14 Why Hope in God Won't Let You Down

Krisan Marotta: Welcome to Wednesday in the Word. I'm Krisan Marotta, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the 14th and penultimate episode in a companion series to my book, Start Strong: A New Believer's Guide to Christianity. Today we'll be studying one of my favorite passages, Romans 5, 1 through 11, which is also one of the book's See for Yourself passages from chapter 14. What if you know the gospel is true, but deep down you still wonder whether your own weakness, failure, and inconsistency will undo you in the end? What if the thing you fear most is not whether God can save you, but whether you can make it all the way to the finish line? In this episode, we'll look at Romans 5 and see why believers can have absolute confidence that their hope will not disappoint and God will never let them go. Thanks for joining me today. Today we are looking at Romans chapter 5, verses 1 through 11, which is one of my all-time favorite passages, and I love teaching it. When I first heard this passage explained in my first year of college, I finally understood the gospel, even though I'd accepted Jesus as Savior about a year before. Let me set the stage for us where we are in the book of Romans. Paul wrote this letter to the church at Rome, which was a church he had never visited in person. And in this letter, Paul presents the gospel from the ground up. I think that's one of the things that makes Romans such a special book in the New Testament. Because Paul had never taught this church, he didn't assume that they had any prior knowledge, and he explains the gospel start to finish. In the first four chapters, Paul lays out his case for the gospel, for the fact that we are saved by faith in Jesus and not by keeping the law. Then, as he starts chapter 5, he answers the question, so what? What difference does it make that we're saved by faith rather than by keeping the law? And that's the section we're going to look at. Let's start with 5.1. Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. This starts our section. Therefore, because of everything Paul just explained in the first four chapters of the book about how we're saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. Since we have been justified by faith, that whole thing he just explained, we have peace with God. We're no longer enemies or under God's wrath because of what Jesus did for us. And then he's going to go on to say, we rejoice in three things. Because of that, because we've been justified and we now have peace as opposed to war with God, because of Jesus, we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. That's in 5.2, our sufferings in 5.3, and then he has a big discussion of that. And then in 5.11, he says we rejoice in being reconciled to God. Now he spends most of his time on that second point about rejoicing and suffering, and that's the section we're going to spend most of our time on, too. But before we talk about what we rejoice in, let's talk about what it means to rejoice. Almost all translations translate this word differently, this rejoice in the hope of the glory of God and so on. The King James Version translates it glory. The NIV and the ESV, I just read you the ESV, translate it rejoice. And the New American Standard translates it exalt. And if you look at older translations, you might see the word boast. Now, whenever you see a Greek word translated so differently in the various English translations, you know you're dealing with a concept that's hard to express in English, and it's probably a good word to do a word study on. Because this word, rejoice or boast or exalt, it has more than just the sense of being happy, although it does include being happy, but it's more than that. The root of this word is the word for neck. The idea is the neck holds up your head. The neck is the thing that holds your head up high and makes you stand tall with confidence and joy. That's why the New American Standard almost always translates this word boast, although in Romans 5 they choose the word exalt, because in English the word boast often has a negative connotation. We think of boasting as thinking too highly of yourself. But boasting in the New Testament is an important concept. Paul talks about it, he uses this word in several of his letters, but his idea of boasting is not the American idea of thinking I'm better than you or I'm exaggerating in order to put myself above someone else. The idea of boasting here is the contrast between the things I boast about and the things I'm ashamed about. So it's the things I wish you wouldn't notice and I don't, I feel guilty and ashamed of versus the things about which I rejoice with God-given confidence. So on the negative side, there are many aspects of my personality and life that I just wish you wouldn't see. Those are the things I try to hide from public view or make excuses for or deny they happen because I want to put my best foot forward. Those things make me look bad. I'm ashamed of them, and so I try to hide them until you get to know me better. On the other side, and this is true, I'm using the first person, but this is true of all of us. There are things about myself