“Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” (Romans 5:1-5 NKJ).
Peter and Paul are the two great foundational warriors of the Church, Peter leading the apostles into the new era with the Holy Spirit and Paul establishing most of the theology upon which our doctrines are established. Both write about persecution, about suffering, and both agree that, as believers, we are to glory in that suffering. The NLT says this: “We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials, for we know that they are good for us—they help us learn to endure” (Romans 5:3). There is a sense that we should embrace our struggles, not because we are masochists and want to hurt, but because we know that God will use these struggles to mold our characters into the image of His Son.
Why is this so important? Peter tells us in the preceding verses:
“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him who called us to His own glory and excellence, by which He has granted to us His precious and very great promises, that through these you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature” (v. 3-4 RSV).
Paul described the battle within believers, a battle that is spiritual and involves both the commands of God and the lusts of the flesh:
“For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do” (Romans 7:15 NKJV).
As believers, we should want to do what the Word says. We should love our enemies. We should put aside sin. We should forgive and leave peaceably. We should witness the gospel to the lost. But often we don’t do those things. We hold onto anger. We seek revenge upon those who have hurt us. We turn to the things that make us feel good to assuage our pain and guilt. So the Lord, in His infinite love and mercy, allows into our lives those things which turn us toward Him. He allows pain, suffering, and persecution to that we “may escape from the corruption that is in the world.”
Peter tells us to “give all diligence” to this process. Diligence is defined as “a steady, earnest, and energetic effort.” Thus, the process to which Peter is calling us is something that we do all the time, that we do with all of our hearts and desire, and which requires energy and effort. It isn’t something that happens to us, but is rather an interactive process in which we are fully involved with the Holy Spirit.
I can remember an Internet conversation that I had with a woman some time back. She basically said that she was who she was, faults and all, and if and when God wanted to change her, He would. She wasn’t the least interested in working at the process of change herself. Yet, here Peter is fully explaining to us that we must be involved in the process of change and that this process will involve suffering.
The first thing that Peter tells us to do is to add virtue to our faith. Virtue is moral purity or excellence. It really means simply doing the right thing (which, as most of us know, is usually not the easy thing). It means telling the truth, being kind and gentle, choosing the honest decision, abstaining from a vast multitude of behavior. We don’t see much virtue in our society today. It may be even difficult to think about what is the right thing to do. Often, what we have been taught (or seen through either our own families or through the media) is actually the wrong thing to do. In order to find out what is virtuous we need to know what the Bible says and then be willing to do it in every part of our lives.
It’s interesting that Peter puts virtue before knowledge. In a sense what he is saying is that we can’t understand the deeper things of Christianity until we understand the basics of right and wrong. As long as we are involved with habitual sin, the discernment of the deeper things of God will remain hidden from us. The writer of Hebrews speaks to this:
“About this we have much to say that is hard to explain, since you have become dull in understanding. For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you need someone to teach you again the basic elements of the oracles of God. You need milk, not solid food; for everyone who lives on milk, being still an infant, is unskilled in the word of righteousness. But solid food is for the mature, for those whose faculties have been trained by practice to distinguish good from evil” (5:11-14 NRSV).
We must be trained to distinguish good from evil, trained not only understanding what virtue is, but applying it to our lives. We cannot understand or discern the deeper things of God until we not only understand good from evil, but have practiced it in our own lives! Paul tells us, in Romans, that “tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character.” It is suffering (tribulation) that forces us to persevere. And this isn’t necessarily even an external force, but an internal one. It is like a track that we must travel, at track that doesn’t allow us to turn to the left or the right, but forces us to continue in one direction, that direction being obedience to God. Oh, we can make the choice to escape the suffering, but if we do, we lose the opportunity to develop perseverance. And it is that perseverance that develops character (virtue) in our lives. If we want to move on to the deeper things of God, if we want to mature as Christians so that we are able to reach out to those around us with true spiritual maturity and teaching, then we must be willing to push through the suffering, to persevere through it, to reach on to the higher and deeper things of Christ.
© 2012 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. Permission granted for nonprofit and church groups to use this article in its entirety (including this notice). For other uses, please contact servinggodalone@yahoo.com.
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