And not only [that], but we also boast in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works endurance;
Commentary for this verse has not been generated yet.
and endurance, experience; and experience, hope;
This verse sits in the middle of a chain that begins with rejoicing in trouble. Endurance leads to something, and that something leads to hope. The word in between is "character" in the ESV and "experience" in older translations. So the first question is what that word means.
The Greek word behind it carries two ideas at once: experience gained, and being approved.
The first effect, then, of tribulations is patience or endurance. (The Greek word, hupomone, seems to mean both bearing up patiently under the present evil and holding out to the end.) But patience and endurance produce experience, or being approved. The Greek word here (dokime) seems to show both. If we are impatient in our troubles, we gain only human experience. That kind is necessary, but it humbles us and tends to weigh us down — and it should. But if we learn in God's school to be still and patient under His hand, and to listen to His voice, we gain divine experience that lifts us up. We learn what God is.
This is not about looking inside ourselves. That comes later in the letter. What is proved here is God.
Again, "patience [works out] experience." This is not yet the experience of what is inside us. The letter takes that up fully later, from Romans 5:12 through to Romans 8. Here endurance works out what God is along the road, and we miss it as far as we allow impatience.
Put positively, trouble becomes the place where we prove God's care for ourselves.
The result of enduring in tribulation is that we gain experience. Endurance gives us real proof that God cares for us and takes an interest in us, keeping the soul through tribulation. So in tribulation we come to know God by experience. We prove for ourselves the grace, the tender sympathy and the mercy of our God.
The process is slower than we would like, and that slowness is part of the point.
See what trouble produces — "tribulation works patience." My will needs to be broken. I will expect to get something and never have it. I may have to cry to God for three weeks and fast, as Daniel did. I have to learn patience, and in it learn how rash my heart is, wanting everything at once… [Moses] was learning experience, and experience works hope. What blocked the hope and dimmed it is broken away in the process. Earthly hope has died away, and the heavenly hope has become more real and bright. And in it I learn what God is.
The change often begins in confusion rather than clarity.
In His dealings with us God is surrounded by cloud and darkness. Here faith should find its opportunity, yet it often finds confusion and perplexity instead. Even so, this forces us to admit that we are nothing, and to creep close to the side of the One who still walks with us. Forced to let God be God, we then experience a moral government that is a Father's… [His ways] produce no fear and no doubt, but a brightening hope that steadies as it brightens.
Hope grows because the God we are travelling toward is the God we have been meeting on the way.
We are next told that "experience works hope." On the path that leads to the glory we experience what the God of glory is — and how that glory brightens! By patient endurance we learn for ourselves the love, the care and the tender mercies of Christ, who never fails to care for us as He guides us on our way. How it makes us say, "What will it be to be with Him!"
These are not three stages you leave behind one by one. They work together and feed each other.
When a tested believer experiences Christ's faithfulness and sufficiency, hope flows more strongly in the soul. And hope, stirred like this, works back again to renew patience… So these three — patience, experience and hope — each produce or support the other. They work side by side, and together they confirm the confidence and the rejoicing of the child of God.
One caution keeps all of this from turning inward. Our feelings in affliction are not the foundation.
The result of tribulation is experience, and that works hope. Experience in affliction is an inner thing, and it does produce experience, but this inner feeling is not what we can lean on. The only support given to our faith is the love of God — the love He showed us in Christ. It is there that experience and faith meet.
- Proof — the word behind "experience" means tested and approved. Trouble does not just teach us. It proves something.
- Proof of God — what is proved is His care and faithfulness along the road, not our inner state. The letter takes that up later.
- Proof takes time — the will has to be broken, and impatience is what forfeits the lesson.
- Proof brightens — earthly hope dies away, the heavenly hope grows real and steady, and hope renews patience in return.
- Proof is not our footing — we stand on the love of God shown in Christ. That is where faith and experience meet.
and hope does not make ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by [the] Holy Spirit which has been given to us
This verse follows a chain of tribulation, patience, experience, and hope. It says why that hope will never let a believer down: God's own love, and God's own Spirit.
The love spoken of here is not the love we manage to feel toward God. That distinction is what makes the hope safe.
Romans 5:5. — The love of God to us, not ours to Him. Our love is so weak and unworthy that it makes every renewed soul ashamed; but His love is so full and rich that even the hope of His glory does not put us to shame. If the Holy Spirit, given to us, has poured that love into our hearts, then such a hope fits it well. It is the natural completion of the love that has already done such great things for us.
Verse 5 and verse 6 belong together. One speaks of God's love in us; the next of His love for us, shown for all to see.
So in verse 5 we have the love of God in us — His love poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. In verse 6 we have the love of God for us, because when we had no strength at all, "Christ died for us." What a picture for faith to look at! What a treasure for the heart to keep! What a stronghold in the day of trial! This love has come into our hearts through the presence of the Holy Spirit there. It is also shown openly in the gift, the work, the resurrection, and the glory of the Saviour.
This verse is not asking us to agree with an idea. What it describes does not stay in the mind.
I have said God's love is not a doctrine but a fact. It is not for the head but for the heart, as the next mention of it in this letter proves. It is too beautiful to pass by lightly: "the love of God has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." It is for the heart and in the heart. But if it fills the heart, it warms and spreads through the whole being. The head and hands and feet come under its influence. As the sun flooding a house with its rays drives out all darkness and chill, so the love of God acts on a life that opens to it.
Romans has said nothing about the Spirit until this point. The order is not an accident.
This verse is remarkable as the first one that speaks either of the Spirit given to us, or of the love of God which is poured into us by Him. We have His righteousness fully displayed and applied before there is any mention of either… It is good that the soul should be shut up to what is absolutely perfect outside ourselves, on God's part. This rests not on the Spirit's work in us, but on Christ's work for us… Had it come in before this, the heart would readily have turned from Christ and God's righteousness to its own workings and affections.
