What does the Bible tell us about the suffering of this present time?

Scripture reference – Romans 8:18

“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

I know it’s probably not right for me to say so, as we should treat all of scripture with the same fidelity and praise, but verses like Romans 8:18 take on special meaning and provide hope beyond expectation for those believers who are in the most sorrowful of circumstances, – particularly those who suffer from extreme chronic, relentless pain around the clock.

Paul’s words in Romans 8:18 have become one of my life verses ever since my diagnosis 10 ½ years ago. If you’ve read my devotionals for any amount of time, you might say, – “gee, you seem to have a lot of life verses.” It’s true, I do, and I turn to them often with the thought that I’m reading from Holy Scripture, knowing that I’m reading 100% truth that I can apply to my life.

Think about all the people in your life that you know. There probably isn’t one of us that this very day, that doesn’t know someone that you have great empathy for, – perhaps a friend or someone from church that due to the reality of what their life looks like, is suffering through another day of sorrow and pain.

I’ve talked to a lot of God’s people going through every degree of suffering and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that many of them have reported the special significance of the book of Job and how they’ve poured over it countless times since their affliction began.

I remember in the early months after my diagnosis when I could still walk at a good pace miles a day around town, that I would pray throughout the walk,

asking God to grant me just 1/1000th of the faith and character of Job. Many have felt like no man may have suffered as much as Job did, with the exception of our Savior. Job knew, as Spurgeon said, that “God was more concerned about his character than his comfort, – He was more concerned about his holiness than his happiness.” Job finally quit questioning the providence of God, and no matterwhat God allowed to come upon him, he stated in faith…..”though you slay me, yet I will trust in you.”

The Apostle Paul was a man of stalwart faith. He was all too aware of his sufferings when he penned that verse in Romans 8:18 that has brought comfort to many of God’s saints all over the world who have faithfully endured every manner of suffering.

I have a dear friend who served with me in prison ministry for 5 years, who for all practical purposes lays in his bed, unable to get up, in a nearby hospice

facility. We believe that his time is very short. My visits in recent weeks are totally different from those earlier this year. My buddy can no longer engage in

wonderful conversations like we used to have, and can’t even get out of bed. Since communication is almost nil, I read from the Psalms and from my favorite book by Spurgeon, – “Beside Still Waters: Words Of Comfort For The Soul.”

I spent much of our visit praying and quoting different passages of scripture. I recently read Romans 8:18 to him, hoping that he could dwell on the wonderful

hope and comfort God gives us. Even though he couldn't tell me, I’m confident he was thinking about those impactful words.

In this passage, the Apostle Paul reminds us that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. This powerful verse offers hope and encouragement to those who are going through difficult times. Paul wants to communicate that suffering is an inevitable part of the human experience.

A Quick Look At The Text

This much-loved and often-cited verse is about Paul's perspective. He has previously written that all who are in Christ are heirs of God's kingdom with Christ, since all who are in Christ will share in His suffering before sharing in His glory.

This begins a powerful passage in which Paul discusses living, as a Christian, through the suffering that comes with this life on earth. Some Bible teachers suggest that Paul is referring "only" to suffering caused by persecution for faith in Christ. Based on the full context of the passage, however, there is every reason to understand Paul to include the everyday suffering that comes with living on this sin-stained planet. He will be clear that it is experienced by all creatures (Romans 8:20), but that only those who are in Christ look forward to sharing in the glories of God's kingdom afterwards.

Paul's perspective is that our present sufferings are not even worth holding up in comparison with the glories that will be revealed in us. Some readers might be tempted to hear Paul glossing over the enormous pain, physical and emotional, that comes with human existence. He is not. Instead, Paul is elevating the much more enormous glory to come.

Paul understood pain very deeply. 2 Corinthians 11:23-29 contains a small sampling of his experiences: hunger, thirst, danger, imprisonment, torture, stoning and persecution. And yet, he says all of that suffering cannot compare to the glories that will be revealed at some future time to saved believers as God's heirs with Christ. Truly, those endless glories must be incomprehensibly wonderful, satisfying, and meaningful.

Without Christ, we could never participate in God's glory because of our sin (Romans 3:23). In Christ, as God's fully adopted heirs, we will fully experience His glory forever (Romans 6:23). This verse does not minimize the pain we experience—it simply puts it into an eternal perspective.

Suffering is an unavoidable part of our lives in this fallen world. But earth is not our permanent home (1 Peter 2:11; Hebrews 11:13). As we wait for eternity, we can cling to this life-transforming hope communicated by the apostle Paul: “For I consider that the sufferings of this presenttime are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18, NKJV). Redemptive suffering is Paul’s theme in Romans 8:18-27. Because of humanity’s fall, everything in creation has been subjected to God’s curse (Romans 8:20; see also Genesis 3:14-19). Along with every other created thing, believers long with eager anticipation for their ultimate adoption and emancipation from the curse (Romans 8:19).

We can endure through the suffering of this present time because even our best experiences here on earth don’t hold a candle to the matchless glory of our future destiny and lasting reality in God’s eternal kingdom. When the curse of sin is lifted in the new heavens and new earth, we will live as “God’s children in glorious freedom from death and decay” (Romans 8:21 NLT).

