Hope Does Not Disappoint

 Hope Does Not Disappoint

June 21, 2023

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.

Romans 5:3-5

Big Idea - We have hope because of the love God shows us each and every day. 

verse 3

And not only so - We not only rejoice in times of prosperity, and of health. Paul proceeds to show that this plan is not less adapted to produce support in trials.

The meaning is, that we rejoice not only in hope; not only in the direct results of justification, in the immediate effect which religion itself produces; but we carry our joy and triumph even into the midst of trials.

In tribulations - In afflictions. The word used here refers to all kinds of trials which people are called to endure; 

Knowing - Being assured of this. Paul’s assurance might have arisen from reasoning on the nature of religion, and its tendency to produce comfort;

or it is more probable that he was speaking here the language of his own experience. He had found it to be so.

This was written near the close of his life, and it states the personal experience of a man who endured, perhaps, as much as anyone ever did, in attempting to spread the gospel;

Yet he, like all other Christians, could leave his deliberate testimony to the fact that Christianity was sufficient to sustain the soul in its severest trials;

Worketh - Produces; the effect of afflictions on the minds of Christians is to make them patient.

Sinners are irritated and troubled by them; they complain, and become more and more obstinate and rebellious.

they deem God a hard master; and they become fretful and rebellions just in proportion to the depth and continuance of their trials.

But we glory in tribulations also - All the sufferings we endure for the testimony of our Lord are so sanctified to us by his grace, that they become powerful instruments of increasing our happiness.

Tribulation worketh patience - Ὑπομονην, Endurance under trials, without sustaining loss or deterioration. 

patience is a grace, of which God is the author; it is one of the fruits of the Spirit; the word of God is the means of its being first implanted; and afflictions are the means of promoting it, when they are sanctified

otherwise they produce impatience, murmurings, and repinings; there is great need of patience under them; and, by divine grace, they are the matter and occasion of exercising, and so of increasing it.

verse 4

hope is a gift of God's grace,

Full proof, by trial, of the truth of our religion, the solidity of our Christian state, and the faithfulness of our God. I

Experience, hope - For we thus calculate, that he who has supported us in the past will support us in those which may yet come; 

verse 5

As a vain hope does, things not answering to expectation, it deceives, and is lost;

By "the love of God" is meant, not that love by which we love God, for hope does not depend upon, nor is it supported by our love and obedience to God;

Now the love which the Spirit sheds abroad in the heart, is the source and spring, both of justification itself, which is owing to the free grace of God, and of all the effects of it, as peace with God, access to the throne of grace, rejoicing in hope of the glory of God, the usefulness of afflictions, and the stability of hope, and is here alleged as the reason of all.

And hope maketh not ashamed - A hope that is not rationally founded will have its expectation cut off; and then shame and confusion will be the portion of its possessor.

We have the most solid and convincing testimony of God’s love to us, by that measure of it which he has communicated to our hearts.

This love is the spring of all our actions; it is the motive of our obedience; the principle through which we love God, we love him because he first loved us; and we love him with a love worthy of himself, because it springs from him: 

Because the love of God - Love toward God. There is produced an abundant, an overflowing love to God.

it is meant that Christians are under his sanctifying influence; that he produces in their hearts the Christian graces; and fills their minds with peace, and love, and joy.

The Holy Spirit is thus represented as dwelling in the hearts of believers;