Paul is reminding us that we should rejoice in suffering because suffering liberates us from selfish hopes and foolish treasures. Suffering refines our character to build in us a durable strength that has the capacity to love and treasure the glory of God more than whatever else might tempt us.

When we suffer, we pray for God to intervene. We ask for the Lord to help and to heal, to remove and to restore. But what if our suffering is itself God’s intervention?

God’s Intervention

In our small group at church, we have been studying John Calvin’s little book On the Christian Life. The chapter on “Bearing the Cross” relentlessly emphasized the goodness of suffering.

At one point, Calvin mentioned God’s intervention in our lives:

Yes, God’s kindness ought to have allured us into pondering and deeply loving his goodness. But because our malice is such that, instead, we are continually spoiled by his pampering, some kind of discipline is absolutely necessary to keep us from diving into such wild behavior. Thus, to keep us from acting wildly due to excessive wealth, to keep us from becoming prideful due to exalted honors, to keep us from becoming arrogant due to being bloated with the rest of the advantages of mind, body, or fortune, the Lord himself, as he foresees it to be appropriate, intervenes and subdues and bridles the wildness of our flesh through the remedy of the cross.¹

We typically think of—and pray for—God to intervene in our lives to remove trials, pain, difficulties, and hardships. Calvin’s view is the opposite: God intervenes in our lives by placing trials, pain, difficulties, and hardships in our lives. Whatever ails us in our spiritual lives, the remedy, Calvin says, is the blessing of a cross to bear.

Not a few members of our small group struggled with this idea. Particularly those who were experiencing real, present, pervasive, life-altering, dream-shattering, soul-crushing, inescapable suffering.

The intellectual answer is simple: God ordains trials in our lives for our good (see James 1:2-4 and Romans 8:28-29).

The experiential answer is much more revealing because the real, present, pervasive, life-altering, dream-shattering, soul-crushing inescapable experience of suffering digs down to our deepest desires: What do you hope for in this life?

Suffering Produces Hope

Paul tells us that the goal of suffering is to produce joyful, God-glorifying hope.

Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God. Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. Romans 5:1-5

These few verses should completely change how we view suffering. Paul’s argument is that joyful, God-glorifying hope comes from character, which is produced by endurance, which in turn is produced by suffering.

For Paul, suffering directs the outlook and object of our hope. He says, “We rejoice in hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:2). We have the right outlook (rejoicing in hope) when we have the right object for our hope (the glory of God). Suffering, therefore, is the controlling factor for our hope.

This raises an important question: Why does God use suffering to generate biblical hope?

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