Not Worth Comparing

Every week, you and I wrestle with the messiness of our present world. In this space, we grapple with headline news and the evidence of brokenness. Closer to home, you navigate pain and loss and difficulty. I do the same. Through it all, we often ask, “Why?” Why must we endure such pain, frustration, and agony when we serve a God bigger than it all? Why is it necessary?

Those questions find both voice and resolution in Romans 8, which describes our current condition as one of “bondage” and “decay” (v. 21) and acknowledges that “the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time” (v. 22).

Does that resonate with you? Does it feel as though your struggle and your effort results only in the deterioration of all that is around you? Is your spirit groaning and do you sense that all of creation is groaning with you?

If so, read on, because the reason for our temporary pain and suffering is intensely beautiful! Verse 19 says, “For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed,” and verse 20 says that it was God’s will that creation be subjected to frustration.

That sounds like the opposite of beautiful, doesn’t it? That sounds more cruel than beautiful. But as always, context is everything. Why did God entangle our existence with suffering? In verses 14-16, God expresses His intense fatherly love for us by granting us the “spirit of adoption” and claiming us as His very own children! Then, in verse 17, He gives us the reason for our suffering: “Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

You are an heir. You are an heir because you are God’s child. You are God’s child because He has adopted you! He has adopted you because He chose you! And finally, you suffer because He suffered and because He longs for you to share in the glory that will come on the other side of your suffering!

Your God has chosen to share His glory with you, and the temporary price to pay is that you will also share in His suffering on the way to that glory. It is an astounding and glorious trade!

One final thought. You might be tempted to weigh the cost of this exchange. Is your present suffering worth the future shared glory? Don’t be ashamed if that question wells up—you are presently in a finite body that cannot fully comprehend the magnitude of the promised glory, so the question is normal. It is one with which I regularly grapple! 

It is a question that makes verses 18-19 jump off the page! Read and consider this weighing of the exchange slowly and with care:

“I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed.”

Not. Worth. Comparing.

Friends, it is not even a close call. It is not just that your shared glory with God exceeds your present suffering. It is not just that the exchange will be worth it.

It is that the two are not even worth comparing!

Your suffering is for the purpose of being called a child of God’s, and all creation waits in breathless anticipation for your association in Him to be revealed!

You are suffering. It is true.

But your glory is coming, and all of creation will be astonished at its magnitude.

Your present suffering is not even worth comparing to the glory that is coming, and in which you will share with Him forever!

The following article originally appeared in Thann’s “The Equipped” Weekly Newsletter. For more information on Thann’s weekly email, click here.