^1-2 To have been justified by faith is a recapitulation (cf. Dunn, Romans, 262) of the justification or reckoning of righteousness to Abraham (cf. 4:22), who believed that God would act to ensure the future of his seed. Peace and righteousness are naturally associated in Old Testament passages that speak of the salvation and restoration of Israel (cf. Ps. 72:7; 85:1-13; Is. 9:7; 32:17). In the letter so far peace has been the alternative to the turmoil and suffering that accompanies the wrath of God:

Affliction and anguish upon every soul of man working evil, Jew first, then Greek; but glory and honour and peace to everyone working good, Jew first, then Greek. (2:9-10)

‘…their feet (are) swift to shed blood; destruction and misery (are) in their ways; and a way of peace they did not know.’ (3:15-17)

This second passage is a quotation from Isaiah 59: Israel has been separated from God by its sins (1-2); the wicked act violently, they do not know the way of peace (3-8); therefore, justice and righteousness are far off (9-14); but YHWH has put on righteousness as a breastplate, the helmet of salvation, etc., and will come to inflict wrath on those in Israel who defied him, so that they shall ‘fear the name of the LORD from the west, and his glory from the rising of the sun’ (15-19); and he will come to Zion as a redeemer, to ‘those in Jacob who turn from transgression’ (20). Righteousness and peace, therefore, are not private qualities: they are the marks of eschatological restoration that will appear at the end of the age, when the unrighteous and violent in Israel are judged.

Paul’s assertion that they boast in hope of the glory of God also has a passage such as this in view: it is a hope not so much of personal salvation as of national restoration - the re-establishment of the glorious presence of God in the midst of his people, visible to the nations of the world. The argument here that connects the key themes of justification by faith, peace with God, and the hope of the glory of God belongs in the historical-eschatological narrative about the wrath of God against the nation and the survival of a redeemed subsection of Israel.

^3-4 But he boasts not only in the hope that God will again be glorified - because such a hope is inseparable from the suffering that the community of those who are ‘called of Jesus Christ, …called saints’ (1:6-7) must endure. Affliction produces perseverance, which leads to a character tested or approved by the ordeal of persecution (this is what Paul appears to mean by the unusual word dokimēn), which provides the experiential basis for the hope of glory. The stories of the Maccabean martyrs provide an apposite background to Paul’s thought and language (cf. 4 Macc. 1:11; 9:7-8; 17:4).

⁵ What empowers them to endure opposition and suffering is the experience of the love of God that came with the pouring out of the Spirit at Pentecost - specifically for this prophetic community of the Son of man that would have to withstand the upheavals of the end of the age. The conjunction of the idea of not being put to shame and the pouring out of the Spirit is anticipated in Joel 2:26b-29:

And my people shall never again be put to shame. You shall know that I am in the midst of Israel, and that I am the LORD your God and there is none else. And my people shall never again be put to shame. And it shall come to pass afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men shall see visions. Even on the male and female servants in those days I will pour out my Spirit.

If this is not merely coincidental, we may suppose that Paul is thinking of a restored people that will not be put to shame as they face the ‘great and terrible day of the LORD’, when God will judge sinful Israel, who will call on the name of the Lord and will escape destruction (cf. Joel 2:30-32).