What does it mean that tribulation produces perseverance (Romans 5:3)?

“But we glory in tribulation also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience (or endurance); and patience, experience; and experience, hope.” At the very outset, the Christian ought to settle it in his heart to expect a path of tribulation. Justification gives no assurance of an easy earthly path: quite the reverse. But it brings heavenly joy into the midst of the trouble — beauteous testimony to the grace of God! Sorrow and trial become the very sphere of the conquest of eternal joys, which will not be defeated by these mere momentary hindrances. And it is no mere bearing our troubles with submission (more or less), but of rejoicing in them, realizing that they are working steadily to an end of more exceeding blessing for us and glory to God. Tribulation (properly regarded) is the teacher of endurance: endurance soon bears fruit in abundantly valuable experience — valuable in regard to all our relationships of life, whether in making personal decisions, whether in contacts with the saved or the unsaved, in home affairs, in the assembly, in business. In all these things, no one would deny the value of hard-learned experience. And experience is the very nourishment of hope. For true experience teaches the vanity and shallowness of all that is of the world. Such is the very plain recording of the book of Ecclesiastes, written by a man of wisdom declaring the findings of his own experience. But if this is so, how much more fully will experience (rightly regarded, of course), draw the heart toward Heaven and quicken in the soul the hope of glory. The reality of this all who have tasted it know well. Another point, however is this — that while experience teaches the transitoriness of life on earth, it is also always the proof of God's abiding faithfulness, and such realization cannot but stir the hope of the soul to be eternally in His presence.

Nevertheless, God intends that the tribulation we may pass through shall turn to our spiritual blessing. Therefore, the Apostle adds, "We glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works endurance". He does not suggest that we glory in tribulation as such, but because it works to our spiritual advantage. Tribulation leads to endurance. In the light of what is coming we learn to endure what is present. Our Lord has been before us in this path. Walking in the light of the glory that was before Him, He endured the trials He had to meet; as we read, "Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the Cross despising the shame"; and again we read, He "endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself". Truly, in His case, the trial drew forth the perfection of the endurance that He had; in ours we have to learn endurance. Rejoicing in hope of the glory we, too, shall be able to endure in the midst of tribulations. Losing sight of the glory we shall be in danger, in the presence of trial of giving up, rather than enduring.

(V. 4). The result of enduring in tribulation is that we gain experience. Endurance leads to a practical proof of the reality of the care and interest of God in preserving and keeping the soul in tribulation. Thus, in tribulation, we gain an experimental acquaintance with God; we practically prove the grace and tender sympathy, and mercy of our God.

Nor is this all. "We glory (verse 3) in tribulations also." The prospect of the saint is glory. His actual condition is tribulation. "Through much tribulation we must enter the kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). "In the world ye shall have tribulation," etc. (John 16:33). In some shape tribulation must be felt and known by the believer whilst in, and because he is in, the world. But no present sorrow can reach so deep as to touch with defilement or with bitterness the springs of God's love in Christ. Heaviness may be a portion of Christian experience here, but the power of the Holy Ghost as the Comforter is shown in raising the inner man above the stress of present trial by the revelation of the love of Christ. He is the Spirit of truth; and therefore He feeds the soul, not on evanescent fancies, but on the sincere milk of the word. But that word is the revelation of God in His ways. Thus the heart of faith, nourished by the truth of God, knows the way of God, and thus can pass through the dark experiences of actual tribulation, by the sustaining power of a knowledge which makes every special circumstance of trial turn to the furtherance of the soul's blessing, in the remembrance of the end to which all these things are conducing. "Knowing that tribulation works patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope."

Patience is an effect, not a cause; though producing, in its turn, its own results. It is wrought out through suffering. Tribulation of some kind must be passed through, for the soul to know its dependence on God as the God of patience and of hope. The believer knows this; and often feels, in the absence of trial, a spiritual lassitude, which real tribulation seldom fails to remove, by throwing the soul more immediately and more consciously upon God. It is written of the Holy One Himself, whose meat and whose drink it was to do the will of the Father, that "He learned obedience by the things which He suffered" (Heb. 5:8). The believer, indeed, often needs some special affliction as a means of teaching him the lesson of patience. What Jesus learned in the way of perfect devotedness to the Father's will, we have too often to learn in the way of chastisement, because of the waywardness of our path. But the effect of the lesson of patience, however learnt, is experience, or proof (dokime). The patient waiting of the tried spirit upon God, brings into the soul a richer experience of what God really is, as the fountain of living waters — the eternal refreshment of the wearied soul. Especially there is made a practical discovery of the sufficiency of the grace of Christ (2 Cor. 12:9; Phil. 4:3), through the process of soul-trial and exercise of spirit produced by the endurance of tribulation. There is, moreover, a ripening of the mind in the wisdom of the Lord's ways (Prov. 8:34; Ps. 119 passim). Where tribulation is borne with God, all turns to blessing. The Lord's strength is proved as the soul's stay, and His joy becomes our strength.

