Episode 31 - Standing Firm: Five Scriptures That Can Change Your Life – Part 3 (Romans 5:3-5)

Welcome to the Flint to Grace Podcast. 

In Part 3 of the Standing Firm: Five Scriptures That Can Change Your Life series, Dr. TJ Klein reflects on Romans 5:3–5 and the powerful truth that suffering is not meaningless in the hands of God.

Recorded on July 4th from the island of Okinawa, this episode begins with a quiet morning reflection overlooking blue skies and the water, coffee in hand, and God’s Word open. From there, Dr. Klein walks through Paul’s teaching that suffering produces endurance, endurance produces character, and character produces hope.

Pain is not something we pretend away, minimize, or romanticize. But when surrendered to God, pain can become the soil where perseverance grows, character is proven, and hope rises stronger than shame. If you are walking through a difficult season, this episode offers biblical encouragement, practical reflection, and a reminder that God can use what hurts to produce what lasts.

Scripture: Romans 5:3–5 (ESV)
Series: Standing Firm: Five Scriptures That Can Change Your Life
Episode: Part 3 of 5

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey friends, welcome to the Flint to Grace podcast. We're really glad you're here. In our podcast, we talk about real life, real faith, and how God takes the places and stories that shaped us and turns them into something full of purpose. Each week, Dr. TJ Klein shares reflections from his life growing up in Flint, Michigan, mixed with scripture, honesty, and a whole lot of grace. He's a teacher, a storyteller, and yes, he also happens to be my husband and best friend. I'm Danny Klein, and it's pretty special to introduce him today. Whether you're listening on your commute, doing chores, out on a walk, or just catching a quiet moment, we're grateful you chose to spend part of your day with us. All right, let's get into it. And here's your host, Dr. TJ Klein.

