WHY DO CHRISTIANS SUFFER?
A recent writer has offerd a series of articles under the heading of GOOD GRIEF. In the opening piece he speaks of a Christian, peculiarly beloved to him, who died after much ill health. He described her suffering and death as "horrible and pointless." In several personal exchanges with him he continued to characterize her illness and death as "meaningless" and "pointless" though, he insisted, as every believer would, that God can use the pointless and meaningless for good [the text he leaned on was the familiar Romans 8:28]. Because this dear girl didn't die from persecution and because she didn't die under God's judgment for her personal sins he branded her suffering [and the suffering of all like her] as horrible and meaningless.
In these personal exchanges, when pressed, he said that by "horrible and pointless/meaningless" he meant the illness and death had no connection to her being saved or getting eternal life. I don't suppose any reader would have got that out of what he originally said. Who would ever have thought it would? He continued to deny that her death had any theological mean—as little, he thought, as his randomly cutting his face shaving.
You understand, if it is meaningless then not even God can pretend it has meaning. Listen you can't take what is truly meaningless and invest it with meaning. That would be a pious scam. You can certainly [by God's grace] make the meaningless spur you to meaningful response
I find such a view as astonishing and profoundly misleading and it also robs countless Christian sufferers of the truth that they can offer their [non-punitive/non-persecution] suffering to God as service to his cause.
I would insist that disease [which is Death's approach] and Death belong to the old Adamic world, to the old creation. I would also propose [with millions of others] that disease [which is Death's approach] and Death are the result of God's righteous and gracious [yes!] response to human rebellion when he pronounced the curse on us; a curse that included death [Genesis 2 & 3] and that God came in and as Jesus to bear/share that curse that he might redeem us from it [Hebrews 2:14-15].
The NT elect, those who are in the Lord Jesus and are his Body in the world are part of an already existing new creation that will be fully appropriated when the Lord Jesus comes and Death in all its forms is utterly obliterated [note 2 Corinthians 5:17 along with passages such as Galatians 1:4 and Colossians 1:13]. Those who are in the Lord Jesus have passed from Death to Life [John 5:24], they already belong to a new world, they are not of this world though they are in it [John 17:5-6, 11, 14, 18—I recognize that these texts beg to be developed].
All the above says what? I'm saying that Christians though in the world do not belong to the old world, the old creation, the fallen world, though they are in it at Christ's request [John 17]. They are "in him" and he "in them"; they are his Body [the Church—Colossians 1:18, Ephesians 1:23 and elsewhere]. Jesus was not "of the world" and the disease and death that is part of "the world" that is under God's judgment/curse did not rightly belong to his experience but he chose to bear it on humanity's behalf [see Matthew 8:16-17].
And it's that sharing/bearing that the Body of Christ rehearses in each generation. Sin and disease and death and all the realities connected with the Fallen/Adamic world are not for them either but as the instrument of their Master's present presence in the world they rehearseHIS suffering and the glory that follows.
Jesus' unique and indispensable personal life, death and resurrection in his earthly ministry [his glad sharing of God's curse] proclaimed the way God would bring the human family to glory. That he did 2,000 years ago and that is what the Church, his Body, rehearses and announces in each generation. It images the Lord Jesus and his redeeming work.
This is what Paul has in mind when he says he wants to be conformed, more and more, to the likeness of Jesus' sufferings, knowing that it will end in the image of His resurrection [Philippians 3:10-14].
This is what he has in mind when he calls Christians to imitate him and he imitates Christ. This is what he has in mind when in Romans 8:17-29 he claims God eternally purposed the Church to be conformed to his Son's image of suffering and then glory. Read that entire section—8:17-31, where he lists suffering and trials of all kinds and not just persecution or chastisement.
Christians share the agony of the world until their true inheritance is finally revealed [1 Peter 1:3-4].
To call a Christian's suffering "meaningless" or "pointless" is biblical igorance and it is unintentionally to rob Christians of profound comfort and a sense of their mission and place in God's unfolding drama.
We're well aware that some Christians overtly suffer persecution for their faith. I'm taking that truth for granted. A dear Christian who suffers greatly in illness and not persecution wonders why she is suffering as she does.
There’s more than one "answer" but to the degree that any of them is worth anything at all, they must rise out of the biblical witness and while the biblical witness must involve individual verses correctly and rigorously exegeted, in the end, the individual verses are about who Christians are and what their place is in the entire Drama that is God’s great enterprise—we need to get the big picture. Christians have been given a place to live and serve, to rejoice and suffer—they have their "part to play" in God’s bringing to completion his creation commitment and intention. The impetus for, the model followed and the goal toward which creation under God moved and moves was and is Jesus Christ and centrally involved in that is the suffering of Christ.
There are many faces to his sufferings. The stress in the NT is the truth that he died to deal with the sins of the human family [and that has more than one face]. But that truth doesn’t stand alone, it’s part of the larger truth that God eternally desired to live in holy loving fellowship with every man and his mother. In order to accomplish that he was prepared to deal with human sinfulness and he did it in and as Jesus Christ.
It’s clear from the NT that Jesus Christ continues to suffer.
In Matthew 25, for good or ill, he said, "If you did it to them you did it to me!"
When he met Paul on the road with the question, "Saul, Saul why do you persecute me?" he went on to identify himself as "Jesus, whom you are persecuting." Acts 9:4-5. We need to take this seriously. There is a unity of relationship between the church of Christ and Jesus Christ himself. The church is not Jesus Christ and should never presume that it is. But having said that, the church is boldly declared to be the body of Christ and its sufferings are said to be his.
