..................................................................................................................................................................
Your Pain Has an Expiration Date
Don’t look at the present pain without looking at the
future glory
What belongs to Jesus is yours because you belong to him
Ligon
Duncan
Editors’
note: This is an adapted excerpt from the new book Coming Home: Essays on
the New Heaven and New Earth, edited by Don Carson
and Jeff Robinson.
Paul’s
writings are full of suffering — both in his experience and in his theology.
The
apostle makes clear that it is vital for us as children of God to have
right views of suffering, trial, and tribulation because they are part of God’s
plan for our future glory.
Those
who blame suffering, pain, and poverty on your lack of faith fail to understand
texts like Romans 8:16–25.
Those
who imply God is surprised by our suffering do not begin to understand
God’s wonderful purposes in the adversity we experience in this life.
Paul says, “We are children of God, and if children, then
heirs” (Romans 8:16).
What
does that mean? Of what, exactly, are we heirs?
We are
heirs of the Abrahamic promises.
If you
are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, you will inherit it all. The promises
of God to Abraham are yours.
But
it’s not mere things you will receive.
God will give you the greatest inheritance in the Abrahamic
promise: himself. “I will be your God, and you will be my people.”
So,
what does the Christian get in his or her inheritance? God!
God is
our inheritance (Romans 8:17).
Yet Paul
doesn’t stop there.
In addition to being “heirs of God,” he says we are “fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:17).
This
inheritance comes, however, through suffering.
We are “fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him
in order that we may also be glorified in him” (Romans 8:17).
Sorrow Now
In verse 18, Paul speaks of “the sufferings of this present
time.”
Although
God has saved you by his grace, you are guaranteed a life of suffering, partly
because you inhabit a fallen world in which pain is unavoidable.
At the
same time, it is precisely because you are God’s child that
you suffer, both inwardly and outwardly.
I don’t
know how many times I’ve learned, forgotten, and re-learned that lesson.
Suffering will catch me unaware, and I’ll throw up my hands
and say, “Something is not right here. This is not how it’s supposed to be!”
But
Paul teaches us our suffering is the consequence of being a new creation in
this old creation, and God in his sovereignty has a purpose that transcends
“now” and stretches into the “not yet.”
A verse
from a Margaret Clarkson hymn begins simply:
O Father, you are sovereign, the Lord of human pain.
Sovereign
Father, Clarkson says, you’re not just the Lord of blessings who has nothing to
do with my pain; you’re the Lord even of my pain.
God Almighty can
make even suffering serve his eternal interests in us and produce a weight of glory
beyond all comparison.
Glory Later
In Romans 8:18, Paul begins to point us
to the future:
“I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not
worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
Our
trials here are real — sometimes so real and overwhelming they seem beyond
our endurance, so we feel like Job and regret our birth.
But
Paul explains that even if we count up all our sufferings, they cannot compare
to the glory awaiting us.
The
glory of the “not yet” is put before our eyes now — but not so we can
escape and sing, “Pie in the sky, by and by.”
No, it
is put before us so we can be strengthened to endure, engage, and bless.
When Paul says, “the sufferings of this present time,” he
includes both the inward battle with sin and the outward battle with a broken
world.
Nonetheless,
all the suffering brought to you by inward and outward battles cannot
begin to compare to the glory yet to come.
God
uses this pain to produce the future glory he will reveal to you and in
you.
God is
going to make you so much like Jesus Christ that if you were to meet your
glorified self now, you would be tempted to fall down and worship, as John was (Revelation 19:10).
The
glory God is producing in you outweighs the suffering, because through suffering
you will be made like his Son.
In The Lord of the Rings, Aragorn
dies after a long and magnificent reign as king. Tolkien says of his body:
“Then a great beauty was revealed in him, so that all who after
came there looked on him in wonder; for they saw that the grace of his youth,
and the valor of his manhood, and the wisdom and majesty of his age were
blended together. And long there he lay, an image of the Kings of Men in glory
undimmed before the breaking of the world.”
Look Ahead!
Quite
the same thing will happen to you, but you’re going to be alive!
One
day, we’ll meet one another in glory and say, “Perfect!”
We see
in part how God works in us now, and we admire his work in each other, but on
that day, we will be stunned by the perfection God has given.
In the Garden, the serpent basically said to Adam and Eve, “Take
that fruit and you’ll be like God.”
Adam and Eve should have replied, “What do you mean we will
be like God? We are like God! We are created in the image and
likeness of God.”
But
they grasped the fruit. And far from Satan’s promise, they became less like
God. His image in humanity, though not erased, was deeply marred.
In our redemption,
however, God pardons and accepts us, and begins a process of remaking us into
the fullness of his image.
One day he will look at us and we will be like him, or as John
puts it, “We shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2).
The
Lord is making you like him even — especially — in your pain.
Are you
surprised by that?
If your
Savior learned obedience through what he suffered (Hebrews 5:8), do you
think it’ll be different for you?
Was God
up to something in his Son? Of course, he was.
Is God
up to something in you, son or daughter of God?
Absolutely.
Don’t
look at the present pain without looking at the future glory.
Take
heart, suffering brother or sister — God is up to something in you. He is
making you like him.
Ligon
Duncan (MDiv,
Covenant Theological Seminary; PhD, University of Edinburgh) is chancellor and
CEO of Reformed Theological
Seminary, chairman of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, and a
Council member for The Gospel Coalition. He has authored, co-authored, edited,
or contributed to numerous books, including Does Grace Grow Best in Winter? He and his wife, Anne,
have two children.
https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/your-pain-has-expiration-date/
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