From Suffering to Glory: the Training

There lies before you a glory for which no man can give you words.

That is where Scripture begins, each time it brings this road to speech. Not at the pain — at the radiance at the end. A crown that does not fade. A weight of glory that surpasses everything you bore here. The two words on which your life runs out: well done. "If indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him" (Romans 8:17). Not merely saved — glorified with Him, sharing in His own splendor.

But there is an order, and it knows no exception. No one is crowned first and goes through the suffering afterward. It goes the other way around — and the first to do it the other way around was Christ Himself. "Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory?" (Luke 24:26). To suffer, and so — along that road, not along another — to enter the glory. What held for the Head holds for the members. In all of Scripture there is no glory that did not first go through the cross.

This chapter, then, is not about the suffering. It is about the glory; the suffering is only the road. And precisely for that reason it can be looked honestly in the face. There exists a faith that skips this road: a Savior who takes away your burdens and is silent about the cross He charges you to bear. That sells well. But it is not the Jesus who gave the enthusiastic crowd His hardest words — deliberately, to sift who went with Him and who only walked along as long as it was easy. "Through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God" (Acts 14:22). Through, not around. The suffering is the gate, not the misfortune that lies before it.

He learned from what He suffered

Begin at the heart, and the heart is one sentence from the Letter to the Hebrews.

"In the days of His flesh, when He had offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to Him who was able to save Him from death, and was heard because of His godly fear. Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him." (Hebrews 5:7–9)

Though He was a Son. Not because — for then the suffering would have been spared Him, then the Son would have received an exemption. But there stands a contrast: He entered the same school we enter — and not for one week, but His whole life long.

Do not think the suffering began only in the garden. It began at the manger and never stopped. A child who is pure among children who are not learns early what it costs to be different; a young man in a village that thought it knew Him — "is this not the carpenter's son?" — how it cuts to be unrecognized by your own people. On every front He was tempted as we are, and nowhere, not a single time, did He give in. "In all points tempted as we are, yet without sin" (Hebrews 4:15). So He learned obedience: not out of a book, but out of thirty years of holding fast while it chafed — and at last out of the blood and the sweat of Gethsemane, out of the nails and the three hours of darkness.

Understand it well: He was not disobedient and had to be made obedient. He was perfectly obedient, from the manger to the cross. What He learned was that obedience in the mode of suffering — what it is to keep on obeying when it costs everything. "Not My will, but Yours be done" (Luke 22:42) is the same will as always, now spoken with loud cries and tears.

And in that lies a deep comfort. Your High Priest is no stranger to what befalls you. He knows the betrayal of a friend at table, the nerve-wracking wait for a Father who is silent, the scorn of people who never understood you. He did not study it — He underwent it, to the very bottom. Whoever comes to Him with a torn heart comes not to a Judge at a distance, but to One who knows exactly how it feels, because He walked that road Himself to the end.

And here lies the mold for your life as a steward. Not because your suffering atones for anything — only His does that, and not a drop of your tears adds to it. But because the road He went is the road you go: through the suffering to the glory. And see where the sentence ends: He became "the author of eternal salvation." For Him the school of suffering did not dead-end in death, but ran out onto the throne — and onto an opened door for all who follow.

In Depth — Emathen aph' hōn epathen: the wordplay that carries the matter

The Greek core of Hebrews 5:8 is a wordplay that survives in no translation. Emathen aph' hōn epathen — "He learned (emathen) from what (aph' hōn) He suffered (epathen)." Learning and suffering, mathein and pathein, differ by only one letter; they sound like each other's echo. (Well documented.)

It was almost a proverb — the Greeks already knew pathēmata mathēmata, "what one suffers, are one's lessons" — but the writer fills that folk wisdom with something infinitely weightier: not the stoic lesson that adversity hardens, but the obedience of the Son, learned on the anvil of the utmost need. Note also the closing word: teleiōtheis, "having been perfected, completed" — the same stem as the tetelestai, "it is finished," of the cross (John 19:30). The Son was not morally improved; He was perfect. He was completed as the High Priest who now fully understands what suffering is, "One who in all points has been tempted as we are" (Hebrews 4:15). Your High Priest is no stranger to your tears. (Well documented.)

