Sometimes people will go through a graduation ceremony even though they still have classes. Other times, people have sold their houses but haven’t yet jumped through all the hoops to make it final and are still living there. Or even as simple as food in the oven but not yet being eaten. We see this in scripture as well, with Abraham & Sarah promised a son but still barren, or the Israelites freed from Egypt but not yet in the Promised Land.
And that’s the situation we find ourselves in. Forgiven, justified, redeemed – but not yet perfected. That’s what Paul addresses here in the letter to the church in Rome. He has spent the first part of the letter describing the need for and nature of this justification and the grace extended to us. Here, he describes this state as something we enter into, not merely a moment, but a new state of being. But even within that state of being, it is not yet complete. We stand in grace, but not like we will one day. We are saved from slavery but are not yet in the Promised Land.
This chapter is Paul pivoting to describing the implications of this situation in our current state. Naturally, he addresses suffering. The word Paul uses here is not just about persecution, but all forms of suffering, all distress brought about by outward circumstances. There is plenty of suffering to go around, and it can make that grace and redemption seem fleeting.
But Paul urges us to rejoice in our suffering, to exalt and even boast. This is the same word used when he warns us not to boast in our own strength & works, and the same word used to describe how to respond to the “hope of the glory of God.”
And in fact it is that hope Paul points us to through our suffering, by way of the character built by endurance, itself built by the suffering that we endure.
But we still find ways to block ourselves off from this suffering. We can deny it, ignore it, rationalize it away. But to rejoice in suffering we have to acknowledge it, to sit in it and experience it. This is not something we are excited to do, but this is the offer of transformation we can only attain by going through this sequence Paul describes.
Elsewhere, Paul tells us we are predestined to be conformed to the likeness of Christ, and this transformation begins as we endure and rejoice in suffering, acknowledging and engaging in our experiences, even when they are unpleasant. The hope produced in this process is ah extravagant effusion, an inexhaustible supply, like a cloud burst on parched countryside.
This all means that our already-not-yet period is of supreme value, a purposeful part of God’s plan to bring us to fullness and oneness in Him.
–Sermon Notes, Karen Howe, Renew Church, Lynnwood WA, March 12, 2023