Suffering 13
Note: Having begun this series on suffering with definitions and descriptions, we then moved on to some scriptural and current examples. Last week we shifted and began to offer some answers to the great question, "But why did this happen?" We began with two reasons, that suffering is sometimes the consequence of our sin and other times judgment on us for our sin. Today I will offer a third reason, that suffering is a school that develops or grows us into Christian maturity. I cannot write this better than I already have in a chapter in Freed From Sin. Here is that chapter.
I
like to be comfortable. I would rather sit on a hard bench than stand up, and
if a cushioned chair is available, I am going to leave the hard bench for you.
I would rather walk than run, and I would rather ride than walk. I suspect you
are like me. I have never yet seen a line outside of a gym. Our flesh likes to
be pampered, indulged, and spoiled. We do not like to suffer.
The problem with this approach in the
context of holiness is that being at ease in Zion has never yet brought a body
to the place of conformity with Jesus Christ. It is suffering that God holds
valuable in His economy, not comfort. Peter tells us to suffer according to the will of God (I Peter 4.19). In other words,
there is some suffering that our Heavenly Father has purposely designed for us
to endure for reasons that seem good to Him. It is His wish, His desire, His
will for us that we experience it.
I
Peter and Job are the best books
in the Bible to study suffering, but we find an absolutely foundational truth
tucked away in an obscure corner of Hebrews.
Though he were a Son, yet learned he
obedience by the things which he suffered. (Hebrews 5.8). Obviously, this
is talking about Jesus Christ. Just as obviously, Jesus did not ever have a time
in His earthly career when He was not completely obedient. Incomplete obedience
is partial disobedience, and disobedience is sin. Jesus was not a sinner;
therefore, this verse cannot be telling us that He came to the place of
learning to obey by way of suffering.
What does it mean then? One of things
sometimes misunderstood about Jesus is that there were things He had to learn. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature
(Luke 2.52). Yes, He was God, but in choosing to robe Himself in human
flesh, He chose to empty Himself temporarily of some aspects of His deity. God
is omni-present; Jesus was not. God has never learned anything; Jesus did. As a
child, He had to learn how to walk, how to tie His laces, and how to read. As a
young man, He had to learn how to use Joseph's tools. At some point (I think
about the age of twelve) He had to learn Who He was. It was not that He was
ever stubborn, rebellious, or unwilling; no, for those are sins. It is simply
that He had to mature and to grow in his ability, in His capacity, so to speak.
Included in the other areas in which
He needed to grow was obedience. He was never disobedient, but His obedience
had to increase in capacity, too. As a young man, He sat in the Temple and
solemnly declared His willingness to obey His Heavenly Father when He stated, I must be about my Father's business (Luke
2.49). Although at the age of twelve He was completely willing to do His
Father's will, He was not yet ready to follow through on the ultimate
expression of that will – His death on the cross. His obedience had to grow for
another two decades to that point, so to speak. And it did. He humbled himself, and became obedient unto
death, even the death of the cross (Philippians 2.8).
Indeed, I could even go so far as to
say that obedience to His Heavenly Father during his earthly career is the
central lesson for Christians. It is what jumps out at you again and again as
you examine His life. Four times alone in the book of John He references this. I
seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father (John 5.30). For I came down
from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me (John
6.38). I do always those things that
please him (John 8.29). As the Father gave me commandment, even so I do (John
14.31). Christ was never disobedient, but Scripture teaches us that He had
to learn the fulness of obedience, which He clearly did.
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Christ Bearing the Cross
Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin
c 1970 |
How did He learn to increase, to grow
His capacity to obey? In what school was it taught? Beloved, He learned it in
the school of suffering. Yet learned he
obedience by the things which he suffered. Or, as the writer of Hebrews phrased it elsewhere, For it became him, for whom are all things,
and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the
captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2.10). No one was ever so obedient as Jesus Christ; no one ever
suffered as much as Jesus Christ. And the two halves of that sentence are
not a coincidence.
Our situation, while different in that
we must first grow away from disobedience into obedience on our way mature
obedience, is still similar. If we want to grow in the grace of holiness, we
must grow in our capacity to obey. This will include seasons spent in the
school of suffering. In his matchless paean to suffering, his first epistle,
Peter says as much. Forasmuch then as
Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same
mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That
he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men,
but to the will of God (I Peter 4.1-2).
How does suffering do this? The short
answer is that suffering minimizes or, perhaps I should say, mortifies our
flesh. Remember, our flesh likes comfort; it does not like suffering. It
shrinks away from suffering, pulls back from it. Peter shows us that suffering in the flesh (a phrase he used three
times in those two verses) does something to decrease our lust, causing us to
cease from sin.
There are two ways to apply this
understanding. One is to interpret this as meaning we ought to actively try to
harm our own body, as if we can in this manner minimize our lust and bring
ourselves to the place of holiness. In Catholicism, dedicated members of Opus
Dei wear barbed garters under their clothes so that they may live in constant
agony. In the picturesque Spanish town of Guardia Sanframondi, every few years
penitents parade through the streets while scourging themselves with metal
whips and pins. Supposedly, such self-inflicted physical pain draws the favor of
God and brings one closer to Him. This is utter nonsense. The Word of God teaches
us to take care of our body (Ephesians
5.29). Sadistically tormenting our own flesh is not the answer.