SPEAKER_00 1:00

Welcome to the Flint to Grace podcast, where real struggles meet redeeming grace. I'm Dr. TJ Klein, and I'm grateful you're here. Whether you're driving to work, sitting on your back porch with a cup of coffee, taking a walk through your neighborhood, or simply trying to catch your breath after another long day, thank you for allowing me to spend these next few minutes with you. As I record this episode on July 4th from the island of Okinawa, I am looking out at one of those mornings that almost makes you stop mid-thought and simply breathe. The sky is a deep, beautiful blue, stretched wide above the island. And from my balcony, there is a panoramic view of the water that seems to go on and on. Coffee is in hand. God's word is open before me. And today, as we celebrate 250 years, I am reminded that freedom, faith, endurance, and hope are never abstract ideas. They are lived in real places, on real mornings, by real people who are learning to trust God one day at a time. Two weeks ago, we began our new series, Standing Firm, Five Scriptures That Can Change Your Life by studying Psalm 46 10 and Isaiah 43 2. Today we continue that journey with part three of five and turn to one of the most honest and comforting promises in all of Scripture, Romans five, three to five. This episode is called What Pain Produces. Here's the theme I want us to carry through the whole episode. Suffering is not meaningless in the hands of God. Pain, when surrendered to Him, becomes the soil where perseverance grows, character is proven, and hope becomes stronger than shame. That does not mean pain is good in itself. It does not mean suffering is easy, simple, or something we should pretend to enjoy. The Bible never asks us to fake a smile over real wounds, but Romans 5 teaches us that suffering is not wasted when it is brought under the loving hand of God. Pain can produce perseverance. Perseverance can produce character. Character can produce hope. And that hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit. So today we are going to slow down and walk through Romans 5, 3 to 5 carefully. Before we begin explaining it, let's first hear the passage itself and let Paul's words set the direction for everything that follows. Romans 5, 3 to 5 says, 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. That is the word of God. And now that we have heard the passage, we need to step back and remember where we are in the book of Romans, because the comfort of these verses becomes even stronger when we understand the gospel foundation Paul has already laid. Romans was written by the Apostle Paul to believers in Rome. Paul had not yet visited them, but he wanted to give them a rich, clear doctrinal foundation in the gospel. Romans is not a light letter, it is one of the deepest explanations in Scripture of sin, grace, justification, faith, righteousness, and life in Christ. By the time we reach Romans 5, Paul has already explained that we are justified by faith. That means we are declared right with God, not because of our performance, not because of religious achievement, not because we finally got our act together, but because of Jesus Christ. Romans 5 opens by saying, Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. That context matters. Paul's not talking to people trying to earn God's love through suffering. He is talking to people who already stand in grace. Their suffering does not buy their salvation. Their pain does not make God love them more. Their trials are not payment for peace with God. Peace with God has already been secured through Jesus. That is why this passage is so powerful. Paul is saying that once you are justified, once you stand in grace, once you have peace with God, suffering takes on a new meaning. It is no longer evidence that God has abandoned you. It becomes an arena where God forms you. And that leads us directly into Paul's first surprising statement. Believers can rejoice even in their sufferings. So let's begin with Paul's first phrase. The word sufferings here is not talking about minor inconveniences. This is not about a bad parking spot, a slow internet connection, or a day when everything feels slightly annoying. David Guzick points out that the term refers to real hardships, pressures, stresses, afflictions, and difficulties that pressed down on the soul. And Paul knew suffering personally. He was beaten, imprisoned, falsely accused, shipwrecked, rejected, and eventually martyred. So when Paul talks about suffering, he is not speaking as a detached theologian sitting safely above pain. He is speaking as a man who had scars. That is important because sometimes Christian language about suffering can sound shallow if we are not careful. We can say things that are true but say them too quickly. We can rush people past grief into a lesson. But Paul does not minimize suffering. He reinterprets it through the gospel. Paul is not saying why pain does not hurt. He is saying pain does not get the final word. He is saying suffering can become productive in the hands of God. Billy Graham often reminded people that the Christian life does not exempt us from trouble, but it does give us the presence and promises of God in the middle of trouble. That is the heartbeat of Romans 5. The believer does not rejoice because suffering feels good. The believer rejoices because God is good, even when suffering feels unbearable. Matt Chandler has often emphasized that the Christian life is not simply up and to the right, as though spiritual maturity means constant comfort, visible success, and uninterrupted progress. Romans 5 confronts that false expectation. Growth often comes through resistance. Faith often deepens in pressure. The path of discipleship is not always smooth, but it is always held by grace. So if Paul says we can rejoice in suffering, the next question is why? And his answer is that suffering produces endurance. That brings us to the next movement in Paul's chain. Suffering produces endurance. Some translations use the word perseverance. The idea is steadfastness, the ability to remain faithful under pressure without giving up. Endurance is not passive resignation. It is not folding your arms and saying, I guess I have no choice. Biblical endurance is active trust. It is faith that stays when escape would be easier. It is obedience that continues when emotions are exhausted. It is the soul saying, Lord, I do not understand everything you are allowing, but I will keep walking with you. Guzik uses the image of a runner who must be stressed to gain