisel is ‘learning obedience from what we suffer’ (cf. Heb 5:8). Our circumstances don’t change; we change. The “who” of who we are is transformed, like a form unfolding, into his likeness with ever-increasing glory....I cannot afford to focus on the hammer and the chisel. I cannot look around me and bemoan what God is chipping away.
Joni Eareckson Tada, When God Weeps[3]
As God’s hammers and chisels and rasps do their work in our lives in a personal, specific manner, “character” is being formed in us. We begin to act more like Christ. We begin to respond with more godliness. Virtues like “love, joy, peace, patience” (Gal 5:22) are more a part of our lives.
But we’re still not at the final step.
THIRD, “character produces hope” (Rom 5:4).
The last step that Paul identifies is “hope” (Grk. elpis). “Hope” is a confidence in God that is future-oriented. You “hope” for future things, not past things (Rom 8:24–25). “Hope” believes that God will bring grace and blessing to you in the future.
“Suffering” is something very hard in the present. But “hope” is able to look ahead, look down the road a bit further and know God’s grace and blessing is there. The future will be better than the present. God will make sure of that.
It could be that the better future is at the end of the road when we see Jesus face-to-face at our death.
But “hope” can also trust that the good things God is doing through suffering can be experienced even now in the midst of our suffering.
The hard part about suffering is that it draws your gaze inward. You look inside. You look at your immediate surroundings. The temptation is to obsess about the circumstances. Like Joni’s “focus on the hammer and chisel.”
But Paul is telling us that God uses suffering to change our focus. Over time we look less and less at the circumstances themselves and more and more at what God is going to the do in the future. Instead of complaining, there is hope. Instead of despair, there is hope.
A few things to help respond well to suffering:
From Suffering to Hope (Rom 5:3–5)
1. Be honest about your suffering.
2. Engage with God in your suffering.
3. Do the basics (Bible, prayer, church).
4. Keep fighting to change the ratio of complaining to thanksgiving.
5. Deal with the setbacks and then keep moving.
6. Don’t stop praying for the circumstances to change until it’s time.
Of course your suffering isn’t the worst that anyone has ever experienced. Even in Joni’s book, When God Weeps, you realize that Joni’s suffering isn’t the worst ever.
Paul doesn’t say, though, that “suffering” has to be the worst ever to do this work of character-formation and hope-building.
Your suffering is personal and real, so be honest about it.
The Psalms remind us that yelling at God is a way of engaging with God (Ps 10:1; 13:1). Ignoring God isn’t.
Read your Bible, pray, go to church, be involved in the life of the church as much as you’re able. And never stop doing these things.
JW’s marathon on Strava. At mile 11 cramps. Had to sit down right before the finish. Well-prepared. Had a great attitude. So now? Taking a week off and then back to his goals.
Read Rom. 5:5.
In this last verse Paul goes deeper into the “hope” we have. He first describes it as a “hope” that “does not put us to shame.”
The “hope” that “sufferings” produce is not a false hope. It is a sure and unbreakable hope. A hope rooted in something we can’t lose, something that nothing can destroy.
This hope is made of different stuff than the stuff of this world—“where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal” (Matt 6:19).
It does not put us to shame. Putting your confidence in a leader or politician athlete can sometimes “put us to shame.” A recent example: Sam Bankman-Fried, the 30-yr old founder of FTX, a cryptocurrency company that scammed its clients out of billions of dollars and created a massive fraud. Created a false image of a company that was profitable and making people rich—giving people enough money to make them think there was a ton more.
But it was all a house of cards that collapsed. Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison. A lot of people were “put to shame” because they hoped in Sam Bankman-Fried’s company.
Paul is saying our “hope” in the Lord is a hope that will never end that way. It will never “put us to shame.”
Why is this hope so solid, so secure, so impossible to defeat? Why is it that we’ll never be ashamed to have this hope?
His answer is surprising. His answer is that GOD LOVES US!
But he speaks about God’s love like it’s something given to us physically. It’s in us. We have it, and so we can’t lose it.
Paul uses a complicated double-metaphor. The Spirit is said to be “given to us,” but God’s Holy Spirit “given to us” also “pours into our hearts” the “love of God.”
Love being “poured into our hearts” is meant to be a picture of a lavish and abundant love being poured out. Don’t think of the times you try to pour milk back into the milk jug. You have to be careful to have a very narrow pour.
Think of filling up a cup with a water hose that’s at full blast. The water fills up the cup and it’s spilling over. Water’s falling on the ground, because there’s far more water than your little cup can hold. That’s the image Paul is giving.
God doesn’t need to ration his love as if there’s barely enough to go around. His love for us is a massive waterfall that flows and flows and flows. And it’s there being poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit. It fills up our hearts—but then it keeps being poured into our hearts. He loves us to overflowing, and then keeps us pouring out his love in us.
This isn’t what it means to be one of the good Christians. It’s what it means to be a Christian! This is our birthright as those who are born-again by the Spirit!
Once again our list:
From Suffering to Hope (Rom 5:3–5)
1. Be honest about your suffering.
2. Engage with God in your suffering.
3. Do the basics (Bible, prayer, church).
4. Keep fighting to change the ratio of complaining to thanksgiving.
5. Deal with the setbacks and then keep moving.
6. Don’t stop praying for the circumstances to change until it’s time.
Our call is to rejoice EVEN in our sufferings. Our sufferings are the work of The Great Sculptor. Let us be those “yielding to the chisel” (Tada) of the Great Sculptor.
If you’re not a Christian, there’s an invitation for you to experience the love we’re talking. The love that is a certain hope.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
How? “Believes in him.”
But also, maybe as a Christian you struggle to know that you know that God loves you. You need to experience it afresh.
Ephesians 3:14–19:
For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, 15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, 16 that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, 18 may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, 19 and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. (Eph 3:14–19)
Prayer
Closing Song (“Yet Not I But Christ Through Me”)
[1] https://art.newcity.com/2023/05/02/patience-is-a-virtue-my-afternoon-as-a-stone-carver-with-sculptor-jyl-bonaguro/
[2] Joni Eareckson Tada and Steven Estes, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 116.
[3] Joni Eareckson Tada and Steven Estes, When God Weeps: Why Our Sufferings Matter to the Almighty (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1997), 119.
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