Romans 8

¹⁶ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. ¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

One of the guilty pleasures of my life is reading tweets from the Twitter account called “Werner Twertzog,” which is a parody account that purports to reflect the thoughts of the eccentric German filmmaker Werner Herzog. It is frequently hilarious, though not always so (this is NOT a wide-open endorsement of it, I hasten to add). The tweets are essentially nihilistic and pessimistic but often make rather poignant points about the absurdity of life as we have arranged it.

Anyway, it is, as I said, a guilty pleasure. I think my favorite Werner Hertzog tweet is this one:

Life is a parade of absurdities and pain, and then we die, alone…So, yes, little girl, I shall buy a box of Thin Mints.

It is, in a sense, humorous. The shocking juxtaposition of the nihilistic philosophy in the first sentence and the desire for Thin Mints in the second (along with the realization that he is saying all of this to a Girl Scout!) really just catches you off guard. And yet, it is also a sad statement. It is sad because, parody or not, there are, in fact, numerous people who view life in just this way: that there is no real and underling meaning to life, that life is a struggle we are doomed to lose, that there is no ultimate purpose, and so we should therefore try to grab what paltry and fleeting pleasures we can while we can.

Put another way, for many people, life really is nothing more than pain and Thin Mints, agony and Girl Scout cookies, despair punctuated by little and largely irrelevant bits of joy.

But that is not how Christians view the world. For the Christian, life is more than pain and Thin Mints. The Christian does not deny the pain (and most do not deny the Thin Mints!). But the Christian sees these aspects of life and interprets them in the life of Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross and the empty tomb. Another way to say this is to say that Christians view all things – pain and death and Thin Mints and birth and life and marriage and health and disease and friendship and betrayal and all things, painful or pleasing, life giving or life-destroying – in the light of the glory of God that has been revealed in and through Jesus Christ. And that glory makes all the difference in how we view and understand a life filled with these things.

The coming glory is more beautiful than your present trials are ugly.

Glory is a perspective-bringing thing. It enables us not to despair in the light of calamity and not to lose our priorities in the midst of joys. As far as pain goes, the glory that is coming keeps us from losing all sense of meaning in the midst of it. What the scriptures say is that the coming glory is more beautiful than your present trials are ugly. Here is how Paul put it in Romans 8.

¹⁶ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, ¹⁷ and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. ¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

We are heading to glory! We are heading, first, to our dwelling within the emanating glory of God! We shall live forever in the presence of His glory, seeing it and savoring it. But there is more. Paul is not speaking merely of our observing glory but rather of God catching us up in and transforming us within that glory. I am speaking here of the doctrine of glorification. When Paul says, “that we may also be glorified with him,” he is, again, not speaking of mere observation. He is saying that at the end of all things, God will grant us glory as well! We will be glorified.

Let us hasten to add that this does not mean we become gods. This does not man we become God! Heaven forbid that we would ever say or think such a thing. But what the doctrine of glorification means is that we will caught up into the glory of Jesus Christ. We will have a new body. We will be free of all sin. We will, through the blood of the lamb, stand in peace before our great God. When the Bible speaks about glorification it is speaking about God through Christ lifting us out of the mire of fallen existence and restoring us to what we should be! Again, we were not created to be nor will we ever be gods. We were created to be God’s people! But in Heaven we will finally see the fruition and culmination of that original intent restored through Christ’s great work of rescue. The doctrine of glorification means that we will finally be what God intended for us to be!

Michael Horton says of the doctrine of glorification, “As Jesus is now, we will be also together with him: head and members joined in unending joy. This future hope is what theology identifies as glorification.”[i] That is a good way of putting it, a good way of getting at what Paul means in Romans 8:17 by the statement that we will “also be glorified with him.”

The doctrine of glorification is part and parcel of classic, biblical Christianity, yet, as theologian Millard Erickson says, it “receives little treatment in standard theology textbooks, and even less attention in sermons.” I suppose this is because of how this doctrine can be abused and has been abused by some. Even so, Erickson rightly says, the doctrine of glorification “is rich in practical significance, for it gives believers and encouragement and strengthens their hope.”[ii] Yes, practically, it reminds us that we were made for more and made to be more, that our lives are not intended to be only pain and Thin Mints, that Christ will glorify His people! Peter, in1 Peter 5, put it even more jarring terms.

