James 1:2-4
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The trials burn away any impurities in the believer’s faith. What is left when the trials have ended is purified, genuine faith, analogous to the pure gold or silver that emerges from the refiner’s fire.
Wayne Grudem
Trials are the winds which root the tree of our faith.
Charles Spurgeon
The reason that believers should react with joy when faced with various trials is that these trials are means of testing through which God works to perfect faith.
Douglas J. Moo
Trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees.
J. C. Ryle
Believers need to understand the dual role of these calamities so that they can accept them in a positive manner as tools of sanctification, yet also realizing that these same trials are punishments upon unbelievers.
G. K. Beale
There is no more important, and no more subtle, test of our profession of the Christian faith than the way we react to the trials and the troubles and the tribulations of life in this world.
The New Man, 60
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones
The diamond can not be polished without friction, nor the man perfected without trials.
Anonymous
God, James has said, promises a blessing to those who endure trials. Every trial, every external difficulty, carries with it a temptation, an inner enticement to sin. God may bring, or allow, trials; but he is not, James insists, the author of temptation (v. 13). Enticement to sin comes from our own sinful natures, not from God (vv. 14–15).
Douglas J. Moo
God permits no suffering or trials without a purpose, even though that purpose may be hidden from us.
Frank Retief
I have learned more from life’s trials than from its triumphs.
John Blanchard
Trials are to be seen overall as a ground for rejoicing since vital faith is required by God, and trials serve as its stimulus. Trials encourage a continuing dependence upon God and maturation toward the greater worship of God in the activities appropriate to faith in him.
Kurt A. Richardson
Those who understand God’s sovereignty have joy even in the midst of suffering, a joy reflected on their very faces, for they see that their suffering is not without purpose.
R. C. Sproul
Jesus means that his followers must die to self-interest, declare themselves dead to the glories and attractions of this world, and be prepared for suffering, even the most ignominious suffering.
D. A. Carson
Suffering dispels the illusion that we have the strength and competence to rule our own lives and save ourselves. People “become nothing through suffering” so that they can be filled with God and his grace.
Timothy Keller
The staying power of our faith is neither demonstrated nor developed until it is tested by suffering.
D. A. Carson
The connection between the two sections is this: since Christ’s suffering is the pathway to glory, believers should also prepare themselves to suffer, knowing that suffering is the prelude to an eschatological reward.
Thomas Schreiner
God whispers to us in health and prosperity, but, being hard of hearing, we fail to hear God’s voice in both. Whereupon God turns up the amplifier by means of suffering. Then his voice booms.
C. S. Lewis
We could not learn endurance without suffering, because without suffering there would be nothing to endure.
John Stott
Christian, Jesus does not suffer so as to exclude your suffering. He bears a cross, not that you may escape it, but that you may endure it. Christ exempts you from sin, but not from sorrow. Remember that, and expect to suffer.
Charles Spurgeon
Suffering eases our grasp on the things of this world. It makes us less willing to die for the things that do not last and more willing to live for the things that are eternal.
Bryan Chapell
Secondly, if suffering leads to glory in the end, it leads to maturity meanwhile. Suffering can be productive, if we respond to it positively, and not with anger or bitterness.
John Stott
41 Satan wants to use suffering to tear us down, but God can use suffering to build us up and equip us to serve him better. However, keep in mind that suffering does not automatically equip the saint. Sad to say, some Christians have gone through trials and have come out of the fiery furnace burned and bitter instead of purified and perfected. It is only when we depend on the grace of “the God of all grace” that the furnace does its equipping work.
Warren Wiersbe
Be What You Are (1988)
Warren W. Wiersbe
Hence, “knowing Christ” for Paul involves “participation in his sufferings”—and is a cause for constant joy, not because suffering is enjoyable, but because it is certain evidence of his intimate relationship with his Lord.
Gordon Fee