that I'm not ashamed of. I think these aspects speak well of me, and I try to put these forward. These are the things that I want you to remember when you think of me. They're the things I boast about. I exalt in them, I glory or rejoice in them. I can display them openly with joy and confidence. For example, it's a good thing to be an honorable person. I would love to be an honorable, godly person, and I would like to boast about being a person of godly integrity. And I would like for you to see me that way. I am ashamed of the times I am ungodly or dishonorable, and I hope that you won't notice those. That's the idea. The things I boast about are the things about which I rejoice with God-given confidence. The things I don't boast about are the things I'm ashamed of. Now we tend to associate the English word boasting with lying because most of us tend to exaggerate the good things about ourselves. Or we sometimes use those good things as a lever to pull ourselves up while we push someone else down. So we boast in a way that suggests, hey, I'm better than others, or we exaggerate and stretch the truth to make people think higher of us. Well, the reality for us is that most of our boasting is usually a bit of a lie. What do we have that God has not given us? What do we have that we have earned apart from God? Nothing. Our boasting has a negative connotation to it in part because we tend to ignore God's place in the picture. We make something of ourselves that we're not and forget that He made us who we are. Because everything we think of as our own accomplishment in reality is a gift of God. Let me give you an analogy to see if I can explain this better. Suppose I owe a million dollars in student loan debts, and then the government decides to forgive my debt. It's true, I can now boast about the fact that I am debt free, but I didn't do anything to earn it. This good thing is now true of me, this good thing that I'm rejoicing in, exalting in, and boasting about, it is now true of me, but it's not based on my own accomplishment. Similarly, when we boast that we have peace with God, we aren't boasting on something we accomplished. We can boast that we are no longer under his wrath, we can boast that we stand to inherit a place in his kingdom, but we didn't accomplish it. We didn't do anything to gain it. It was given to us as a gift. The way God saves us is similar to the government forgiving our student loans. We do have a reason to rejoice, but not because we did anything to earn it or accomplish it. The natural gifts of our intelligence, success, social status, worldly power, whatever we think of that we boast about, they mean nothing when it comes to salvation. All the things that we think give us a leg up in this world are not enough to make us right with God. And Paul just spent the first four chapters of the book of Romans arguing God did not choose us because we are such stellar people. God did not choose us because we kept the law so well. God didn't measure any of our human accomplishments to see if we were worthy of salvation. We're not. We're sinners. None of us is worthy of salvation. None of us earn God's favor. Therefore, we have no reason to boast about ourselves, but we do have reason to boast because of what God did for us in Christ. God didn't choose us because of our accomplishments, and neither did we choose God because of our accomplishments. Our only boast is in what God has done for us in Christ. Just like having our student loan forgiven, it was a gift that he gave us. There's nothing we can do left to ourselves to earn it or force him to save us. It's all a gift of his grace. All right. So when we're talking about boasting, we're talking about the thing that we rejoice in, the thing that gives us significance, the thing that we glory and exalt in about ourselves, but we had nothing to do with it. It's not our accomplishment. It came to us as a gift of God. Now, let's look at the first reason to rejoice. He says, we'll bring in five, two. 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 the hope of the glory of God. So that word rejoice is our word boast. We're not saved by our own doing, it's God doing, yet we have a reason to rejoice, a reason to boast. We have reason to hold our head up high and stand with joy and confidence and a sense of satisfaction because of what God has done for us. And what are we pointing to that gives us that satisfaction? We have a hope of the glory of God. So let's break that down. First, let's talk about hope. We use the word hope to describe wishful thinking. We might say, Oh, I hope it doesn't rain Saturday. Oh, I hope I get to go to the concert. And that's just wishful thinking. We have no idea if the thing we're wishing for will happen or not. We'd just like it to happen. That is not the concept of hope in the Bible. In the Bible, hope is never wishful thinking. Hope is a confident, eager expectation that something good will happen. God has made promises to us. We believe that God will keep those promises, and we wait with confidence and joy for the fulfillment of those promises. That's hope. We do not yet have what has been promised, but we live in hope, the confident, joyful, eager