⁴ And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

Are you suffering? Are you struggling? Is your life just pain and Thin Mints? Do you fear that there might not be more? Are you bound in fear and despair and depression? Then listen:

¹⁸ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

The coming glory is more beautiful than your present trials are ugly! There is more to this life than simply what you see! There is glory! Glory is coming!

To get us to the glory that is coming we have been given the glory Who has come.

It is coming, it is true, but there is even better news: to get us to the glory that is coming we have been given the glory Who has come. Glory is coming, but it is not only coming…it has also come! In Jesus’ “High Priestly Prayer” in John 17, the Lord prays:

²² The glory that you have given me I have given to them, that they may be one even as we are one

Notice the tense: “I have given [the glory that you have given me] to them.” The glory is coming, but the glory has come! We will be glorified in Christ, but we are being glorified now in Christ! It is future, but it is also now. It is “not yet” but it is also “already.”

The glorification of our lives in Christ has begun but will not reach its full culmination until the coming of the day of the Lord. This means that the “already/not yet” glory is right here and right now a source of great joy for us! In Romans 5, Paul wrote:

² 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.

In 1 Peter 4, Peter writes that the “already/not yet” glory enables us to withstand the trials we face today.

¹⁴ If you are insulted for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the Spirit of glory and of God rests upon you.

Hear the word of God: our vision of the glory of God in Christ – that glory that has come and is coming, that glory that is God’s but is being offered to us through Christ Jesus our Lord – can equip us to overcome any and every trial. More than that, we might say that the sufferings of the present age in some way heighten the glory that has come and is coming. “Christ lives in glory,” wrote Dietrich Bonhoeffer, “and the sufferings of this age disappear before such glory. Indeed, if one experiences them to the fullest, they themselves create that glory…precisely because they mean community with Christ.”[iii] Bonhoeffer quoted 2 Corinthians 4 to make his point.

¹⁷ For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison

The glory that has come and is coming, the glory of God in Christ, is able to carry us through and, in fact, has its own role to play in our journey in and to glory! The most powerful and beautiful example of this is found in Acts 7 in the account of the martyrdom of Stephen. Stephen, after preaching boldly before the Jews, is attacked and, ultimately, murdered by his enraged audience. He is stoned to death by his offended hearers. But Luke tells us something fascinating in his description of this event.

⁵⁴ When the members of the Sanhedrin heard this, they were furious and gnashed their teeth at him. ⁵⁵ But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. ⁵⁶ “Look,” he said, “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God.” ⁵⁷ At this they covered their ears and, yelling at the top of their voices, they all rushed at him, ⁵⁸ dragged him out of the city and began to stone him. Meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. ⁵⁹ While they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” ⁶⁰ Then he fell on his knees and cried out, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he fell asleep.

There it is! “But Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up to heaven and saw the glory of God…” So overwhelmed was Stephen by what he saw that he cried out in delight to the men who were killing him, “Look!”

We must get this mind-boggling scene right in our minds: while they are killing him, Stephen is inviting them to look up and see the glory with him! What would it be like to live life in such a way that the glory of God so filled your life that you did not even notice your own suffering? What an astonishing thought!

The glory that is coming and that has come is enough to keep us from giving up. It is enough to keep us from being overwhelmed. It is enough to give us joy in the most grueling of circumstances!

Life may feel like it is just a revolving cycle of pain and Thin Mints, but it is actually so much more: in and through Christ, it is glory! It is the beginning of the unfolding of the glory of God, and unfolding that will find its apex in Heaven when we stand before God Himself.

 

[i] Michael Horton, Pilgrim Theology: Core Doctrines for Christian Disciples. (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012), p.325.

[ii] Millard J. Erickson, Introducing Christian Doctrine. (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2015), p.384.

[iii] Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Barcelona, Berlin, New York, 1928-1931. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works. Gen. Eds., Victoria J. Barnett and Barbara Wojhoski. Vol. 10 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), p.387.