Humiliation before exaltation

If Hebrews 5 is the heart, then Philippians 2 is the curriculum — the whole arc, from the highest height to the deepest depth and back. Paul sets one command over it: "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). The pattern of the Son is the pattern of the son.

Count the steps downward. He who "was in the form of God" emptied Himself, "taking the form of a servant." Servant. Man. "He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross" (2:6–8). And the lowest step — the cross — was for a Roman the deepest shame that existed, a sentence one was not even allowed to inflict on a free man. No descent by chance, but a choice, at each step anew, all the way down.

And then everything tilts on a single word. Therefore. "Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name" (2:9). That one therefore is the hinge: the exaltation is no chance sequel, it is the fruit of the humiliation. The depth of the descent is the measure of the height of the ascent. The cross was the stairway to the throne.

Read that back onto yourself. The road upward runs downward. "He who humbles himself will be exalted" (Luke 18:14). You do not become great as a steward by making yourself great, but by taking the servant's form, by serving until it hurts. "Whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant" (Matthew 20:26). But see what lies at the end of the narrow road: not the humiliation, but the exaltation; not the staying small, but the reigning with Him — raised up by the same hand that lifted the Son out of the grave onto the throne.

That is why Paul longed to be inserted into this pattern: "that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death" (Philippians 3:10). Note the order: first the fellowship of the suffering, then the power of the resurrection. Whoever wants the power without the fellowship skips the first half of the sentence.

In Depth — The athlete, the son, the race

For all of this Scripture reaches for three images out of the Greco-Roman world.

The athlete. "Everyone who competes in the games exercises self-control in all things" — enkrateuetai, the strict abstinence the games demanded beforehand (1 Corinthians 9:25). Paul's word for his own bodily discipline is rawer still: hupōpiazō, "I strike under the eye, I give a black eye" (9:27) — the image of the boxer. The wreath is called stephanos, the victor's crown of foliage; and it was phthartos, "perishable," withered within days — ours aphthartos, "imperishable." For such a wreath the athlete trains. (Well documented.)

The son. The key word of Hebrews 12 is paideia: not "punishment" as retribution, but "formation, upbringing" — the whole shaping of a child into a grown son. "God deals with you as with sons [...] He does it for our profit, that we may partake of His holiness" (12:7–10). No courtroom, but a school — the tone of a Father who forms with an eye to an inheritance. (Well documented.)

The race. The agōn binds both together. "Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus" (12:1–2): first lay aside what hinders, then run di' hupomonēs, "with endurance" — the long distance, not the sprint — and aphorōntes eis Iēsoun, "looking away toward Jesus." A training with a goal, a coach, and a prize, and the gaze on One who already ran the track.

No punishment, but discipline

The suffering of the believer is no punishment. Perhaps you have assumed your whole life that adversity means God is settling something with you — but that is not so. The punishment for sin has been borne, fully and forever, by Christ. "The chastisement for our peace was upon Him" (Isaiah 53:5). "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1). That verdict has fallen and does not fall back.

What the suffering then is, Scripture keeps apart in three strands.

Most of it is formation — the hand of the Father preparing a son. It prunes, it bends, it breaks self-will. "Every branch that bears fruit He prunes, that it may bear more fruit" (John 15:2). The pruning-knife comes not to the dead branch, but to the living one — precisely because it lives, and must bear more.

The second strand is testing — not to form, but to show what is in you, to refine the faith as gold. "The testing of your faith — more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire — may be found to praise, honor, and glory" (1 Peter 1:7). The smelter holds the silver in the fire not to destroy it, but to part it from its dross. What is genuine proves, on that Day, to be gold.

The third strand is suffering for Christ's sake — persecution, reproach for the Word. "All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will suffer persecution" (2 Timothy 3:12). Peter calls it sharing in Christ's suffering, and says it in a staggering tone: "Rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings, that when His glory is revealed, you may also be glad" (1 Peter 4:13).

None of the three is punishment. None of the three is chance. All three have one purpose: to make a man ready for the glory. Peter summed it up in one sentence: "The God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ Jesus, may He Himself — after you have suffered a while — perfect, establish, strengthen, and settle you" (1 Peter 5:10). Four verbs of building, and they come after a little while of suffering, not without it. The suffering is the scaffold; the building is a man being made fit for the glory.