expectation that God will fulfill his promises. Now, Paul says we're boasting in that hope, and that hope is for the glory of God. So the next thing we want to talk about is what is the glory of God? Well, glory is a quality something has when it is praiseworthy, radiant, and beautiful. And God is glorious for many reasons. He has glory in his holiness, in his wisdom, in being the source of life and goodness, in justice and mercy. We could go on and on. All of those qualities make God glorious in a way that when we see him, we are struck with awe and wonder. He is praiseworthy and beautiful. Right now, in this sinful fallen life, we, his children, do not share that glory. We do not have his righteous, holy character. We are not wise like we should be wise. We are not merciful or generous or forgiving as we should be. And we are not praiseworthy, radiant, or morally beautiful. We are flawed by sin and death. Included in the promises of the gospel, though, is the promise that one day God will free us completely from sin and death and all the things about us that are not praiseworthy and make us glorious. Paul calls this glorification. Earlier in Romans, Paul said we all sin and fall short of the glory of God. Now he says here, but one day we have a hope that we will share in the glory of God. We will no longer fall short of it. All that is ugly and shameful and evil about us will be replaced by God's holy, righteous, beautiful moral character. We will share God's glorious, holy character and become creatures who are truly worthy of praise. Having God give us his glory, share his glory with us, and make us morally beautiful people is the solution to our deepest problem. Our biggest problem is we're sinners, and there is no other solution to that problem than obtaining the priceless glory of God. And that's part of the promise of the gospel, that one day, when Jesus returns, God will grant us that. Our hope, our confident, eager expectation is that God has promised to share his glory with us, and we wait for it joyfully and confidently. That brings us to our second post. Let's bring in verses three through five. 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. So the first thing we boast about is we have a hope of the glory of God. The second thing we boast about is our sufferings. Now that may sound ironic. Sufferings are just what you'd expect: the trials, tragedies, all the hardships of life that make life hard. Now, our temptation is to think that when we encounter trials and hardship, it must mean that God is angry with us or he's abandoned us. We think, oh, I must have done something wrong, I'm on God's bad side, and now I'm being punished. That's why I'm suffering. But suffering does not mean that God is angry with us. Far from it, Paul is saying we boast, we rejoice, exalt in our suffering. Suffering is one of the things that we can point to with satisfaction. Now he's not saying we enjoy it. He's not saying we feel happy about it. He's saying we boast about it because we understand the place of suffering in our lives, and we know that it has a very worthwhile purpose. In this context, as will become clear, Paul is talking specifically about the trials that test and mature our faith, the circumstances of life that we face that rock our world and make us start doubting and asking questions like do I really trust God? Do I really believe in the promises of the gospel? Will I really trust a God who will make me go through this? Those are the situations he's talking about. Situations that make us doubt and wonder whether we will continue trusting God. Now, why would we boast in that? Why is this process of having our faith tested through a hardship something that we would point to with satisfaction? And he tells us, because suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope. So let's go through that chain. First, he says suffering produces endurance. Now, by endurance, he simply means perseverance, what the reformers meant by the perseverance of the saints. The crisis comes that rocks our world. We squarely step into it, we face the question, will I continue trusting God if he asked me to go through this hardship? And we say, yes, we do, we persevere. Our faith endures, we follow him through it, and we come out at the other end of the trial with our faith intact. So the trial tested the quality and maturity of our faith, and our faith endured. It stood strong, it persevered, it was shown to be the real deal. So the trial put pressure on our faith to see what it was made of, and the test revealed our faith was made of the genuine real stuff. It is strong and mature. So we point to the trials that rock our spiritual world with joy because trials lead to this thing called endurance or perseverance. And endurance produces character, and character produces hope. Now, what does he mean by character here? The New American Standard translates that proven character. This word describes the characteristic of having been tested and shown by the test to be worthy. So what's being tested here is the genuineness of faith. That's the question. The believer has a hope of the glory of God, but am I a believer? Am I going to continue following Jesus