endurance. A runner does not build stamina by avoiding resistance. Muscles grow through strain. Lungs expand capacity through exertion. Sailors learn the sea by sailing. Soldiers learn battle by entering the fight. And Christians learn perseverance not by living a tribulation free life, but by trusting God in the tribulations that come. That does not mean we seek suffering. We do not go looking for pain. We do not romanticize trauma. We do not pretend affliction is easy. But when suffering comes, we do not have to assume it is useless. God can use the pressure to build spiritual endurance. That is why the episode theme matters so much. If suffering is only something to escape, then pain feels pointless. But if suffering can become soil in the hands of God, then even pressure can become a place where perseverance begins to grow. Think about what perseverance looks like in ordinary life. It looks like praying again after you feel like heaven has been silent. It looks like showing up with faithfulness when your heart is tired. It looks like forgiving when bitterness feels easier. It looks like choosing obedience when compromise would cost less. It looks like trusting God when the timeline does not make sense. Francis Chan has often challenged believers to stop treating comfort as the highest goal of Christianity. Romans 5 does the same. If comfort is our greatest aim, suffering will only feel like interruption. But if Christlikeness is our aim, suffering can become formation. And once endurance begins to take root, Paul says it produces something even deeper, character. So Paul continues, and endurance produces character. The word carries the idea of testedness, something proven genuine after examination. Character is not merely what we say we believe. Character is what remains after pressure has tested us. Matthew Henry explains that tribulation, when sanctified by God's grace, proves and improves patience, just as exercise strengthens ability and fire hardens steel. The suffering itself is not the efficient cause of holiness. God's grace working through suffering is what forms us. This is an important distinction. Pain alone does not automatically make people better. Pain can make people bitter. Suffering can deepen faith, but it can also expose resentment, fear, anger, pride, or unbelief. Martin Luther observed that tribulation tends to develop what it finds in us. If the heart is hardened, suffering may make it harder. But if the heart is surrendered to God, suffering can deepen humility, wisdom, gentleness, strength, and faith. That means the question is not only what am I going through? The deeper question is who am I becoming as I go through it? Character is formed in hidden places. It is formed when no one applauds. It is formed when the prayer is unanswered for longer than you expected. It is formed when you keep your integrity under stress. It is formed when you choose faithfulness over self-protection. It is formed when you refuse to let pain become your permission slip for sin. This is pain becoming soil. Not because the pain itself is beautiful, but because God is able to bring something beautiful from it in that soil. Perseverance grows, and over time character is proven. This is why Romans 5 is so practical. Paul is not giving us a slogan, he is giving us a spiritual sequence. Suffering produces endurance. Endurance produces proven character. God uses the long road to make us steady, and he uses pressure to reveal what is real. And as that proven character develops, Paul says it begins to produce hope. That leads us to the next phrase, and character produces hope. This is surprising because many people assume suffering destroys hope. And sometimes at first it can feel that way. Suffering can make the future feel dark, it can make prayers feel heavy, it can make promises feel distant. But Paul says that when suffering is met with endurance, and endurance produces tested character, the result is hope. Why? Because tested character gives evidence that God is truly at work in us. We begin to look back and say, God carried me there, God sustained me then, God strengthened me when I thought I could not stand. If he was faithful before, he will be faithful again. Matthew Henry describes this as experience becoming a prop to hope. The believer who has experienced God's faithfulness in past affliction gains confidence for future affliction. Hope is not wishful thinking. Biblical hope is confident expectation anchored in the character of God. That is why hope in Romans 5 is not fragile optimism. It is not pretending everything will be easy. It is not saying, I hope life works out. Christian hope says, Because I belong to Christ, my suffering is not ultimate. My pain is not purposeless. My story is not over. God is still forming me, still keeping me, still loving me, and still leading me toward glory. And that is where hope becomes stronger than shame. Shame tries to tell us that suffering means we have been forgotten, disqualified, or abandoned. But hope answers, no, God is still here. God is still working. God is still loving me. God is still producing something that will last. This is the kind of hope that can stand in a hospital room, at a graveside, in a season of rejection, in a financial setback, in a family crisis, or in the quiet ache of disappointment, and still say, God is not finished. But Paul does not stop with the word hope. He wants us to know that this hope will not ultimately leave us ashamed. So Romans 5 5 says, and hope does not put us to shame. In other words, this hope will not ultimately disappoint us, it will not embarrass us for trusting God, it will not collapse at the end. It will not leave us saying, I was foolish to believe. That does not mean every earthly circumstance turns out the way we wanted. Some prayers are answered differently than we hoped. Some wounds remain tender. Some losses are not restored in this life. But Christian hope is not grounded in perfect circumstances. It is grounded in the love of God revealed in Christ and poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. The world often uses shame to control people. Shame says you are weak because you suffer. Shame says you are foolish for trusting God. Shame says if God loved you, this would not be happening. But Romans 5 answers shame with the love of God. Paul says God's love has been poured into our hearts, not dropped, not dripped, not rationed, poured. Guzik emphasizes that God does not give his love in a trickle. The Holy Spirit makes the love of God known