Back in August, I wrote a column for Journey called “The Master Motion,” and I received a note from a Journey reader who asked a great question in response. Here’s what she asked (used with permission): “In your August column in Journey devotional, you say if God allows pain and disappointment to touch us, then we must trust that He’s doing so out of love and for our ultimate good. How do we recognize what that ultimate good is?”
What a great question. I’ve been pondering it for awhile, and I think Romans 8:28-29 has the answer: “28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God: those who are called according to His purpose. 29 For those He foreknew He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.”
The first part of this verse is familiar to us. It’s a promise we cling to for dear life in hard seasons — God works everything out for our good according to His purpose. And what is that good and His purpose? The answer is found in verse 29: our being conformed into the image of His Son.
I think most of us would prefer verse 29 say something like this instead: “God’s ultimate good is giving you the outcome you want so that your suffering will come to an end and you’ll be happy.” I wish! If I’m honest, my main priority usually isn’t becoming more like Christ, primarily because I know suffering is the means through which God does that transforming work, and it’s painful! I’m oftentimes more concerned with the outcome of any given situation than I am with the change going on beneath the surface. And that fact reveals my shortsightedness. I’m way too caught up in what I can see, in the temporary.
I remember Elisabeth Elliot saying in one of her talks that this world is not opaque, it’s translucent — meaning, what we see here isn’t our reality. We need to look through the things of this world to the spiritual realm beyond, because that’s our reality. This world is the shadowlands, as C.S. Lewis called it — a mere shadow of the real world yet to come.
When I really think about it, I can see that in light of eternity, life here is just a blip on the radar. But it’s hard not to feel like this is it, partly because we know so little of what eternity is going to be like, and partly because, well, we live here! We have jobs we want to excel in, weddings we want to plan, kids we want to get off to college — all of these things feel so ultimate, like they’re the reason we exist. But they’re not. And our suffering is a reminder of that. God doesn’t want us to get too comfortable here, because He has something much better in mind — eternity with Him.
Second Corinthians 4:17 has really helped me gain a long-term perspective of suffering: “For our momentary light affliction is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.” Paul describes our trials here as light and momentary, but he doesn’t just brush them off as meaningless inconveniences. Instead, he tells us that these very trials — the ones we sometimes think are purposeless — are the means through which God is producing an eternal weight of glory in us.
John Piper wrote in the article Called to Suffer and Rejoice: For an Eternal Weight of Glory, “The point is not that the afflictions merely precede the glory; they help produce the glory. There is a real causal connection between how we endure hardship now and how much we will be able to enjoy the glory of God in the ages to come.” Our suffering has eternal significance, and that eternal significance is our ultimate good. It’s the good that God is working out here before we get there.
And yet!
Even though our transformation into the image of Jesus is God’s ultimate good for us, and that purpose is largely achieved through suffering, He still very much cares about our circumstances here — about the things we pray for, hope for, dream for — and He redeems them in ways we can’t even imagine — here. He promises that we’ll “see the Lord’s goodness in the land of the living” (Psalm 27:13), and He’ll be true to that promise in each of our lives. But the redemption we experience in this life is still just a shadow — a shadow of the redemption we’ll experience in eternity.
When we leave the shadowlands, we can’t take anything with us except the investments we made in eternity through our suffering — that eternal weight of glory that comes as the Lord transforms us into the image of His Son. Maybe that's why the apostle Paul calls suffering a gift in Philippians 1:29. Not only is it the means through which we get to know God here, but it's also the means through which we'll be able to enjoy Him in all of His glory forever.
“For it has been given to you on Christ’s behalf not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for Him”
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