On the other hand, if God brings
suffering to us, a proper reaction on our part produces precious things.
Namely, suffering in the flesh minimizes our attention to it and minimizes its
claim on our lives. Conversely, suffering allows us to maximize our sensitivity
to spiritual things.
Some of you reading this are puzzled
at the moment. "Minimizes our attention to our flesh? Minimizes its claim
on our lives? That's nonsense. I live in constant pain, and I've never had to
pay more attention to my body in my life." I think I understand this, yet
at the same time, if that suffering is accepted in the right spirit, it
produces in us the humility necessary for spirituality.
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My reading spot on my most recent prayer
retreat just this month. |
Nearly ten years ago, I set aside a
few days to go into the woods alone for my first prayer retreat. Just prior to
this, I had taken an extended course of a powerful antibiotic for the first
time. Unbeknownst to me, that antibiotic would kick off an inherited genetic
flaw linked directly to an obscure condition called Meniere's Disease. First
identified in the early 1800s by French doctor Prosper Meniere, it is an
incurable condition that manifests itself principally in headaches, dizziness,
vertigo, tinnitus, and eventually deafness. Associated with these, to one
extent or another, are nausea, fatigue, hyperacusis, photophobia, and a
condition with the curious name of brain fog (think of what happens to a
computer trying to run too many programs at once).
Nearly a decade of intimate
acquaintance with this disease has taught me how to manage it, but when it
first struck, I was completely at sea. I had no idea what had happened to me. I
only knew that as I drove alone west out of Chicago toward the Mississippi
River I was terribly sick. I was dizzy. The only way I could drive was by focusing
my eyes on some fixed point in the distance and sitting bolt upright and still
in the seat. I could not look down at the instrument panel, aside to my
mirrors, or around me at passing cars or other scenery. When I stopped and got
out, I had trouble walking in a straight line. My ears felt like someone had
inserted a balloon and then proceeded to inflate it near to the point of
bursting. Several hours later, after arriving at my little one-room cabin, I
collapsed onto the bed physically drained.
During the next few days, I spent most
of my time on that bed. Periodically, I would feel good enough to attempt a
prayer walk. But soon enough the symptoms would activate again, and I would
stumble back to my bed. At one point, in the initial grips of a despair that
would through the years become an old and familiar foe, I wept. All I wanted to
do was pray. All I wanted to do was walk with Him. All I wanted to do was
experience God. And I could not even stay out of bed, let alone concentrate
well enough to enter into prayer of any depth.
Curiously enough, you would think such
physical frailty would focus my attention so completely on my health that I
would be unable to concentrate on growing spiritually. The opposite has
occurred. Empathy toward the physical ailments of others has grown in me, and
that empathy has made me a better pastor and a better friend. Humility has been
inserted into my life through crevices pried open by the crowbar of weakness.
Faith, in the sense of dependence on God, has come to rule the secluded moments
immediately prior to my public ministry. Gratitude for a longsuffering wife,
for patient children, and for a kind and flexible church warms my heart. Even
when I am misunderstood by others for actions I take as a result of an
invisible disease, I am reminded of how often my Saviour was misunderstood.
Please do not misunderstand me in turn.
In the third paragraph of the introduction of this book, I laid aside any claim
to personal holiness. I am not picking it up now. The distance between where I
am and where I should be in the likeness of Christ is breathtaking in its
expanse. But He has taught me, beloved. He has grown me; He has stretched me; He
has developed me in the school of suffering. It is in this school we realize
how frail our flesh is. It is in this school that He reminds us of just how
temporal this world is while He draws our attention to the next one. It is in
this school that we come to see God alone as the source of all comfort,
strength, and peace. It is in this school we come to depend less and less upon
ourselves and more and more upon Him. It is in this school our flesh is
mortified, and our spirit is enlivened. It is in the
hothouse of the school of suffering that the fruit of the Spirit is grown to
ripeness.
Remember, as in all things, Jesus
leads us by example here, too. Whatever pain He calls you to endure, He endured
worse. Whatever burden He calls you to carry, He carried more. Whatever bitter
cup He calls you to taste, recall to your mind that He drank from it more
deeply and more often. He did so without anger, without doubt, and without
complaint. No wonder He learned obedience!
Heretical branches of modern
Christianity promote a prosperity gospel that is entirely unattached to the
Word of God. They do so because it sells. More orthodox branches of
Christianity are little better, promoting a God who pours out only what seems
good to us – peace of mind and heart, complete acceptance, unconditional love, continual
forgiveness – crowned with eternal life as the frosting on the cake. All of
these last are true about God, yes; but they are decidedly one-sided. He also
calls us to suffer, to live as strangers and pilgrims on the earth, to deny
ourselves, to labor for Him, and to pay the price. This side of eternity God is
not in the business of making us comfortable. He is in the business of making
us holy, and at some point, that always entails suffering.
For most of you reading this book it
has come to you already. For a few of you, it has yet to arrive. But for each
of you, the truth is the same: suffering is not a hindrance to holiness, but a
help. You do not have to seek such suffering; rest assured, He will bring it to
you in His time. No, you do not have to seek it, but I do advise you not to run
from it. In fact, with a bit of fear and trembling, I urge you to embrace it.
It is a hard school and a long school. But it is a wonderfully precious school,
for it draws us to Him. And that is where you want to go.
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