Romans 5:4Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Certainly in hopes, but not human hopes. Human hopes are often destroyed and put the one who hoped to shame. The person who promised protection may die, or, though alive, may change his disposition. Our hopes are not like this. They are firm and unshaken. He who gave us the promise is always alive. And we who are to enjoy them, though we die, shall rise again. Thus there is nothing that can put us to shame, as if we had comforted ourselves vainly and foolishly with empty hopes. Having sufficiently freed his hearers from every doubt by these words, the Apostle does not stop his discourse at present blessings. Rather, he again passes to future ones. He knows that weaker people, though they seek present blessings, are not satisfied with them. He confirms future blessings by the blessings already given. Someone might object, “What if God is not pleased to grant us these blessings? True, we all know that He has power, abides, and lives. But how do we know that He also wills our blessedness?” The Apostle answers that this is clear from the blessings already given to us. From which blessings? From the love that God has shown toward us.

He becomes tested before God, because his will is tried by Him through afflictions. He also becomes tested before himself, because in afflictions he practices the virtue of patience.

How, then, does such testing produce hope in us? When testing has shown you in very deed that by God's grace you were able to bear a past affliction and overcome a past temptation, then your mind assures you of this.

It tells you that with God's help you will also overcome the present calamity and the temptation set before you. God, having tested your patience, increases blessed and saving hope in your heart.

For from these also beneficial fruits may arise. The greater the afflictions and sufferings of Christians are, the greater and higher are the fruits obtained.

Thus every affliction leads to patience, patience to tested character, and experience to confidence in receiving the great promises granted to us by God's greatest love. Its manifest influence is clearly shown in this whole saving and generally joyful state of our spirit.

There is no doubt that the joyful state of our spirit, permeated by love, has appeared through the influence of divine love, always given through the Holy Spirit. It will not deceive us, but will truly lead us to that eternal blessedness concerning which our spirit now has assurance.

"We are established upon hope," says Saint John Chrysostom, "but not upon hope in men, which is often destroyed and puts the one hoping to shame. The patron who gave hope either dies, or, though living, changes his disposition.

Such is not our hope. It is firm and unshaken. He who gave us the promises is ever-living. We who are to enjoy them, though we die, shall rise again. Thus we shall in no way be put to shame, as though we had vainly and foolishly comforted ourselves with weak hopes."

Live, then, O Christian, with God's help in the spirit of faith, and you will undoubtedly be a partaker of the glory of God in the age to come.

As for afflictions, they not only cannot destroy our firm hope in the eternal inheritance, but can even serve to strengthen it. For through many tribulations we must enter the Kingdom of God (Acts 14:22).

This feature of patience cannot be manifested if there are no afflictions. Without afflictions, endurance will not be seen, and therefore neither will patience. Yet it is obvious that this feature of patience, endurance, necessarily presupposes the presence of the first feature. This is constancy in good, or faithfulness to that inner order built in the heart under the action of faith. Faith reconciles the soul with God and lets it feel reunion with God, whom it always thirsts for and seeks.

The essence of this order is this: one would rather die than depart in anything from the knowledge of God’s will. The second link in this chain is: “patience produces experience.” Supply: produces. “Experience,” δοκιμή, is trial by deed, the tasting of something. When someone learns the quality of food by tasting it, this is δοκιμή, experience.

Thus the Apostle’s thought is this: patience lets one test, or taste in very deed, the soundness of something. Of what? Of what the soul resolved under the influence of faith. And it resolved to live unwaveringly in the spirit of faith. Therefore patience lets one taste the soundness of life according to faith. It lets one taste how sweet, peaceful, joyful, and blessed it is, despite external hardships and sorrows.

How does it let one taste this? By keeping the believer on the path he entered by faith. If this restraint were absent, and if the believer withdrew from the path of faith at every outward assault, he would have no possibility of testing by deed and tasting how sweet and blessed life in the spirit of faith is. Patience, by keeping him in the paths of faith, lets him taste this and produces experience in him.

This experience embraces life as a whole, and also each particular side of it, even every deed done in the spirit of faith. It provides what the Apostle elsewhere defined as having the senses trained for every good. “And experience produces hope.” Supply: produces. This is the third link of the chain.

Knowing what experience is, we will not be surprised at how it produces hope. It means that the heart’s experiential tasting of how sweet and peaceful life in the spirit of faith is warms and roots hope. How does this happen? Through the following conclusion, made not by the mind but by the heart: if here, amid all external sorrow, this life gives such peace and such blessed sweetness, then there all this will exist in an ineffably higher degree.

Nothing can shake me in this hope. Will God, who has let me taste this sweetness here, deprive me of it there? This cannot be. As certain as what I experience is, so certain is my hope. From such a consideration of the matter it is self-evident that afflictions, through patience and experience, lead to undoubting hope under two conditions: faithfulness to faith, or a good conscience, and confidence in God.

Chrysostom expresses both in this way: “Nothing leads so much to good hope as a good conscience. No person living honorably loses confidence in the future. But the negligent man, oppressed by an evil conscience, desires neither judgment nor recompense. We are established on hope, but not on hope in men, which is often destroyed and puts the one who hoped to shame. The one who gave promise of protection either dies, or though living changes his disposition. Our hope is not like this. It is firm and unshakable. He who gave us the promises always lives. And we who will enjoy them, even if we die, will rise again. Therefore we will not be put to shame at all, as though we had vainly and foolishly comforted ourselves with weak hopes.”