when it gets hard? How do I know if I will? How do I know if my faith is genuine? That's the critical question we all face. And Paul is saying one way you know that you have real saving faith is if that faith has been tested and survived the test. If your faith has been tested and shown through the test to be the real deal, then you have objective, tangible evidence that your faith is real. You are a believer and therefore hope is yours. So what is the test? How do you know if you've passed? You persevere. Pseudo-faith falls apart under pressure. You've probably known people who said, Yeah, I tried that Christian stuff, it didn't work for me. They never had faith to begin with. Their faith, or what they claimed to have faith, fell apart when life got hard. So Paul is looking at the kind of hardship, the kind of trial that makes you doubt God Himself and puts pressure on your faith, has the potential to shatter your faith, but instead of shattering it, you hang on, you cling to the promises of God, and you come out of the other end of the trial with your faith intact. That's tangible evidence of true belief. So that's suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces this characteristic of having been tested and shown to be the real deal. And if that's happened, then you have hope. Then you know that you have genuine saving faith, and all the promises of God will be yours, and all the hope of the promises of the gospel will be fulfilled. Now think about who this testing is for. It's not for God. He already knows who has faith and who doesn't. It's not really for your friends and family because why would they care so personally or so? Why would it be significant to them? But proving to me that my faith is real is a great gift for me. Testing my faith is for my sake. Testing my faith gives me visible, historical, reliable evidence that I have faith and I am in fact a child of God. I can look back in my life and go, I went through that. I went through that trial and I'm still here. Therefore, my faith is real, and that gives me confidence that my hope is real. Now let me repeat again what is not being tested here and what is being tested here. What's not being tested is how perfect I am. What's not being tested is how good or worthy I am, or whether or not I can earn my salvation. That test is over and we all failed. The thing that is being tested is whether or not I have faith. The thing that's being tested is not, am I a sinner? Yes, I am a sinner. That's true. But what is being tested through the trials is whether I long to be free from that sin and my heart is open to God. So proving the characteristic of my faith brings about my personal hope. I personally can hope in the glory of God. I know that the promises of the gospel are mine and the believer's hope is mine because I have evidence that God is truly working in my life, and that evidence is I persevered through trials. That's not just promises for the elect out there, whoever they may be. Those are promises for me personally because trials give me personally tangible evidence that. That I am among the elect. Now that's pretty good news, but Paul has more to say. Let's go on and look at 5-5. And hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. A hope that puts you to shame is a hope that doesn't come to pass. You're counting on it and then it never happens. It fails you. And there would be nothing worse than investing the one great hope of your life in something that didn't come to pass. The day comes and you're ashamed and disappointed because hope let you down. It didn't happen. Paul is saying, for the believer who has gone through this process of having your faith tested by trials, your hope will not disappoint you. If you've gone through this process of facing trials that rock your world and make you question your faith and you cling to your faith and stand firm in it, then you can be confident your hope is certain it will not fail you. Now let's think about the kind of hope he's talking about here. There are various ways I might fear that my hope will fail. Perhaps I'm mistaken in thinking that God exists and I put my hope in a God who isn't even there. Perhaps I'm mistaken in my belief that Jesus is the Son of God and has the power and the authority to forgive my sins. Perhaps Plato was right instead. Perhaps I'm mistaken in thinking this hope is all that worthwhile. It comes and I find out, well, that really wasn't so great after all. Those are not the sorts of issues Paul is talking about here. We would have to go to other passages to address those fears, and we can address those fears from other passages. But that's not the question Paul's talking about here in Romans 5. The fear that Paul is addressing here is the fear that I am afraid my hope will fail me, and I will not share in the glory of God. I will not enter the kingdom of heaven because I myself do not have what it takes to get there. I fear that I'm fooling myself. I'm just a big hypocrite. Maybe I passed one test of faith, but you know, the next big trial could be the one that shatters my faith into tiny little pieces. The next big event could be my undoing. And even though I've made it this far, I might