Today’s trials pale in significance when reframed against the setting of heaven’s Eden-like glory. The apostle Peter affirms, “I, too, am an elder and a witness to the sufferings of Christ. And I, too, will share in his glory when he is revealed to the whole world” (1 Peter 5:1). After we have “suffered a little while,” Peter promises that Christ Himself will restore us and make us “strong, firm and steadfast” in His eternal glory (1 Peter 5:10).

For now, we place our hope and trust in God because we “through faith are shielded by God’s power until thecoming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). Paul testifies that God gives us the strength to endure all things (Philippians 4:13). And Peter encourages us through every difficulty to “greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials” (1 Peter 1:5-6). Again, the apostle urges, “Instead, be very glad—for these trials make you partners with Christ in his suffering, so that you will have the wonderful joy of seeing his glory when it is revealed to all the world” (1 Peter 4:13).

Paul describes the suffering of this present time as “our light and momentary troubles” (2 Corinthians 4:17). He equates the experience to “groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22). A mother can undergo excruciating labor accompanied by the joyous anticipation of embracing her newborn baby. We “groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering.

We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us. We were given this hope when we were saved. (If we already have something, we don’t need to hope for it. But if we lookforward to something we don’t yet have, we must wait patiently and confidently)” Romans 8:23-25).

Paul describes the sufferings of this present time and then crystalizes their purpose: “For our present troubles are small and won’t last very long. Yet they produce for us a glory that vastly outweighs them and will last forever!” (2 Corinthians 4:17). Oh how God brings comfort in just a few words.

The early apostles knew more than most of us ever will about the suffering of this present time. Both Peter and Paul died as martyrs for their faith in Jesus Christ. According to tradition, Paul was beheaded and Peter was crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus.

Yet, even if we suffer as violently as these two brave apostles, we can hold on to the hope of a glorious future where death is conquered and sorrow, grief and pain will all be wiped away (Revelation 21:4). When we apprehend

this indisputable promise from God, we realize that the sufferings of this present time weigh no more than a feather compared to the hefty, eternal weight of glory.

Link: https://www.gotquestions.org/God-will-wipe-away-every-tear.html

Final Thought: “Christ also hath once suffered.”

When we think of our own sufferings, as compared with our Lord’s, we may print them in the smallest type that the printer can use; but where shall I find capital letters that are large enough to print this sentence when it applies to him, — “CHRIST ALSO HATH ONCE SUFFERED”?

It is almost as if the apostle said, “none of you have suffered when compared with him or, at least, he was the Arch-Sufferer, — the Prince of sufferers, — the Emperor of the realm of agony, — Lord Paramount in sorrow. Just take that term, “a man of sorrows.” You know that, in the Book of Revelation, there is the expression, “the man of sin.”

What does “the man of sin” mean but a man made up of sin, one who is all sin? Very well, then, “a man of sorrows” means a man made up of sorrows, constructed of sorrows, — sorrows from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot, — sorrow without and sorrow within. He did sleep with sorrow, and wake with sorrow; he was a man of sorrow, a mass of sorrow.

Take the next expression, “and acquainted with grief.” Grief was his familiar acquaintance, not a person that he passed by, and casually addressed, but his acquaintance that kept close to him throughout his life. He said once, “Lover and friend hast thou put far from me, and mine acquaintance into darkness;” but this acquaintance was with him there: “acquainted with grief.”

Listen to the words; and if you can see my Lord, pressed by the strong arm of grief until he is covered all over with a gory shirt of bloody sweat, then you know that grief had made him to be acquainted with its desperate tugs. When you see him bleeding at his hands, and feet, and side, with all his spirit exceeding sorrowful even unto death, and God himself leaving him in the thick darkness, then you know that he was indeed acquainted with grief.

I know a little about grief, but in reality, I don’t think I know much. The hem of grief’s garment is all you ever touch, but Christ wore it as his daily robe. We do but sip of the cup; he drank it to its bitterest dregs. We feel just alittle of the warmth of Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace; but he dwelt in the very midst of the fire.

There I must leave the whole matter with you; but, as you come to the communion table, come with this one thought upon you: “Christ also hath once suffered.” Somebody perhaps asks me, “Is there any comfort in that thought?” Is it not a wonderful thing that there should be more of comfort in the sufferings of Christ than in any other thing under heaven?

Yet it is so; there is more joy in the sufferings of Christ, to those whose hearts are broken, or sorely wounded, than there is in his birth, or his resurrection, or anything else about the Savior. It is by his stripes rather than even by his glory that we are healed.

Come, beloved, take a draught from this bitter wine,

which shall sweetly charm away all your sorrows, and

make you glad. May God, the Holy Spirit, grant that it

may be so! And if there is anybody here who is not saved,

remember, friend, that your salvation depends upon the

sufferings of Christ. If you believe in him, then his

sufferings are yours, they have taken away your sin, and

you are clear. Therefore, go on your way, and be glad.

(EDITOR'S NOTE: The author, Gregg, has suffered with Central Pain Syndrome for years. Where most "check out", Gregg has fought the good fight of FAITH every step of the way. Courage (and love) like this are extremely rare, almost as if... "extraterrestrial"! Acts 1:8 ) JW

From: Fight the Good Fight of Faith / Life Journal: by Gregg Harris