How God Uses Friction to Shape Us
by Sinclair B. Ferguson. The Hand of Providence God employs friction to shape us into his Son’s likeness. Scripture reflects on this in various places. One that provides us with important first principles is Romans 5:3–4: “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.” Paul has been explaining how knowing we are justified leads to rejoicing in the hope, or assurance, of the glory of God. Christ was “delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification” (Roman 4:25). In his resurrection, our sin bearer, the Lord Jesus, was declared to be “righteous” in God’s sight. When we are united to Christ, God declares us to be righteous in his sight too. And because our justification is actually Christ’s justification for us, we can rejoice in the hope of glory. In Romans, Paul takes several chapters to show that we cannot be justified by our own righteousness. ...