“This Too Shall Pass” - Not in the Bible Either
Your Hallmark Card Is Not Inspired
It sounds ancient. It sounds wise. It sounds like exactly what a suffering person needs to hear.
It is not Scripture. Not one word of it.
Where It Actually Comes From
The phrase traces to Persian proverb traditions, developed by medieval Sufi poets, and arrived in Western literature through that same cultural migration. Abraham Lincoln used it in an 1859 address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, attributing it to “an Eastern monarch.” It is a piece of human wisdom with deep cultural roots.
What it does not have is a single verse of inspired Scripture behind it.
That distinction matters; this phrase is not merely repeated as trivia. It is deployed as comfort to people in genuine pain. And comfort applied to the wrong wound is not neutral; it delays the right treatment.
The Problem With Theological Anesthesia
“This too shall pass” soothes the way anesthesia soothes: by numbing rather than healing.
It offers the suffering person one thing: time. The pain will eventually stop. Endure long enough, and the difficulty will recede.
That is not what the Bible offers.
The Bible does not tell you the pain will pass on your timeline. It tells you the pain is doing something.
John MacArthur, preaching on Romans 8 at Grace Community Church, frames the biblical position without softening it: suffering is not an interruption to be tolerated or a season to survive. It is an active, purposeful, divinely orchestrated preparation for something so immeasurably greater that Paul strains the limits of language to describe the contrast.
What Paul Actually Says
Romans 8:18 — “For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”
The word translated “I consider” is λογίζομαι (logizomai): a deliberate accounting term. Paul is not expressing a feeling or a hope. He is stating the result of a reasoned calculation. He has run the numbers on suffering and glory, and the conclusion is not even close.
2 Corinthians 4:17 presses the contrast further: “For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
Two words carry the argument. The Greek for “light” is ἐλαφρόν: trivial, of no consequence. The Greek for “weight of glory” is βάρος: heaviness, substance, magnitude. Paul is setting a feather against a stone; and he calls your suffering the feather.
The man who wrote that had been beaten with rods three times, shipwrecked three times, stoned at Lystra and left for dead (2 Corinthians 11:24–25; Acts 14:19). He was not writing from comfort about abstract theology. He was writing from a broken body; and he called it light. He suffered well beyond what was even written.
What the Bible Promises Instead
“This too shall pass” gives you a destination: the end of pain.
Scripture gives you something entirely different: a purpose for the pain and a glory that renders it incomparable.
Romans 5:3–4 — “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope.”
Not just endurance. Character. And not just character. Hope. The chain does not end at relief; it ends at something forged in the furnace of exactly what you are going through.
1 Peter 5:10 — “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”
Four verbs. All active. All initiated by God. He does not promise the pain passes. He promises He will do something with it. The person who comes through suffering in God’s hands is not the same person who entered it.
MacArthur, writing on Romans 8, frames the entire arc this way: whatever we endure in this life, God is working it toward a final, eternal good; and our eternity with Him is unassailable.
Take This With You
The next time you are tempted to say “this too shall pass” to a suffering person, offer them Romans 8:18 instead. Not as a rebuke; as a gift. Time ends. Glory does not.
Read 2 Corinthians 4:17 and focus on the original meanings. Paul calls your suffering ἐλαφρόν. He has earned the right to say that. Hear him.
“This too shall pass” gives you time.
The Bible gives you eternity; and it tells you the suffering between here and there is not wasted. It is the preparation.
“This too shall pass” ends at relief. Romans 8:18 ends at glory. One of those is worth building your life on.
To His Glory,
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