SUFFERING IS A PATIENT BEAST—IT WILL CATCH US.
“Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12)
Suffering is lonely, and its most obvious effect is to bring the sufferer into a new relationship with himself. Suffering does not teach from a textbook; it works with the material already in a woman or man. But why does God allow his children to suffer? God is beyond our comprehension and we cannot know why he allows each instance of suffering to come into our lives. Our part is simply to remain faithful. Through suffering, we learn that God is enough for our lives and our future. We must love God regardless of whether he allows blessing or suffering to come to us. Testing is difficult, but the result is often a deeper relationship with God. Those who endure the testing of their faith will experience God’s great rewards in the end.
Suffering can be, but is not always, a penalty for sin. In the same way, prosperity is not always a reward for being good. Those who love God are not exempt from trouble. Although we may not be able to understand fully the pain we experience; it can lead us to rediscover God. Be slow to give advice to those who are hurting. They often need compassion more than they need advice.
When we suffer we must turn to God for understanding endurance, and deliverance. Suffering purges everything that is not central to life. People who have suffered understand each other in a way that others who have not suffered cannot. Suffering teaches us the absolute limit to our abilities. Many times we who are suffering can do nothing about it at the time we are in the middle of these situations.
As we study the New Testament we see that suffering was not an agonizing problem. It was as natural to the first Christians as the air they breathed. Jesus had predicted that his followers would suffer the same troubles he did, and never was a prediction more thoroughly fulfilled. During the early church we saw official and unofficial harassment, or arrest, imprisonment, torture, and death.
Against our age’s belief that suffering is a monstrous affront, the New Testament assumes that suffering is a Christian vocation entirely natural and even grimly desirable. Paul wrote the Philippians, as though announcing a sweepstake winner, “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him” (1:29). He told Timothy, “Everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (2 Timothy 3:12). The early Christians saw themselves as part of a continuous chain of suffering witnesses to God’s truth, dating from the murder of Abel by Cain. Such suffering provided you were in the battle against evil. The book of Acts says that the apostles, after being flogged by the Sanhedrin, went off rejoicing “because they had been counted worthy of suffering disgrace for the Name” (Acts 5:41).
Not only was suffering necessary to God’s work, it was also good for those who suffered. Suffering produced perseverance, which in turn produced character (Rom. 5:3-4). If Jesus learned obedience through suffering (Heb. 5:8), so could his followers. Someone who has “suffered in his body is done with sin,” Peter wrote, and “as a result, he does not live the rest of his earthly life for evil human desires, but rather for the will of God” (1 Peter 4:1-2).
If we want to find people who struggled with the meaning of suffering somewhat as we do today, we should not look in the New Testament. Instead, turn to the Old Testament—its atmosphere is comparatively modern. Nobody in the Old Testament treated suffering with gratitude. They treated it more as we would—as an ugly fact to be searched for meaning.
What meaning did they find? Most often they concluded their suffering was punishment for sins. Sometimes, especially in the later prophets, suffering was also a purifying agent, separating the remnant of Israel from the disobedient masses. The book of Isaiah even contains the idea of vicarious suffering—that the Servant may suffer for others’ sake so that “by his stripes we are healed.”
The early Christians gladly accepted suffering because they longed, like all people of God, to see God face to face. They also longed for any foretaste of that full and personal intimacy. In suffering, they came into fellowship with Jesus in a deeply person way. Job had found fellowship with God only at the end of his suffering. The first Christians found fellowship with God all through their sufferings—for Jesus was a fellow-sufferer who lived in fellowship with them as they suffered.
The Bible tells us we will suffer and be persecuted in our Christian lives and we should count it all joy for any trial we face. I am sure you have heard the expression, “the joy of suffering.” To us, that sounds like a religious plaque: sentiment, but not sense. We do not want to suffer joyfully. If we must suffer, let the pain come in a splendorous, existential agony. Let it really hurt. Otherwise, keep it far from us. Use drugs to mute screaming nerves, blow up the unjust government, divorce the painful partner, abort the unwanted child—anything can be justified to prevent undeserved pain.
However, to suffer for Christ is to obediently face the sufferings that come our way and to believe that through them we trace his steps—through pain and death to life and immortality and fellowship with him. Those who embrace suffering as part of their calling in Christ remain blind to its purpose. They may not see how their battle affects the larger battle. They can see, nonetheless, that bravery and obedience are called for, just as for a soldier in battle. As those on Jesus’ side, suffering as his servants, they may gain a glimpse of him walking ahead, fighting for them. We must understand that Christ died for us on a cross and shed his blood for us. Suffering will continue, as it always has, here and there in sporadic bursts—we are usually interested in our own concerns. Most people suffer in one way or another; only some of us are persecuted for our faith. Suffering is as much a reality in our time and culture, drugged as it is, as in any before, but we push it out of sight. We cannot do anything to fix it, so why think about it?
It would be better for us if we could catch the patient beast of suffering. Hopefully it will bend our attention toward the footsteps of Christ. If we track them closely, we will find the Lamb, Jesus himself, still marked by his wounds. He suffered and died for us. No fact of his life and character is more personal or fuller of love for us. If we can only struggle and wish and hope to escape suffering, we will never understand him. We need, instead, to count it an honor to walk in his steps, to share in the fellowship of his sufferings, to be like him, and therefore to be bound uniquely to him as fellow-sufferers on our journey to heaven.
