And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, so that we may be also glorified together.
Read Chapter 8
Ambrosiaster
AD 400
Since there is no way that God the Father can be said to have died and Christ the Son is said to have died because of his having become flesh. How is it that he who died is always said to be the heir of the life, when heirs are normally heirs of the dead? But of course Christ died in his humanity, not in his divinity. For with God, which is where our inheritance lies, the Father’s gift is poured into his obedient children, so that one who is alive may be the heir of the Living One by his own merit and not by reason of death…. What it means to be a fellow heir with Christ we are taught by the apostle John, for among other things he says: “We know that when he appears we shall be like him.”… To suffer together with Christ is to endure persecutions in the hope of future rewards and to crucify the flesh with its evils and lusts, i.e., to reject the pleasures and pomp of this world. For when all these things are dead in a man, then he has crucified this world, believing in the life of the w...
Good works can hardly be done without suffering, yet the suffering of the saints is nourished by a great hope. For nothing earthly is promised but rather eternal glory. .
Here “suffer with him” does not mean that we should sympathize and come to the aid of the sufferer, as it usually does in everyday parlance. Christ did not suffer in order to get attention, nor did he undergo weakness in order to gain the sympathy of those who felt sorry for him. To suffer with Christ means to endure the same sufferings that he was forced to suffer by the Jews because he preached the gospel…. If we suffer with him we shall be worthy to be glorified with him as well. This glory is the reward of our sufferings and is not to be regarded as a free gift. The free gift is that we have received remission of our former sins. .
Notice how Paul gradually increases the attraction of the gift. For it is quite possible to be a child without being an heir…. Nor are we simply heirs; we are “fellow heirs with Christ.” See how concerned Paul is to bring us ever nearer to the Son! Homilies on Romans
So also he says elsewhere: "If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together; for I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us.".
For I reckon that the sufferings of this time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us."