1 Peter 4:13 tells the Christians to rejoice because they "participate in the sufferings of Christ." (It’s true that the genitive might mean only that the sufferings come because these people belong to Christ. This would be true, of course, but the Acts 9 texts and the drift of the Story would say there’s more to it than that. They are "Christ’s sufferings".) Christians suffer "for the sake of Christ" but it's a larger truth that Christ himself suffers through Christians.
Paul was just one Christian and it is true that he had his peculiar calling to fulfil but the idea that Paul the apostle stood unrelated to or independent of the "body" is false. He existed and was sustained as part of the body of Christ—without his living union with the rest of the body through the Spirit of Christ he had no existence as a Christian. His personal sufferings were part of what the body of Christ suffered (see 1 Corinthians 12:4-31) so that when he suffered and served it was the body suffering and serving through one of its individual members. The eye isn’t a foot and seeing is not the business of the ear; but it’s the body that sees through the eye or hears through the ear. These parts don’t exist independent of all else. They have no existence apart from the body and what is more they don't function as anything other than the body functioning through them.
So while Paul’s sufferings are personal they are Paul playing his part as a part of the body of Christ (see 2 Corinthians 1:5-6).
In Colossians 1:24 he says this. "Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you." Notice this "for you" phrase. What does that tell you? We see from this that the sufferings of one person can be endured "for" someone else. Keep that in mind! "And I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s afflictions, for the sake of his body, which is the church." [And notice in 1:25 that he links his suffering with his commission to bring the fullness of God’s word to his people.]
The NRSV renders Colossians 1:24 this way. "In my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church."
The passage is filled with difficulties so as you’d expect the history of interpretation is filled with explanations. But everyone agrees that there is a "quota" of sufferings that has not yet been filled and that Paul’s sufferings are to be understood as contributing toward filling it up.
I’m taking the direction that the sufferings of Christ in his own flesh have been completed and therefore all that is necessary to bring about the reconciliation of the world was completed at the cross (the resurrection is part of the package, of course).
But how was the news of that to get to the planet? Could Christ have come and gone without anyone knowing what God had accomplished in him? Well of course not!
The rehearsal of that saving life and death, resurection and glorification with all the afflictions that were part of his life must go on if the church is to "witness" to each generation of the human family so that people can be saved in Jesus and become part of the NT elect (see 1 Corinthians 1.21). So Christ in and through his body the church rehearses the once for all suffering. This is the kind of thing I think Paul has in mind in 2 Corinthians 4:10-11. "We always carry around in our body the death (Gk. nekrosin, dying or killing) of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body."
The upshot of all this is that Paul’s suffering is "for" others and is not just "bad luck" or punishment for his personal sins--compare 2 Corinthians 1:3-9. (I’m not suggesting that God would not chastise Paul if he saw fit.) Here is suffering that has a vicarious character and has its place in God’s offer of redemption to the human family.
Ah, yes, but surely all this is persecution rather than suffering that comes as a part of "the human condition". We can’t say that. And in 2 Corinthians Paul’s sufferings were more than the pain inflicted on him by enemies of the gospel. See his list of troubles in 2 Corinthians, chapters 4 and 6 and 11. Part of his agony, he tells us, is his worry about the affliction that the little churches were undergoing (11:28).That's not persecution; it is the pain that being a lover brings in a world where our beloved suffers.
And we need to bear in mind that when Jesus was working his work of redemption, when he was single-handedly showing the reign of God at work in his own life and service he bore the sufferings of people. Matthew 8:16-17 doesn’t speak of persecution. It declares (and uses a well-established redemption section—Isaiah 53) that he shares/carries their diseases and sicknesses. Passages like these don’t speak of specific "moments" in his life, isolated and with independent "points" to make. They are part of his life as a whole, which is inextricably tied up with his place in God’s unfolding Drama that stretches from one eternity to another.
In such a passage it is disease and illness that is focussed on and not pain or loss consciously inflicted by wicked human hands. It isn’t hurt and loss that results from their devotion to God. I’ve developed this a little on Matthew 8:16-17.
Click.
That passage and others insist that when we reflect on Christ’s saving work that we are not to dismiss general human suffering from the picture. However they are connected, Christ’s life—from birth to exaltation, involves his bearing the diseases and sicknesses of the human family. If that is true it is a terrible omission if our theology doesn’t take it into account and since suffering is a profound and universal experience it is a tragic omission.
Because they are united with him by faith the inheritance of Christians is not sickness and death and loss. Their inheritance is altogether different (1 Peter 1:3-4). Why then do they share the sufferings and sicknesses that are common to the sinful human family? Because they are Christ’s body! Because he continues to spell out the meaning of who he is, what he did and what he is bringing to completion. Because he continues to bring to the world the good news of God’s creation purposes in and through his body, the Church,—the good news that he embodied and proclaimed in his earthly ministry and now in his glorification and exaltation.
This is (I believe) the central reason that Christians share the hurt experienced by the entire human family. In their sufferings they "gospel".
Their sharing of the ills and death and other things of their fellow-humans is not pointless.
IT'S A CALLING!
[Compare 1 Peter 2:18-24 where the suffering is not persecution for the faith but for alleged faults as a servant.]
IT'S A GLORIOUS DESTINY! [See Romans 8:29.]
(I'm open to discuss this should you choose to respond.]
©2004 Jim McGuiggan. All materials are free to be copied and used as long as money is not being made.
Many thanks to brother Ed Healy for allowing me to post from his website, the abiding word.com.