The joy in the midst

And then there stands something that goes against the grain. The tone of the New Testament about this suffering is not that of resignation, but that of joy. Not joy after it is over. No teeth-gritted joy in spite of the pain. Joy in it.

The apostolic example is almost shocking. Flogged before the Sanhedrin, "they departed rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name" (Acts 5:41). Not cheerful in spite of the flogging, but because the suffering was entrusted to them as an honor.

And it is no impulse of a few heroes; it is doctrine. "We also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope" (Romans 5:3–4). Nothing in that chain is wasted: the tribulation is no interruption of God's work — it is the work. How can that be? Not by thinking the pain away; Scripture is honest that the discipline "for the moment seems not to be joyful, but painful" (Hebrews 12:11). The joy comes from elsewhere: from knowing where the road runs out — as the athlete rejoices in the heaviness of his training, because he knows which crown awaits it.

A servant is not greater than his master

There is yet a deeper reason why this suffering is not strange: Jesus warned you that the world would treat you as it treated Him. "A servant is not greater than his master. If they persecuted Me, they will also persecute you" (John 15:20).

A sober sentence, but there is a world in it. If the Master went the road of reproach, then the servant can expect no paved way. Whoever binds himself to a rejected Christ shares in His rejection — no misfortune, but the logical consequence of what you bound yourself to. And conversely: a Christianity ground so smooth that it no longer collides with anything anywhere may well ask whether it still resembles the Master.

But that sharing-in-the-rejection is, in the Kingdom, no loss. It is bound-up-ness with Him — the highest honor that can befall a man. Paul dared even to call the suffering for Christ's sake a gift: "To you it has been granted on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake" (Philippians 1:29). Granted. Not imposed as a penalty, but bestowed as a privilege.

The rule of the road, not the price of admission

And now the sharpest question of this chapter, for here the gospel is betrayed or kept. Do you earn the glory by suffering?

The answer is loud and clear: no. And at the same time that no may not become so loud that it shouts down the text which says that suffering and glory are fastened to each other. The one error makes the reward into salvation and loses the gospel. The other reasons the suffering away because "it is all grace anyway" — and makes half the Bible into a hollow phrase. The truth runs between them.

The hinge is Romans 8:17. "If we are children, then heirs — heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him, that we may also be glorified with Him." The bond between suffering and glory is not that of reward on merit. It is the bond of together-with-Christ: whoever suffers with Him is glorified with Him — not because the suffering buys the glory, but because both are one road, His road. Whoever sets out with Him comes out with Him. And the end is sharing in His glory.

In Depth — The eiper of Romans 8:17 honestly weighed

In Romans 8:17 stands a small, heavily loaded word: eiper, "if indeed," "if at least." And the two verbs around it both begin with sun-, "together-with": sumpaschomen, suffering-together, and sundoxasthōmen, being-glorified-together. The bond is therefore that of with-Christ, not that of reward on merit. Whoever reads the eiper wrongly hears a threat in it — beware, or you forfeit your glory. But that does not fit the sentence. (Weighed reading.)

The eiper is no condition the believer must first fulfill in order to become a child — he is a child; that stands right before it ("if we are children, then heirs"). It does not put the admission on loose footing. It describes the rule of the road: there is no co-glorification without co-suffering, because that is simply the form of Christ's own life, and the heir shares in that form. No condition of salvation, but a route-description — not "suffer, or you will not get there," but "the road along which the heir comes to his inheritance is the same one the Heir Himself went." Whoever makes a condition of salvation out of it hangs the assurance of the child on the quantity of his suffering, and destroys precisely the comfort Romans 8 means to give. (Well documented that the believer is here already addressed as a child.)

An eternal weight

And then Paul takes it up again in the second Letter to the Corinthians. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17).

Hear the opposites collide. The light of the affliction against the weight of the glory. The momentary against the eternal. A feather on the one scale, and on the other a weight that presses the balance through the floor. No cautious comfort, but a jubilation: what lies on the other side is so heavy with glory that the heaviest load of now becomes a feather.

And such a weight must be able to be borne. The suffering of now does not damage the bearer; it strengthens the shoulders that must one day carry the eternal weight. Whoever evades every load keeps himself untrained.

In Depth — Does the affliction work the glory, or measure it out?