The Present. — The future then is sure. But what about the way to it? Can the Lord's sacrifice shed a light on that also, and administer encouragement to the saint in his path through this world? It can. It does. And he who had already suffered for Christ, short then of martyrdom, as few if any had (Acts 9:16; 2 Cor. 11:23-33), here assures us, that we can "rejoice (or glory) in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation works patience; and patience, experience; and experience, hope: and hope makes not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost, which is given to us" (Rom. 5:3-5). There is a manifest fitness, all will feel, in such testimony coming from the Apostle Paul. What indeed was the love of God to him! How had grace wrought in him! He tells us here what he had learnt by his sufferings for Christ: viz., the right and healthy effects of tribulations on the saint, as he has just told us some of the blessed consequences for us of the Lord's death and resurrection. "Tribulation works patience." The spirit which naturally would get chafed and ruffled, bows to endure the trial. Enduring it, the saint is tested, proved; for, "blessed," writes James (1:12) "is the man that endures temptation," or trial. And Peter assures us (1 Peter 1:7), that the trial of our faith is much more precious than that of gold which perishes, though that gold has been tried by the fire, and so purged from all dross. The most precious thing of earth is not to be compared in God's eyes with the proved faith of His saints. The saint proved by endurance is sustained by hope, which will not fail of its accomplishment; for deliverance from trials, and that is the object of hope in v. 4, must come. Of that he is assured, because the love of God is shed abroad in his heart by the Holy Ghost given to us.

Such is the shining pathway of the Christian even here, because Christ is before the heart: otherwise, tribulation works out the impatience of the first man, not endurance through the Second. Then endurance sustained in faith works out experience (i.e., the proof of what is tested and stands); as this again, from what God is shown to be in gracious present care, strengthens hope; and this does not put to shame by failure and disappointment; because the Holy Ghost sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God, who loved us when there was nothing lovable in us, as we are shown after self is thus detected and judged, the world seen in its true colours, and God more than ever proved, and prized, and trusted.

Meanwhile there is nothing but desert around. Do we boast in hope notwithstanding? Assuredly, "and not only [so], but we boast in tribulations also." This flesh can never do; it may affect stoical insensibility: but faith, while it increases our feeling, alone gives us to triumph.

Here, however, there is a process to which we need to take heed. In hoping for the glory of God, our boast is direct. It is not so with our tribulations. We should and do boast in them, but it is not immediate. It is the fruit of intelligent apprehension of God's gracious aim in these afflictions. Hence the apostle proceeds to set out how we are brought thus to traverse the judgment of nature. We boast in tribulations, says he; "knowing that tribulation works endurance; and endurance, experience; and experience, hope; and hope makes not ashamed, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost that was given to us."

He does not only write down tribulations on the asset side of the account, but he tells us why he does so. The reason why we rejoice in tribulations is that we know the healthful effect of tribulations upon our souls; we know what they work in our hearts. We rejoice in tribulations, knowing that tribulation works patience or endurance, and patience works experience. As we endure, so we gain true experience, doubtless of our own folly and frailty and foolishness and insufficiency, but coupled therewith true experience of the blessedness and sufficiency and all-satisfyingness of the Lord Jesus Christ — and to learn that lesson well is something that is well worth while.

This obviously cuts across the natural course of things — "glory in tribulations"? Yes, because we know that tribulation is used to form us as we go through it in communion with God. The moral quality of "patience" (endurance) is acquired in the face of trial. We are morally strengthened to stand against the storm just as the tree bending to the wind strikes its roots deeper. This endurance works experience, for we are brought to the conscious knowledge of the faithfulness and support of God. We learn to distrust ourselves, for we are just as incapable of sustaining ourselves in the path of faith as we were of justifying ourselves. So we learn God when things are seemingly against us. Blessed experience that gives us to trust Him unreservedly!

But we are still in the wilderness and there are tribulations. And in tribulations, as justified and assured of the glory of God, we can even boast (the word used in the Greek) in them. Tribulation worketh patience; and patience experience; and experience, hope; and hope maketh not ashamed. "Here is how that which is against us works for us; and notice that the very first thing effected is the breaking down of our own wills, those wills, that Jacob-like struggle so much with the will of God. Sovereign He must be; and spite of all that we have known of Him, it is what in practical detail we so little want Him to be. Amid the clouds and darkness that encompass Him in His providential dealings, faith that should find its opportunity finds oftentimes bewilderment and perplexity; yet in it we are forced to recognize our nothingness, and creep close to the side of Him who yet goes with us. Forced to let God be God, it is then that we get experience of a moral government which is that of a Father. The forcing of outward things comes to be read as drawings of Omnipotent Love that seeks us for its own delight. His ways, if still they may be beyond us, are not strange and still less adverse. They beget, not fear or misgiving, but a brightening hope, that steadies as it brightens." (F.W. Grant)

Rom. 5:3. "We boast (or rejoice) in tribulations also." The ways of God towards us during the crossing of the wilderness are designed to mortify the flesh, to break the man, and thereby to form us for the knowledge of God. The flesh is a veil which hides heavenly things from us. God acts in our interest, as to this veil, and afterwards we see better throughout. In this verse 3 it is in view of the subjective fruit, which results from the tribulation that we boast. In Rom. 5:11 we boast in view of the objective blessing — we joy or boast in God. By objective blessing is meant the blessing which specially belongs to faith, as the knowledge of God, His work of grace accomplished outside us in Christ, etc. Subjective blessing is said of the effects of grace produced in us.