not have what it takes to ultimately cross the finish line. That's the fear Paul is addressing. And he's saying, you don't have to worry about that. Why is it that my hope will not fail me? Why is it that I need not fear my own sin will cause me to stumble and fall short? He goes on to explain, let's look at 5.5 through 5.8. Because the love of God has been poured out within our hearts through the Holy Spirit who is given to us. For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person, though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die. But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And going on in 9 and 10, since therefore we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if, while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. Now that sounds like a lot to get to, but let's break it down. Why will our hope not fail us? Paul's answer is basically because God loves us. God's love for us guarantees that we will reach the fullness of our salvation. God loved us enough to justify us while we were still under his wrath. If he loved us enough to do that, then now that we're no longer under wrath, surely he loves us enough to sanctify us. That's Paul's point. The cross already shows the depth of God's love. So even though we've not yet seen the finished work of sanctification, we know he loves us enough to get us there. And Paul uses this analogy. If it takes a certain measure of love to do kindness to an enemy, then surely it takes less love to do kindness for a friend. Well, God already demonstrated that greater amount of love because he sent his son to die for us while we were his enemies. Well, now we're his children. Now we've seen the cross, we've been adopted into his family. So even though we haven't yet seen the end of the process, we know God loves us enough to finish what he started. Let me see if I can explain that with another analogy. Suppose your beloved child, your toddler, wanders out into the path of an oncoming car. Even if the odds of survival were incredibly small, you'd try. In that split second, if you saw even the slightest chance to save your beloved child, you would run out into the path of that car, scoop them up, and flee across the street. Why? Because that's your child, the child that you love, and you love that child enough to lay down your life. But now change the picture. What if the person standing in the path of the car were the next door neighbor that hates you and makes your life miserable? You might go, but it wouldn't be the same. After all, this is not someone you love dearly. He's someone who's caused you a lot of grief. You might shout a warning, but would you really run out in front of the car? So that Paul is Paul's point. Which is the greater act of love? Running out in front of the car to die for someone who hates you and you hate him? Or running out in front of the car to die for your beloved child? Well, the greater act of love is dying for your enemy. Now let's take it one step further. What if the person in front of the car were a truly evil man? Maybe he's Hitler or a serial killer who's murdered 10 to 20 innocent people. Would you rush out to save him? Would you even consider making that sacrifice? Well, that's Paul's argument. What requires more love to die for your child or to die for your enemy? Obviously, it takes greater love to die for your enemy. Well, now let's push the analogy one more step. Suppose somehow you found the courage to die for your enemy, and all the while he mocked you and laughed at you and treated your sacrifice as worthless. As you attempt to push him out of the way of the car, he mocks you and calls you a fool. Wouldn't that require greater love still? Well, now we've arrived at the cross because Jesus made that kind of sacrifice for us. We were the enemies of God, we were under his wrath. We had no claim on his favor. We were estranged and even opposed to him. And even as he died for us, we mocked him and called him a fool. So Paul's reasoning is simple and really powerful. If God loved you enough to die for you on the cross while you were his enemy, do you really think he will stop loving you now that you are his adopted child? He's already shown you the greater act of love. So doesn't it make sense that he will also show you the easier, lesser act of love? If he reconciled you to himself through the death of his son, won't he get you the rest of the way now that you belong to him? Now notice something important in Paul's argument. His argument works only if God is responsible for our sanctification. If sanctification is even partly up to me, then Paul's logic would fall apart. The basic line of his argument is this your sanctification, your becoming holy, your hope of the glory of God is certain because God loves you. As a new believer, I thought salvation worked like this. I thought that God justified me and forgave me and then handed me a ticket to heaven. And now the rest is up to me. He's done his part. Now I have to do my part. I have to respond appropriately. I have to clean up my act and live like a Christian. And I do that out of gratitude because he's already done the hard part. And on one level, that sounded right to me. I