Ephesians 3:13

Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.

Exhortation to steadfastness

1. We are prone, when ministers of the gospel are troubled, to forsake them and their gospel (Zechariah 13:7; Matthew 26:56).

(1) By nature there is in us an immoderate declining of that which is grievous to sense. We turn our back upon the storm, and will not go so far as to put our finger in the fire at any band.

(2) From childhood there grows up in us an immoderate love of a pleasant condition. Like swallows, we would always have it to be summer.

(3) We are very inconstant, and inclined to change; ready to crown Christ today, and to crucify Him tomorrow.

2. We must be ready to suffer in the afflictions of the gospel with the ministers thereof.

(1) The Cross and profession of Christ are almost undivided companions, by God’s appointment.

(2) We must not take offence at this, because our blessedness stands in it.

(3) This not falling away in times of persecution is a testimony to us of sound hearts.

(4) This is a gainful, thing (Hebrews 11:26; Mark 10:30). (Paul Bayne.)

Tribulation, the Church’s glory

Leonard Keyser, a friend and disciple of Luther, having been condemned by the bishop, had his head shaved, and being dressed in a smock frock, was placed on horseback. As the executioners were cursing and swearing because they could not disentangle the ropes with which his limbs were to be tied, he said to them mildly, “Dear friends, your bonds are not necessary; my Lord Christ has already bound me.” When he drew near the stake, Keyser looked at the crowd and exclaimed, “Behold the harvest! O Master, send forth Thy labourers!” And then ascending the scaffold, he cried, “O Jesus, save me!” These were his last words. “What am I, a wordy preacher,” said Luther, when he received the news of his death, “in comparison with this great doer of the Word?” (J. H. M. D’Aubigne, D. D.)

Joy through tribulation

It is related that in Germany there stood two vast towers, far apart, on the extremes of a castle; and that the old baron to whom this castle belonged stretched huge wires across from one to the other, thus constructing an AEolian harp. Ordinary winds produced no effect upon the mighty instrument; but when fierce storms and wild tempests came rushing down the sides of the mountains and through the valleys, and hurled themselves against those wires, then they began to roll out the most majestic strains of music that can be conceived. It is thus with many of the deepest and grandest emotions of the human soul. The soft and balmy zephyrs that fan the brows of ease and cheer the hours of prosperity and repose give no token of the inward strength and blessing which the tempest’s wrath discloses. But when storms and hurricanes assault the soul, the bursting wail of anguish rises with the swells of jubilant grandeur, and sweeps upward to the throne of God as a song of triumph, victory, and praise. (Biblical Treasury.)

Tribulations of the believer

The very word “tribulation” is full of significance in regard to the Christian’s trials. Tribulatio is the Latin for the winnowing or thrashing out of the corn from the husk. The early Christians, seeing that God intended sorrow as a holy discipline, gave to the word a high and spiritual import, which was, to its original meaning, as the soul of man is to his body. When sorrow came to them they called it tribulatio, the separation of the chaff that was in them from the wheat. And the Christian will so look at afflictions. They come to him as they did before he was brought to Christ. Now, however, he has a strength to bear them which he had not before. They sometimes come like a flood; sometimes in the small worries of his daily life. As when the sculptor, working on the marble block, with heavy strokes brings off large pieces of the stone, and again with nice and delicate touches develops the folds of the robe and the beauty of the form, so does God at one time bring upon us great afflictions, at another smaller griefs, but always in him who receives them rightly is He bringing out the character of Christ. He first makes the heart plastic in the fires of tribulation, and then, as with a royal signet, imprints upon it the image of His Son. (J. G. Pilkington.)