Called To Suffer

by VILES, D. | Category: The Call Of Christ | Mar 2009

Nobody is immune from it. Job, who knew more than most about suffering, observed that 'Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.'(1) We know it, painfully, when it comes, and we fear it in prospect. Well, we're in good company; even the Lord Jesus, contemplating the cross, pleaded with His Father: 'If it is Your will, take this cup away from Me.'(2) So for the Christian following the Master, suffering is not to be courted: still less self-mortification - with its tendency to inflate pride and inhibit submission to God.3 The Lord Himself taught that it is right for us to pray, 'Do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one.'(4)

Yet while God will never tempt us,(5) Scripture is uncompromising that God can and does test the individual believer. The book of Job focuses at length on this paradox, while in the New Testament the Lord said, 'In the world, you will have tribulation'(6) - no doubt about it, then: we are called to suffer! Paul adds that every true disciple 'will suffer persecution'.(7) This is a hard imperative in a materialistic and superficial age - it plumbs the depths of the human experience as well as ascending the heights of the divine purpose. It is all too easy to approach suffering in the abstract, with the platitudes of Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar - dismissed by the anguished Job as miserable comforters.(8) Suffering covers, for the believer, a wide spiritual and physical spectrum and an infinite degree;(9) your suffering is hurtful and is personal to you as mine is to me, but we all share mystically in the suffering which is experienced by every member of the body of Christ.(10) Perhaps you consider the statement 'no chastening seems to be joyful for the present'(11) as an understatement! If so, we can take heart that through the personal, private pain and anguish there is the 'later' of the same verse - 'later on ... it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.' (NIV)

We are not alone

Just as a loving parent is caught up in the life of his child, so God is intimately concerned with the wellbeing of each believer. This goes beyond care and kindness - it extends to a sharing in our experiences, both of suffering and of joy. Take the example of the enslavement of the people of Israel in Egypt. God heard their cry because of their taskmasters, ''for I know their sorrows'.(12) He heard because He reveals Himself as sharing in - empathising with - their misery: 'in all their affliction He was afflicted.'(13) It is immensely comforting - and fundamental to an understanding both of suffering and of how a loving God can presume to test those He loves - to comprehend in wonder that He weeps with those who weep and deigns to suffer alongside us.

The wonder does not end there, of course. Sharing in the human experience from the security of heaven was not enough - creating complete empathy was the purpose of the incarnation of God the Son: 'as the children have partaken of flesh and blood, He Himself likewise shared in the same.'(14) The fact that the Lord Jesus shares in our humanity extends and reinforces the identification of the Godhead with suffering saints - 'in that He Himself has suffered ... He is able to aid those who are tempted.'(15) That sharing involved for the Lord of glory the taking of the lowest place - owning through gritty experience the early realities of rejection, homelessness and insecurity and, finally, the humiliation of Calvary.

So, while we rejoice that our ultimate destiny is to be 'like Him',(16) that process of identification must inevitably involve a calling to suffer as we live counter-culturally in obedience to Him. Paul understood clearly the part played by 'fellowship in His sufferings' in attaining to an intimate knowledge of Christ,(17) while Peter brings the process of identification full circle - just as Christ brought glory to God by His sufferings so do we by our willingness to suffer for Him.(18) In comparison, they're merely light afflictions!(19)

Later on ...

Ask the average person about suffering and the response will probably be a negative one. While, as we have seen, the disciple will, like anybody else, avoid unnecessary suffering, he or she will discern, as Job did after all his afflictions, 'the end intended by the Lord': that He is 'very compassionate and merciful'.(20) Throughout Christian history, commentators have marvelled at the ability of the Christian to persist in believing in a good and loving God despite personal pain and suffering. This was no easy task for Job in ancient times,(21) just as it may be a challenge for some called to particularly intense affliction today, even to persecution for His name.

The Bible is unequivocal that there is a divine purpose in suffering - the 'later on' of Hebrews 12:11. Suffering is not in itself the aim - it is only part of God's loving purpose as the master Potter to make of such unpromising clay as you and me 'vessels of mercy ... for glory'.(22) These will be no ordinary kitchenware - God has taken, and is taking, infinite pains to transform each one of us into a genuine work of art - 'predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son'.(23) To be, as Christ, 'holy and without blame before Him in love'.(24) There can be no higher, nobler destiny, ornamenting us to share eternity with Him.

