Romans 8:17

Romans 8:17

I. Sonship with Christ necessarily involves suffering with Him. This is not merely a text for people that are in affliction, but for all of us. It does not merely contain a law for a certain part of life, but it contains a law for the whole of life. It is the inward strife and conflict in getting rid of evil, which the Apostle designates here with the name of suffering with Christ, that we may be also glorified together. On this high level and not on the lower one of the consideration that Christ will help us to bear outward infirmities and afflictions, do we find the true meaning of all that Scripture teaching that says indeed, "Yes, our sufferings are His," but lays the foundation of it in this, "His sufferings are ours. "

II. This community of suffering is a necessary preparation for the community of glory. God puts us to the school of sorrow, under that stern tutor and governor here, and gives us the opportunity of suffering with Christ, that by the daily crucifixion of our own nature, by the lessons and blessings of outward calamities and changes, there may grow up in us a still nobler and purer and perfecter Divine life; and that we may so be made capable more capable, and capable of more of that inheritance for which the only necessary thing is the death of Christ, and the only fitness is faith in His name.

III. That inheritance is the necessary result of the suffering that has gone before. The suffering results from our union with Christ. That union must needs culminate in glory. The inheritance is sure because Christ possesses it now. Trials have no meaning unless they are means to an end. The end is the inheritance; and sorrows here, as well as the Spirit's work here, are the earnest of the inheritance. The measure of the distance from the farthest point of our darkest earthly sorrow to the throne may help us to the measure of the closeness of the bright, perfect, perpetual glory above, when we are on the throne; for if so be that we are sons, we must suffer with Him; if so be that we suffer, we must be glorified together.

A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester, 1st series, p. 82.

References: Romans 8:17 . Homilist, 3rd series, vol. iv., p. 48; M. Rainsford, No Condemnation, pp. 95, 103; Spurgeon, Morning by Morning, p. 135.Romans 8:18 . H. Wace, Church of England Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 49; Fletcher, Thursday Penny Pulpit, vol. xvi., p. 221.Romans 8:18-21 . H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. vi., p. 27.