“And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,” Romans 8:17-18.
These verses were part of may Bible reading on Tuesday 18th July.
As we said in our first part of this article, Romans chapter 8 is brimful of a gloriously heart-warming setting forth of the sweetest Gospel truths. This is a truth that can’t be overestimated!
Each statement of the Holy Ghost inspired apostle is a miniature Bible in itself!
These two verses contain so much but I do wish to set froth a few considerations that were suggested to my soul as I read them.
I. THE SUFFERINGS EXPERIENCED ARE AN ASSURANCE OF SHARING IN CHRIST’S GLORY.
Paul states the truth most emphatically in 2 Timothy 2:12.
“If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us.”
1. To refuse to publicly own Christ, when it will cost us a measure of suffering, if only by loss of social standing, is tantamount to inviting the Lord to deny us! Dr John Brown commented on these words, ‘There is a secret and silent denying of him, when men are ashamed of him, and do not confess him, . . . There is a partial denying of Christ, which was Peter’s case, though his faith in him, and love to him, were not lost.’
Such a denial will cost the one guilty of such, the fulness of the blessed presence of the Lord. This may be seen in David’s ‘denial’ of the Lord when he engaged in wicked activities and was mercifully brought to recognise the cost of those actions.
“Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit,” Psalm 51:9-12.
Here is the bitter and dreadful realisation on David’s part of what his wrongdoing had cost him!
So it is with any congregation or denomination, which, for the sake of appeasing the reproach of men, set aside any bold and public stand against the sins of today, but instead, tolerate them, embrace them and are silent in response to the abundant evidence of their encroachment into the pulpit and pew!
2. I challenge any minister or elder or Presbytery office-bearer to deny that the presence of the Lord is not amongst as it once undeniably was! Since Christ desires to bless to the fullest measure His people at all times, why is it we are in our present state?
Could it be we are as the church of the Laodiceans was in the 1st century. There Christ was forced out so that He had to address the church from outside!
“Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me,” Revelation 3:20.
The reason for the Saviour’s departure is easily discovered.
“I know thy works, that thou art neither cold nor hot: I would thou wert cold or hot. So then because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spue thee out of my mouth. Because thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked: I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed, and that the shame of thy nakedness do not appear; and anoint thine eyes with eyesalve, that thou mayest see. As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent,” 3:15-19.
The “gold” and “goods” — granted them by the mercy of the Lord, took the place of the spiritual “gold tried in the fire”. They had begun to think of themselves as having “need of nothing”!
On our knees
Gone are the days when we Free Presbyterians had to get down on our knees and cry to God for the money to buy materials to build a wee hall to house our meetings! Our coffers are full and that generates the very foolish notion that we can go our own ways and not closely follow and obey the Lord.
3. If there was a greater consciousness of the coming kingdom of Christ’s glory there might be a greater willingness to live in the light of that day! Two thousand years ago, the early believers lived with a daily awareness of the return of Christ.
“And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body,” Romans 8:23.
“So that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ,” 1 Corinthians 1:7.
“For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God; and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, even Jesus, which delivered us from the wrath to come,” 1 Thessalonians 1:9-10.
“And the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God, and into the patient waiting for Christ,” 2 Thessalonians 3:5.
Waiting
It was not that they believed in ‘an any minute rapture’, as some foolishly teach. No, waiting in faith for the return of Christ as promised by Him — “And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also,” John 14:3 — was the daily disposition of the early believers.
The explanation of the term “patient waiting” is: ‘The characteristic of a man who is not swerved from his deliberate purpose and his loyalty to faith and piety by even the greatest trials and sufferings.’
That stedfastness was the fruit of a constant consciousness of the return of Christ! The wandering and floating around that marks today’s ‘Christianity’ is the fruit of a forgetting this great truth – The Lord is coming back.
Forecast
Christ forecast this sad state of affairs in His exposition of the end times given in Matthew 24. “Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Verily I say unto you, That he shall make him ruler over all his goods.
But and if that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite his fellowservants, and to eat and drink with the drunken; the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him, and in an hour that he is not aware of, and shall cut him asunder, and appoint him his portion with the hypocrites: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth,” verses 46-51.
We cease to live as Christians when we ‘forget’ the returning of Christ!
II. THE GLORY CHRISTIANS WILL SHARE AT CHRIST’S RETURN IS SUCH THAT A DUE CONSIDERATION OF IT WILL UTTERLY CANCEL OUT ANY SENSE OF PRESENT SUFFERING!
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us,” verse 18.
1. Here is what sustained the martyrs amidst their tortures! Yes, there would have been a wonderful overriding of the pain that would have been the outcome of the torturous and cruel sufferings they were called upon to endure. Such was the experience of the those we call the ‘Three Hebrew children’.
“Then Nebuchadnezzar came near to the mouth of the burning fiery furnace, and spake, and said, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, ye servants of the most high God, come forth, and come hither. Then Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, came forth of the midst of the fire. And the princes, governors, and captains, and the king’s counsellors, being gathered together, saw these men, upon whose bodies the fire had no power, nor was an hair of their head singed, neither were their coats changed, nor the smell of fire had passed on them. Then Nebuchadnezzar spake, and said, Blessed be the God of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who hath sent his angel, and delivered his servants that trusted in him, and have changed the king’s word, and yielded their bodies, that they might not serve nor worship any god, except their own God,” Daniel 3:26-28.