wanted to be sanctified. I thought that was a good improper desire. But the problem was it wasn't working. I was morally paralyzed. I thought I had to make it happen. And I couldn't appeal to God for help because in my mind, he'd already done everything he was going to do, and the rest was up to me. So I could never say, well, my hope does not disappoint because how would I know if I was going to make it? The rest is up to me. And, you know, the jury's out on that one. How would I know I wouldn't fail? Now Paul comes along and says, you know what? You're going to get there. You're not going to fail because God loves you. Well, in my understanding, at first glance, that seemed almost like a non-sequitur. What does God loving me have to do with whether or not I become holy? Well, it has everything to do with me becoming holy because me becoming holy or sanctification is part of God's gift. Salvation is more than just forgiveness. Salvation includes replacing my sinful, wretched self with the hope of the glory of God. Salvation includes God making me holy, and that too is an incredible part of the gift he gives. Sanctification is not a burden we carry for God. Sanctification is another gift God gives us. If sanctification were in any way cooperative in the sense that success or failure depends on me, then there's always going to be room for failure. And in that case, we can never say with confidence our hope will not disappoint. That's why this passage is so important. It only makes sense if Paul assumes sanctification is God's responsibility. Becoming holy is not ultimately up to me. It's up to God. And he has already shown at the cross the depth of his commitment to save me, and then he's given me his Holy Spirit to seal the deal as a pledge that he will fulfill his promises. Now there is another view out there that says something a little different. It claims we can hinder God's process of sanctification. We can block the process, get in the way, and slow it down, but maybe not ultimately break it, but we can make it hard. For example, if we don't pray enough, if we don't study the Bible enough, if we don't do the right spiritual disciplines, then even though God wants to save us from our sin, well, he will eventually, but we're not going to really experience his blessing because we're resisting him. Again, if that were true, how could Paul possibly say that our hope does not disappoint because God loves us? Do you see the problem? If I can ultimately help or hinder my sanctification, then my hope does not rest on how much God loves me. My hope rests on how much I love God. But that's not Paul's argument. Paul does not say you'll make it because you love God enough. He says, you'll make it because God loves you enough. Now, why does he argue that way? Because the outcome is not finally up to me. Even my sanctification, my receiving the glory of God, my final holiness is not resting on my ability to cooperate well or at least stop resisting. It rests on God, and God has already shown that he loves us enough to finish what he started. That means you can have real confidence, not just a vague wish, but a real confident hope. You will make it to the finish line and enter heaven because God has already shown you that he loves you enough to get you there. Having loved you enough to die on the cross for you while you were his enemy and mocked him and rejected him, now that you are his beloved child, he's going to finish the job. Now, Paul concludes, more than that, this is 511. More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. So we rejoice in God because God's love takes a very active form in our lives. God demonstrated his great love through the cross, and then he seals it with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Not only are we loved, we are reconciled. That means the biggest problem of our earthly existence is solved. Our biggest problem is sin and death, and that problem is solved because we are reconciled to God. We will be forgiven, we will be freed from sin and granted eternal life because of what Jesus did on the cross. So that inspires this great joy, this gratitude, this boasting and exalting in what God has done. We continue to persevere, we continue to grow in faith and stand firm in our hope because God loved us enough to send his son. We can count on his love and we can count on his spirit to finish the work he began. Of course, I don't have the strength on my own to run the race to the finish line. I would crumble like a house of cards when trials come my way. That's why, from my perspective, hardships are earth-shattering, world-rocking trials. But God has saved us through his son and given us his spirit to seal the deal. The Spirit of God is an anchor in the storm. The Spirit of God is working to strengthen our faith, mature our faith, and teach us the truth and keep us from turning away. So God in his love actively intervenes in our lives through his spirit to give us faith and persevere until the end. So Paul says, your hope will not disappoint because God loves you enough to get you through. If it's up to me or you to help or at least not hinder God's work, then God's love is irrelevant. He could love me to