inwardly, personally, and powerfully to the believer. This is not merely information about God's love, it is the experience of God's love. Romans is a deeply doctrinal book, but it is not cold. Paul wants us to think rightly about God, but he also wants us to know the love of God in our hearts through the Holy Spirit. That matters because perseverance is not produced by willpower alone. We do not endure simply by gritting our teeth and trying harder. We endure because the Spirit reminds us that we are loved, held, sealed, helped, and not alone. So when we put the whole passage together, we can begin to answer the question at the center of today's episode. What does pain produce? So what does pain produce? By itself, pain can produce anger, fear, isolation, bitterness, or despair. But pain surrendered to God can produce something different. It can produce perseverance, it can produce tested character, it can produce hope that is deeper than emotion and stronger than circumstance. That means the goal is not to pretend pain does not hurt. The goal is to bring pain into the presence of God and ask, Lord, what are you forming in me here? Maybe suffering is producing endurance in you right now. Maybe you are learning to keep praying. Maybe you are learning to keep showing up. Maybe you are learning to remain faithful in a season when quitting would feel easier. Maybe endurance is producing character in you. Maybe God is exposing things that need healing. Maybe he is strengthening integrity, humility, compassion, patience, or courage. Maybe he is making you more like Jesus in a way comfort never could. Maybe character is producing hope in you. Maybe you are beginning to see that God has carried you through more than you realized. Maybe you can look back and say, I am still here by grace. And if grace carried you then, grace can carry you now. This is the golden chain of Romans 5. Suffering, endurance, character, hope. We may wish God would simply sprinkle endurance, character, and hope over us while we sleep. But God often forms these things through the very pressures of We would not have chosen. So we do not say, Lord, I love pain. We say, Lord, I trust you in pain. We do not say suffering is easy. We say suffering is not wasted. We do not say I understand everything. We say, I know your love has been poured into my heart by the Holy Spirit. With that in mind, let me leave you with a few practical takeaways you can carry into this week. As we move from teaching to practice, here are five simple ways to respond when suffering presses in, and you are trying to stand firm in faith. First, name the suffering honestly. Faith does not require denial, and God is not asking you to pretend that what hurts does not hurt. Bring the pain into his presence and tell him where it feels heavy. Then ask what endurance looks like today. Sometimes perseverance is not a dramatic act of courage. Sometimes it is one faithful step, one honest prayer, one act of obedience, or one quiet refusal to quit. As you walk through that process, pay attention to formation. Ask, Lord, what is this revealing in me and what are you developing in me? God may be strengthening humility, patience, compassion, courage, or trust in places you did not even realize needed his touch. Then remember past grace. Look back over your life and notice the places where God carried you, sustained you, corrected you, provided for you, and kept you. Let yesterday's evidence of his faithfulness become strength for today's hope. And finally, depend on the Holy Spirit. Hope is not sustained by your ability to manufacture optimism. Hope is sustained by the love of God poured into your heart through the Holy Spirit, reminding you that you are loved, held, helped, and not alone. And after those takeaways, it may help to pause and ask a few reflection questions. These are not meant to rush you toward easy answers, but to help you bring your real life honestly before the Lord? Where am I tempted to believe my suffering is meaningless? What would perseverance look like in this season of my life? What kind of character might God be forming in me through this pressure? How has God carried me in the past? And how can that strengthen my hope today? Am I allowing the Holy Spirit to remind me that I am deeply loved by God? As you sit with those questions, I want to close with encouragement for anyone who is listening from a place of real weariness or pain. If you're listening today from a place of suffering, I want to say this gently. God sees you. Your pain is not invisible to him. Your tears are not dismissed by him. Your endurance matters. Your faithfulness matters. And the God who justified you by faith, gave you peace through Christ, and brought you into grace is not absent in your affliction. The cross of Jesus is the ultimate proof that God can take suffering and bring glory from it. The worst pain in human history became the place where salvation was accomplished. So when Romans 5 says suffering can produce endurance, character, and hope, we are not talking about vague inspiration. We are talking about resurrection logic. God brings life where death thought it had won. So hold on, keep walking, keep trusting, keep bringing your pain to the Lord. He may not waste a single tear. In Christ, pain does not have to be pointless. Suffering is not meaningless in the hands of God. Pain surrendered to him can become the soil where perseverance grows. And before we end, let's bring that hope before God in prayer. Father, thank you that our suffering is not meaningless in your hands. We confess that pain often feels confusing, exhausting, and heavy. But we ask you to meet us there. Produce endurance in us. Form proven character in us, strengthen hope in us. Pour your love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. Help us not to be ashamed of trusting you, even when life is hard. Remind us that because of Jesus we have peace with you, access to grace and hope that will not disappoint. In Jesus' name, amen. As we close, I want to thank you again for joining me for this part of our Standing Firm series. Next week, we are already at part four of five. We will venture into James 1, 2 to 4, titled Finding Joy Before the Victory. Thank you for joining me for this episode of Flint to Grace. If this episode encouraged you, share it with someone who may be walking through a difficult season. And as you go, remember this suffering may press you, but in Christ it does not have to define you. God can use what hurts to produce what lasts from flint to grace.