The first martyr
But in the case of Stephen, the first Christian martyr, I believe that the Lord supplied grace that enabled him to endure the pains of his sufferings.
We read in Acts 7:54-60: “When they heard these things, they were cut to the heart, and they gnashed on him with their teeth. But he, being full of the Holy Ghost, looked up stedfastly into heaven, and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, And said, Behold, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God. Then they cried out with a loud voice, and stopped their ears, and ran upon him with one accord, And cast him out of the city, and stoned him: and the witnesses laid down their clothes at a young man’s feet, whose name was Saul. And they stoned Stephen, calling upon God, and saying, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.”
Son of man standing . . .
It was as Stephen saw the “ Son of man standing”, a posture indicating His readiness to receive and welcome Stephen and which also was a reminder of that future time when He will arise from His sitting by His Father’s right hand to come and claim His inheritance!
“But to which of the angels said he at any time, Sit on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool?” Hebrews 1:13.
“But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God; from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool,” Hebrews 10:12-13.
I have no doubt that the Saviour having arisen from His Father’s right hand would have brought to Stephen’s mind that future day when the Saviour would arise to return to the aid of His people. And on that day, all who suffered for His name’s sake as he, Stephen, was, would be “glorified together” with Him.
A clear and Spirit-induced awareness of that truth, will enable the believer no matter how naturally timid and retiring they be, to bear (suffer) “all things,” 1 Corinthians 13:7.
2. I believe this truth will become ever more relevant as we approach the day of Christ’s return. The moral behaviour in this world today is far removed from what it was when I was a boy! The reason for this is the removal of the restraint that a knowledge, no matter how minimal, of God’s Word brought upon society. In my unsaved days I can remember the check that the sight of a Gospel poster outside a Brethren Hall on the Ormeau Road, near where we lived when we first moved to Belfast in 1953, had upon my heart!
That ‘check’ has been removed from our land to a very great degree and from other lands to a very much greater measure!
The vilest of sins are legalised and sanitised by governments worldwide in recent years. Here in Northern Ireland, political parties that would at least have had a ‘nodding’ acquaintance with the truth of God, have readily embraced every modern abomination.
I need hardly mention that the Democratic Unionist Party, which once aligned itself very publicly with the Holy Scriptures, today has abandoned that stand, even though there are professing Christians still within the ranks of their elected representatives and their general membership.
Leading this departure from God has been the ‘Churches’. For nigh on a century they have increasingly embraced modernism and ecumenism which entails a rejecting of all that their creeds and confessions proclaim and embracing the unclean notions that have emanated from that described by the Saviour as the source of that which dominates our nation today.
“For out of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man,” Matthew 15:19-20. The prophet of old warned of this fountain of corruption.
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” Jeremiah 17:9.
The most obvious subject cast aside is the reality and certainty of the return of Christ in judgment!
Hollywood can mockingly make its films with its mendacious references to the ‘Apocalypse’. It is all a big joke to this modern age.
How important it is for God’s servants to set forth the Bible’s truth on this most holy and pertinent subject!
3. I believe it should be noted that the final words of Christ to His people is called ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ.’ The word ‘Revelation’ means the ‘unveiling’. That which is unveiled is the “things which must shortly come to pass”, or come to pass in a short interval of time.
In the Bible there is a focusing on the last seven years of this age and concentrating particularly on the final half of that period.
It is termed in a threefold manner: “A time, times, and an half,” Daniel 12:7; “Forty and two months,” Revelation 13:5; “A thousand two hundred and threescore days,” Revelation 11:3.
It is termed “the time of Jacob’s trouble,” Jeremiah 30:7 and the “great tribulation,” Matthew 24:21. Paul indicates that is the time when there shall be, “a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition; who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; so that he as God sitteth in the temple of God, shewing himself that he is God. Remember ye not, that, when I was yet with you, I told you these things? And now ye know what withholdeth that he might be revealed in his time. For the mystery of iniquity doth already work: only he who now letteth will let, until he be taken out of the way. And then shall that Wicked be revealed, whom the Lord shall consume with the spirit of his mouth, and shall destroy with the brightness of his coming: Even him, whose coming is after the working of Satan with all power and signs and lying wonders, And with all deceivableness of unrighteousness in them that perish; because they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved,” 2 Thessalonians 2:3-10.
In Revelation 13:5, we are told that the Antichrist or “the beast”, as he is there called, will be permitted to continue his defiance of God for “forty and two months.”
It will be especially needful for God’s people to be aware that when these times come, the Saviour’s return is very near. It is thus they shall be sustained.
Is it not a sad commentary of today’s preaching that few ministers ever make any detailed reference o the circumstances that indicate the nearing of the return of the Lord Jesus!
It is little wonder that the Saviour tells us that, “While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept,” Matthew 25:5. There was none to keep them awake or who used the words of Paul as a text: “And that, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep: for now is our salvation nearer than when we believed. The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light,” Romans 13:11-12.
Annual Conference
I have to say, by way of advertising, that the ‘Annual Soverign Grace Advent Testimony Conference’, in Kilskeery Free Presbyterian Church, September 11th -13th, has as its theme the words of Romans 13:11-12!
May it please Lord to issue that shout soon that will awaken the sleeping saints.
“And at midnight there was a cry made, Behold, the bridegroom cometh; go ye out to meet him,” Matthew 25:6.
Rev Ivan Foster (Rtd)
Tuesday 25th August 2026