Clay, of course, is inanimate and we are not. Sometimes we wander far from the Potter's studio and it takes the loving Potter - who never gives up on us - to jolt us back to our priorities. 'God whispers ... in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains.'(25) Sometimes we need that jolt - only 'later on' do we recognise the peaceable fruit of righteousness as God recommences His work of embellishing our characters.(26)

With some of us, that work may be starting from a very low base. Here we shift the image, from the potter who looks only to the finished result to our loving heavenly Father who loves us for what - and despite what - we are. Unremittingly, inexorably, He changes us, developing our faith and character into that which pleases Him. 'As a man chastens his son, so the Lord your God chastens you'.(27) This statement, again, runs counter to a culture where the concept of fatherhood is rapidly losing meaning, but the Bible is crystal clear - 'without chastening ... then you are illegitimate and not sons'.(28) 'Later on' the sensitive ('trained') believer will recognise the harvest it produces - a further step towards the righteousness and peace exemplified in the character of Christ.

That character - as it fills the believer - is developed in Scripture and by experience. The image changes again, this time to the work of refining the purest gold.(29) The righteousness and peace of Christ includes patience, experience and hope among other qualities, all springing from the refining effect of tribulation.(30) Even Paul had to learn that his painful thorn in the flesh was the work of the divine Refiner purging out the dross of human pride,(31) proving the reality of a faith tested by fire.(32)

As Job found in his suffering, the effects of submission to the will of God cannot be contained - others will be intrigued or inspired. Eternity will reveal how profoundly and fruitfully individual saints have witnessed - usually unknowingly - through their conduct under suffering, and how greatly other saints have been encouraged thereby.(33) To 'bless those who persecute you'(34) reflects powerfully the character of Christ who 'suffered ... the just for the unjust'.(35)

Later, later ...

If the Lord had only said 'in the world you will have tribulation', every day of our earthly existence would be bleak. 'But,' He continued, 'be of good cheer, I have overcome the world'.(36) The comfort and reassurance of that 'but' are surely incalculable for all believers in their suffering. If we have found Scripture uncompromising in stressing the inevitability of suffering for the Christian, let us rejoice that, time and time again, there is a closely associated emphasis on the glory that shall follow ... later!(37) Compared with 'the exceeding and eternal weight of glory', our present afflictions are light.(38)

On the other hand, perhaps we might feel our sufferings are genuinely light compared with those of others. But only the Lord knows what the future holds. 'Our Father refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home.'(39)

All Bible quotations from NKJV unless otherwise indicated.

(1) Job 5:7 (2) Luke 22:42 (3) Col.2:20-23 (4) Mat.6:13 (5) Jas.1:13 (6) John 16:33 (7) 2 Tim.3:12 (8) Job 16:2 (9) E.g. hatred, exclusion, reviling, calumny - Luke 6:22: chains and plundering - Heb.10:34 (10) 1 Cor.12:26 (11) Heb.12:11 (12) Ex.3:7 (13) Is.63:9 (14) Heb.2:14 (15) Heb.2:18 (16) 1 John 3:2 (17) Rom.8:17; Phil.3:10 (18) John 21:18-19; 1 Pet.2:20 (19) 2 Cor.4:17 (20) Jas.5:11 (21) See particularly Job 16 (22) Rom.9:23 (23) Rom.8:29 (24) Eph.1:4 (25) C.S.Lewis: The Problem of Pain Ch.6 (26) Ps.119:67 (27) Deut.8:5 (28) Heb.12:8 (29) Job 23:10 (30) Rom.5:3-4 (31) 2 Cor.12:7-9 (32) 1 Pet.1:6-7 (33) 2 Cor.1:3-5 (34) Rom.12:14 (35) 1 Pet.3:18 (36) See note 6 (37) See, for example, Mat.10;39; Rom.8:17-18; 1 Pet.4:12-13; 5:10 (38) See note 19 (39) C.S Lewis op cit. Ch.7

VILES, D. | Mar 2009
The Call Of Christ