#DailyDevotion Our Suffering Now Is Nothing Compared To Our Glory To Come

Romans 8¹⁸I think what we suffer now isn’t important when I compare it with the glory to be revealed to us. ¹⁹For the created world is waiting on tiptoe to see the unveiling of God’s sons. ²⁰For this created world must waste away, not because it wants to but because its Master would have it so, but it does so with the hope ²¹that this created world also will be freed from the slavery of decay in order to share the freedom of glory with the children of God. ²²We know that all creation has been groaning with the pains of childbirth until now. ²³ And what is more, also we, who have the Spirit as our first taste of heaven, groan inwardly as we look forward to being adopted as His children; then our body will be set free.

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With as much as we hear about suffering from St. Paul you’d think you’d hear more about it from preachers today. If we do hear about suffering it’s only to prepare us for something bigger and better in this life. But that is not the direction St. Paul preaches and teaches us. Indeed, suffering is preparing us for something bigger and better BUT it isn’t in and for this age. Oh occasionally that might be the case, but those things are transitory and will rot and fade away with time.

So what is the suffering God puts us through for? Well St. Paul says “what we suffer now isn’t important when I compare it with the glory to be revealed to us.” We should look at our suffering now on the one hand with disdain or think little of it. It’s not the great big monster we often make of it. In 2 Cor. 4 he calls the things we suffer now ‘slight momentary.” It isn’t important when we compare it to what God has planned for us i.e. the hope of glory. On another hand we can rejoice in our sufferings because St. Paul also tells in 2 Cor. 1 that we are participating, communing with the sufferings of Christ on the cross. We rejoice in them because as he says in chapter 5 of Romans produce in us perseverance, character and hope. In 2 Cor. 4 Paul also says the slight momentary sufferings are preparing us to bear the weight of eternal glory.

Yes, our hope in our suffering is not to have a bigger better life in this age. No, it is to participate, to commune in the glory of God.

Creation is waiting on tiptoe to see us unveiled as God’s sons. For even as we waste away and are subject to corruption as we have seen in chapter seven, creation too has been subject to the curse of Adam. Creation waits patiently as it waste away not because it wants to but because of the promise of a better hope in the promises of God in Christ Jesus. Just as we are raised from the dead in the glory of God so too creation is going to renewed to a bigger, better glory than it has now. It too wants to be freed from the slavery of decay.

So we grown inwardly as we have tasted of heaven having received the Holy Spirit. We wait in hope to being adopted as God’s children or rather that we see it become manifest as we are resurrected and our bodies are set free from the curse and we receive immortal, imperishable, glorious, powerful bodies like our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ did in his resurrection.

Heavenly Father, grant that we may patiently await the hope of glory while you make us suffer in this life with Christ so we may see the glory you have prepared for us on the day of Christ’s revelation. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.