Paul says that the light affliction is "working" an eternal weight of glory — katergazetai, "produces, works out." No weak word: the affliction does not merely stand in contrast with the glory, it works at it. And the heaviness piles up double in the Greek: kath' huperbolēn eis huperbolēn, "according to surpassing measure unto surpassing measure" — the measure that boils over. (Well documented.)

Note also the word weight itself. The Greek baros, "weight," shares its root with the Hebrew kabod, "glory": both mean, at bottom, heaviness. Glory is weight — and a weight must be able to be borne; that is why the suffering trains the shoulders that will one day carry it. (Well documented.)

But what kind of connection? Does the affliction increase the glory — more suffering, more weight, as though a bill were being kept? Or does it prepare the glory and measure it out — does it form the bearer, and determine the measure in which he can one day receive? (Disputed which of the two the text precisely means.) The cautious reading is the second. The glory itself is grace, with no quantity of suffering to be bought; but within that bestowed glory the suffering is not fruitless — it forms, it tests, it measures out the measure. Thus this does not collide with the no to the question whether you earn the glory: grace lays the foundation, the reward measures what is built upon it — and that is often built with tears. "Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy" (Psalm 126:5).

Count the cost

If this is the road, then there is one thing you must do beforehand, and Jesus demands it with a soberness that sobers. Count the cost. Precisely because the price is so glorious, no one may begin halfway.

He demands it in Luke 14. Great crowds traveled with Him full of enthusiasm, and it was precisely to that mass that He turned with words meant to sift. "Whoever does not bear his cross and come after Me cannot be My disciple" (Luke 14:27). And then, in the midst of those hard words, two little parables that are about one thing: reckoning beforehand.

The tower-builder first. "Which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and count the cost, whether he has enough to finish it? Otherwise, when he has laid the foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it begin to mock him" (Luke 14:28–30). A half-built foundation is no beginning, but a monument of shame. And then the king going to war: who marches out against a doubled superior force without first reckoning whether he will make it? Twice the same gesture — first sit down, first face the reality — and an application that leaves no escape: "So likewise, whoever of you does not forsake all that he has cannot be My disciple" (14:33).

This is no discouragement, but honesty, and it is love. Jesus sells no crossless Christianity that later turns out to bear a cross after all. He would rather keep the crowd small with the whole truth than great with half. For that the finished tower is worth too much.

And here this chapter touches the sower. For this is the rocky-ground soil warned of beforehand: the seed that "has no root in itself" and that, "when tribulation or persecution arises because of the Word, immediately stumbles" (Matthew 13:21) — the man who did not count the cost, the straw-fire that flared up and died out as soon as it cost something. Whoever does not now make the reckoning discovers it later anyway, when it is too late to turn back and too late to finish. So make the reckoning now. All in, or do not begin.

In Depth — "Hating" and "forsaking all"

Two expressions in Luke 14 startle at first reading. "Hating" (miseō) is no call to aversion toward your family — that would collide with the command to honor them and even to love your enemies. It is a Semitic idiom for radically subordinating. Matthew gives the same saying without the sharp word: "whoever loves father or mother more than Me is not worthy of Me" (Matthew 10:37). The demand is not lovelessness, but that nothing — not even one's own life — come to stand above Him. (Well documented.)

"Counting the cost" is cool and businesslike: psēphizō, from psēphos, "pebble for reckoning" — men reckoned with pebbles on a counting-board, bead for bead. Tally it up, see whether you can finish. And "forsaking all" (14:33) closes it off — not necessarily disposing of everything, but holding on to nothing; everything on the altar, to be given back the moment He asks for it. So read, the parable joins seamlessly onto the pilgrims of Hebrews 11, who let go of everything because they saw the city with foundations lying ahead: forsaking all costs you only what you could not keep anyway, and wins you what no one can ever take from you. (Well documented.)

The joy on the other side

What brings a man to truly go this road — to count the cost, to forsake all, to rejoice even in the suffering? One thing, and the whole New Testament points to it: the joy on the other side of the cross. Lose that gaze, and you will not endure the road.