the moon and back, and salvation would still rest on my shoulders. But that's not Paul's argument. His argument is you can have utter confidence in your hope because your sanctification, your perseverance, your achieving your hope is not resting on your shoulders. It's resting on God, and He's already proved to you that He loves you enough to get you there. And as we know from other passages, like the one we looked at in the last episode, God seals that promise with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is actively at work in our lives to build and mature our faith. The Holy Spirit is not optional help along the way or the path of the Christian life that I must choose to use. People always ask, what do I do to walk by the Spirit? What must I do to make sure that the Spirit is changing me? Well, that's the wrong question. That's like standing in front of a tsunami and asking, What do I do to let the water carry me away? Should I spread my arms out like this, or should I kick my feet like so? You know what? It's a tsunami. It doesn't matter. You're gonna go wherever the water takes you, no matter how you hold your arms or kick your feet. It's gonna sweep you away no matter what, and you can have confidence in that. Well, that's how the Holy Spirit works. Just be grateful, trust and believe. He'll get you where he wants you to go. The Holy Spirit is the active love of God intervening in my life, in my inner spirit, to bring God's will about for me and make me the kind of person who will persevere. That's what he does for us. That's the universal gift of the Spirit. He makes us the kind of people who will persevere through trials. He makes us the kind of people who long for the righteousness of God and stand firm in that hope when trials come. Now, ultimately, yes, we have to persevere in faith, but why is it we will persevere? Because God in his love and grace put his Holy Spirit inside us to make us the kind of people who will. Ultimately, we're not counting on ourselves to get to the finish line. We're counting on the love of God and the active intervention of his spirit. I think this passage teaches something really important about the nature of salvation, and that is ultimately salvation depends on God's efforts, not mine. But it also tells us something very important about God's love. We are all inclined to think that the way we can tell God loves us is that he removes trials and hardships from our lives. We think, oh, we know he loves us if he makes our life easy and comfortable. And I think we're inclined to think that way because that's how we love each other. We want to make our children's lives easier. We want to remove trouble from our friends' paths. But Paul has a different picture of God's love, and really so does James and Peter. This theme comes up a lot in Scripture. Scripture teaches that God deliberately, on purpose, puts us through hardships, trials, and difficult times, times that test our faith, and that's not an accident. That's part of the plan. And why does he do it? Because he loves us. Because he wants us to be people who get to the kingdom of heaven, and this is part of the plan. So he roughs us up through trials on purpose. He does it out of love because trials produce endurance, and endurance tests the character of our faith, and faith leads to hope, and we know that our hope will not disappoint us. The thing that we most need in this earthly life is to remain faithful to God. Nothing in this life is more important than that. Our biggest problem is we have a tendency to walk away from Him. That's one of the big lessons of the Old Testament. Left to ourselves, we turn away from God. Just read Exodus or judges or kings. But God uses troubles, trials, and sufferings to get our attention, to focus our attention and turn us back to the big issues. Trials make us remember that we long for the promises of God. Trials make us cling to God and we discover that our faith is real. And there's nothing more valuable in this life than having genuine saving faith. It is so great a gift that it's worth going through trials to gain it. Thank you for listening to Wednesday in the Word, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. The blog version of this episode is on wednesdayintheword.com slash Start Strong Podcast14. You can listen to all the episodes in this series, as well as many other series, at WednesdaytheWord.com. There is no charge, no spam, and no ads. Just free trustworthy resources to help you grow and understand scripture. If this podcast has blessed you, please consider leaving it a positive reading and follow it on your favorite platform. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. If you're reading along in my book Start Strong, A New Believer's Guide to Christianity, read chapter 15 before the next episode. And if you are reading the book, I would be very, very grateful if you would leave me a positive review on Amazon or Goodreads. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician, Reggie Coast. You can find Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you so much for joining me today. I'm Krisan Marotta, and I will see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.