Triumphs through suffering January 31, 2008
Posted by reformedville in : Theology , trackbackDo you have a place in your theology or in your world-view for suffering — not only Christ’s suffering, but yours? Or is your aim in life to avoid suffering at all cost? I am not implying that it is healthy to seek suffering, or that suffering is an end in itself. That would be an aberrant and masochistic misunderstanding of Christianity. But it is impossible to have a biblical world-view and fail to understand something of the value of suffering in disciplining our bodies and shaping our souls, just as it is impossible to follow Jesus Christ and still run from pain and suffering. Anyone who teaches that a Christian whose life is pleasing to the Lord will generally live a life free from pain is teaching a lie.The glory of the Christian life is not that it avoids suffering, but that it triumphs through suffering, making even the things that would hurt and destroy us to be instead the very means God uses to free us of our bondage to this world and its false promises, to mature us in our faith, to strengthen us in our obedience, and to prepare us for eternity. Our supreme example in all of this is Jesus himself, who lived a life of poverty and suffering, who was betrayed and abandoned by those whom he loved most, and who endured the painful and shameful death of crucifixion. His death was a scandal to his contemporaries, and still today it is, in the apostle Paul’s words, “a stumbling-block to Jews and folly to Gentiles.”
Too often, Jesus’ rejection by his contemporaries is seen as a tragedy, his suffering and death as a near-defeat, and the resurrection as a picture of God’s making the best out of a bad deal, snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat. But, in fact, Jesus came into the world in order to face all of this. He set his face like a flint towards Jerusalem for this very thing. And as you and I enter this season of Lent, we will be helped if we think on these things, realizing that Jesus did not endure what he endured simply so that we might live the American dream. He did not call us to follow him so that we could spend our lives trying to avoid following him into the places where life becomes hard.
This goes against the grain of much popular teaching in church circles, which remains after years of criticism by biblical theologians still mired in the notion that the gospel is essentially therapeutic, in the popular sense of the word: God going to whatever extent he must in order to get us feeling better about ourselves without ever demanding radical change on our part, and seeking above all to meet our perceived needs. The gospel is far more radical in its diagnosis of our real needs and in God’s determination to transform us by the power of grace.
The passion of the Christ was always God’s plan for freeing us from the consequences of our sin (Isa 53), the fear of death (Heb 2), and from the pride of life (Mark 10).
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