We can understand the apostle’s words this way: in your hope rejoice; in your tribulation be patient; in your prayers be constant. Rejoice in hope because in this world you will have tribulation. In that tribulation be constant in your prayers for patience with a view to that hope.

The apostle speaks to the church of the elect and called saints: those who are born from above, children of the living God, and citizens of an eternal kingdom, living now in this world full of the seed of the serpent. You shall have tribulation. Surely those who take the name Christian can avoid tribulation. They carefully craft their words so as to avoid offending the world. By their associations and silence, they deny that they are much different from the world. And, indeed, they are not. But God’s children, Christ’s church, standing in the world as of the party of the living God, shall have tribulation. The world hates them. It hates them as it hated their Lord and as it hates their God. So the apostle writes in verse 14, “Bless them which persecute you!” Yes, God’s children are the objects of persecution for their confessions, which are rebukes of the unbelief and ungodliness of the world. And at the hands of the world, they lose their names and honor, their families and acquaintances, their jobs and homes, their liberty, and their lives.

Patience in your tribulations! The wicked serve their purposes, both that the wicked fill up their cup of iniquity and that we be exercised in suffering and through much tribulation enter the kingdom of God. “Dearly beloved, avenge not yourselves, but rather give place unto wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (v. 19).

Think on your hope! How grand a hope we have laid up for us in heaven: a glory that eye has not seen, nor ear has heard, and it never has entered into the heart of man to conceive, but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit. It is perfection in body and soul and spirit to serve the living God. It is to walk forever in the undying light of the Son of God. It is to come to Mount Zion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem; to the innumerable company of angels; to the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven; to God the judge of all; to the spirits of just men made perfect; and to Jesus, the mediator of the new covenant. It is such a glory that will be revealed in us that the afflictions of this present time are not worthy to be compared.

Rejoice in your hope! Possessing already now the earnest of our eternal inheritance in the Spirit and the promise of good things to come, rejoice in hope.

In your prayers, then, be constant! Yes, be ever living before the face of God our Father and living in the consciousness of his power and grace to give us what he has promised. Pray for patience to endure, with a view to that hope and with rejoicing in that hope, such tribulations as come on us in this life.