The Spirit is given, not achieved. That gift rests on the blood of Christ.
Here we see the Holy Spirit as the seal given to the believer. He seals to him the value of the blood of Christ, and the perfect cleansing he shares in through that blood. Washed from his sins, he becomes the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. He is the anointing, the believer's seal, and the down payment of glory… And here, in this passage, we learn that by Him also the love of God is poured into our hearts.
Because the verse follows a list of trials, some treat the Spirit as a prize at the end of the process.
People often read these words as meaning the exact opposite of what they say. They take them to mean that we must have this experience first, so that God may then pour His love into our hearts. They think that if we pray much and are very diligent in patience, experience, and hope, then we may hope for the gift of the Holy Spirit. No words can tell how utterly wrong all this is… To think God gives the Holy Spirit because of our own efforts, or experience, or devotedness, is to set aside the perfect work of Christ.
Knowing this love is what turns pressure from something merely endured into something a believer can boast in.
In the end it will make me hope, "because the love of God has been poured into my heart." This gives me the key to all the tribulation, and lets me glory in it. It is the fruit of God's own love. I trust Him. How do I get this? By the Holy Spirit who is within me… It is not mine but His, God's love poured out; God, who is love, is in me — God's own love. This brings us back to a strength of hope that nothing can shake.
- Ground — the love in view is God's love to us, not ours to Him; that is why hope built on it cannot end in shame.
- Proof — the love poured in (v. 5) rests on the love displayed outside us, when Christ died for people with no strength (v. 6).
- Gift — the Spirit is the seal of the value of Christ's blood and the down payment of glory; He is given, never earned by our diligence.
- Reach — this love is a fact, not a doctrine for the head; it warms the whole person, as sunlight fills a house.
- Result — in the day of trial this love is a stronghold, and the hope it feeds cannot end in shame.
for we being still without strength, in [the] due time Christ has died for [the] ungodly.
Paul has been speaking of God's love in the hearts of believers. Now he points to proof outside the heart: a death at a fixed moment, for people who had nothing to offer.
Chapter 5 turns from love felt within to love displayed at the cross. One writer shows how the same death served different purposes earlier in the letter.
God makes His love good in our hearts. But we are not left to look inside our hearts to find that love expressed. Christ's death is the witness of God's righteousness in chapter 3, and of God's power in chapter 4. In chapter 5 it comes forward as the witness of God's love.
This matters when feelings run dry. The proof stands outside us, so a person who feels nothing still has solid ground.
A man may say in the face of all this, But suppose I do not feel it? Well, then, you are going back from faith, and looking to your feelings. How do I know that I have it? Am I perfect? No. The love is enjoyed within, but in His grace God has put the proof of it outside me. I know it, because I believe that Christ died for the ungodly. I am simply an ungodly one and have no strength at all, no feeling at all, and Christ died when I had no feeling at all.
The verse names our condition twice, and the two words do not say the same thing. Older translations, which these writers follow, render "weak" as "without strength."
We were completely helpless, unable to do anything for God. We were ungodly, unwilling to do anything for God. Then it was that love made the great sacrifice by dying for us.
Many read "ungodly" as a label for shocking behaviour. One writer gives the word its full sense.
People now apply the word to outward conduct, and so its real meaning has been lost. In the Scriptures it covers the state of the heart as well as actions. It means "godless" — to be without God, to feel and to act apart from God, without reference to Him or to His will.
People own up to one of these two words long before the other.
First, we were ungodly. That is the first thing we find out. But many know they are ungodly who have not yet found out that they are without strength… "I am determined to change my ways, or I will be lost. I will turn over a new leaf." The new leaf is turned, and all may go well for a time. But soon temptations come, and one resolution after another is broken. He thinks, "It is no use my trying to be a Christian. I have tried again and again, and the more I try to give up my sins, the more I seem to fail."
The verse says Christ died at the right time, which older translations call "in due time." One writer explains what made that moment the right one.
For four thousand years, from the time that Adam sinned, God was testing man. He was looking to see if any good could be found in the race of the first Adam. God weighed man in His balances and found him completely wanting. He tried him without law, and under law. Last of all, God presented His Son to the world, to see if they would receive Him. But no; they rejected Him!… It is important therefore to see that now God is not looking for improvement from man.
The people Christ died for had no strength and no godliness. So this love cannot be explained by anything in them.
Yes, it is no more wonderful than it is true: while we were still without strength, Christ died for ungodly persons. Such are fallen men. Jew or Gentile made no difference as to man's nature. The law gave no power; religious form is not godliness. And because man is what he became through sin, in due time Christ died for us, powerless and ungodly persons. This was beyond all creature love.
One writer compares this love with the way ours works.
God gave the greatest thing in heaven for the worst thing on earth: a sinner. I am a sinner, therefore Christ died for me… This is what makes God's love different from man's. A man must have some motive to act on, something to draw out his love. God's love, on the other hand, springs from Himself, for God could find no motive in us.
- Helpless — "Without strength" means unable to do anything for God. "Ungodly" means unwilling to. The verse names both the inability and the heart behind it.
- Godless — "Ungodly" is not a word for the worst of people. It means living without reference to God, which covers respectable lives too.
- Timed — The death came at the close of a long testing of man, not at its start. God is therefore no longer waiting for improvement from anyone.
- Uncaused — Nothing in us drew this love out. Our love needs a motive; God's love springs from Himself, and it reached powerless, godless people.
- Outside — The proof is not in your feelings but in a death already accomplished. That is why a person with no feeling at all can still rest on it.