d wait for the
redemption and glory yet unrevealed.

Again, no hardship is too great for the world to undergo for the sake
of sordid gain; it willingly suffers whatever comes for that which
moth and rust consume and thieves steal.

13. Paul means to say: "I am certain there is reserved for us
exceeding glory, in comparison wherewith all earthly suffering is
actually of no consideration; only it is not yet manifest." If we
have to face the slightest gale of adversity, or if a trifling
misfortune befalls us, we begin to make outcry, filling the heavens
with our false complaint of a terrible calamity. Were our faith
triumphant, we would regard it but as a small inconvenience to
suffer, even for thirty or forty years or longer; indeed, we should
think our sufferings too trifling to be taken into account. May the
Lord our God only forbear to reckon with us for the sins we have
committed! Why will we have so much to say about great sufferings and
their merits? How utterly unworthy we are of the free grace and
ineffable glory which are ours in the fact that through Christ we
become children and heirs of God, brethren and joint-heirs with
Christ!

Well may we resolve: "I will maintain a cheerful silence about my
sufferings, boasting not of them nor complaining about them. I will
patiently endure all my merciful God sends upon me, meanwhile
rendering him my heartfelt gratitude for calling me to such
surpassing grace and blessing." But, as I said, the vision of glory
will not enter our hearts because of our weak and miserable flesh,
which allows itself to be more influenced by the present than by the
future. So the Holy Spirit must be our schoolmaster to bring the
matter home to our hearts.

14. Note particularly how Paul expressly states that the glory is to
be revealed in us. He would remind us that not only such as Peter or
Paul are to participate in the blessing, as we are prone to believe,
but that we and all Christians are included in the word "us." Indeed,
even the merest babe obtains at death, wherein it is a joint-sufferer
with mankind, this unspeakable glory, which the Lord Jesus into whose
death it was baptized has purchased and bestowed upon it. Though in
the life beyond one saint may have more glory than another, yet all
will have the same eternal life. Here on earth men differ in point of
strength, comeliness, intellect, yet all enjoy the same animal life.
So in the other life there will be degrees of radiance