The archetype is again Christ, and here the circle of this chapter closes. "Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God" (Hebrews 12:1–2). There lay a joy before Him — the glorification, the bride, the finished redemption — that carried Him through the cross. He despised the shame not because it is nothing — for a crucified man it was everything — but because that joy was so much greater. No castle in the air: see where He now sits, and know that it awaits you too.

That same thing Paul holds out to you. "We do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal" (2 Corinthians 4:18). No vague dreaming away, but a focused gazing — like the runner, stretched over the line, everything toward that one point. "Forgetting those things which are behind and reaching forward to those things which are ahead, I press toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God" (Philippians 3:13–14).

And what does the race run out onto? Not onto a reward handed over from outside, an envelope at the exit, but onto something far more intimate. "Well done, good and faithful servant [...] enter into the joy of your lord" (Matthew 25:21). The same joy that was set before Him when He endured the cross — now shared with whoever followed Him on His road. The steward comes at the end not to collect a bill and leave again; he is called in, through the door, into the gladness of his Master. That is the other side of the cross: not a prize in the hand, but a place in the joy.

And do I lay down my cross?

Here I turn the pen toward myself, for it would be dishonest to write this chapter as though it were about another.

I know the believer who evades the suffering; he lives closer by than I admit. I know the quiet little calculation: I am inside, the cross of Christ bore everything — so why should I still take up a cross of my own? I know the comfortable faith, that serves as long as it does not hurt and gives as long as it does not chafe. And I know what I forfeit thereby. Not my salvation — that stands fast. But the training, and the glory for which it trains. Whoever evades the school of practice stands at the finish with the muscles of someone who never ran: safe at home, but with empty hands.

But precisely there is where it turns, and that is why this is no word to crush you. The suffering at issue here is not the rancor of a strange judge, but the discipline of a Father who has sons and no strangers — who wants nothing more than to make His child ready for the glory. A road whose end already stands fast, for One has walked it and now sits at the right hand of the throne, not to shut you out but to call you home.

The glory waits on the other side of the cross. Not around it, along a safer path. Through it, and only through it. And the door stands open today. So lay aside every load. Keep your eye on Jesus. Run with endurance the race that is set before you, for the pilgrim is almost home. The affliction is light; the weight is eternal. The training is hard; the prize is imperishable. And the One who ran the track before you waits at the end with one sentence that makes worth it all that the road has cost.

Enter into the joy of your lord.

The first part laid the foundation. You now know where it runs out: a day, a platform, a Bridegroom who says "well done" — and a fire that assays what you have built. You know the three outcomes, and you know the four soils that bring them into view. And you know that the road there runs through the school of suffering, because it runs through Christ. That is the doctrine. From here on the twelve parables themselves follow, in the order of the story — and the story of every Kingdom begins in the same place: with a sower who goes out to sow.

For before a steward can manage anything, something must be entrusted to him. And the first thing entrusted to him is a seed. "The seed is the word of God" (Luke 8:11) — the word of the Kingdom, laid in your heart, and through your hands scattered again into the world. There the stewardship begins: not with great deeds, but with a grain that disappears into the ground and seems to die.

And precisely there waits the hardest lesson a man of the Kingdom has to learn, and at the same time the most liberating. For look at what happens to that seed, and you discover the secret beneath all fruit: you sow, but you do not make it grow. The three parables that now follow — the seed that comes up of itself, the mustard seed, the leaven — together tell one thing, and it cuts through all our restlessness: the growth of the Kingdom is God's work, not yours. You can sow and you can give water, but "God gives the increase" (1 Corinthians 3:7). And whoever learns to believe that becomes free — free from the cramped toiling to force a result yourself, and free to be faithful in the small and the hidden, in the quiet trust that the Lord of the harvest knows what He does.

It is, at bottom, the rest of the pilgrim who knows that he lives for another city. He need not finish it all here, need not make everything great himself, need not bring in today the harvest that God has kept for the third day. He sows, and he sleeps, and he rises, and the seed grows — he himself does not know how. That is no laziness; it is faith. And it runs out onto a gathering-in that surpasses everything: a full ear, a tree in which the birds shelter, a dough permeated through and through. The smallest grain faithful, laid in God's hand, becomes a harvest over which heaven rejoices — and over which, on that day, the "well done" falls.

Three times a seed, then, and three times the same promise under the same call: sow faithfully, do not despise the small, trust the hidden — and leave the growing to Him.