WHY DO CHRISTIANS SUFFER?
We're well
aware that some Christians 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 is more
than one face to his sufferings. The stress in the NT is the truth that he died
to deal with the sins of the human family. 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.
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
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. 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. We can see from this that the
sufferings of one person can be endured "for" someone else. "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 done at the cross (the resurrection is part of the package, of
course). But the rehearsal of that saving life and death 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 (see 1 Corinthians 1.21). So Christ in 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.
I believe that
Christians are part of the new creation that has already actually come to
completion in the person of Jesus Christ. For him, in his experience as an
individual, death and sickness and subjection no longer exist. He is beyond all
that. But in his body, the church, he continues to experience these realities.
The church is "not of the world" (John 17:14-16 and Philippians 3:20)
but Christ wants them kept in the world, in fact, he sends them into the world
as the Father sent him (John 17:18 and 20:21).
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".
HEAVEN
IS BEING WITH CHRIST Heaven
means Jesus Christ, that is, being with Jesus. That is the only heaven there
is. It is Christ's home and he is never away from his home for a moment.
by Geoff Thomas
Dr. Martyn Lloyd-Jones was
often asked why we are not told more in the New Testament about life beyond the
grave. What did he reply? "I have two answers to give. The first is this
and I am sure that it is right: We are not told more because there is a sense
in which we cannot be told more. Everything in this world is sinful, even our
language. I do not hesitate to assert, therefore, that if the New Testament had
given us a detailed description of heaven and of being with Christ our language
would misrepresent it. Our language is not pure enough; the thing is so
wonderful that all the vocabularies of the universe are not adequate to
describe it. it is so glorious and wonderful that we need to be qualified and
perfected before we can take the description or are capable of understanding
it. I am sure that is the first answer.
"The other answer is that
we are deliberately not told, in order that we may think of it only as Paul
though of it. Paul only put it in one way . . . The only reason for wanting to
go to heaven is that I may be with Christ, that I may see him. That is why the
little word 'and' is so important - 'to me to live is Christ and to die is
gain.' The only man who is really happy about death, the only one who can say
confidently, 'to die is gain', is the man who has said, 'to me to live is
Christ.' . . . That is what enabled Paul to say it. Christ was the consummate
passion of his life: to know him, to dwell with him, that is the thing, said
Paul. That is my life, and therefore to die must be gain; to go home, to be
with Christ, is very far better" (D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, "The Life of
Joy". Hodder & Stoughton, London
In the Bible there is not one
reference to believers going 'to heaven' when they die. Instead they go to be
'with Christ.' In other words, heaven wasn't at all a natural hope. For
example, young people have a hope of growing up, and getting married, and
working for forty years, and retiring, and enjoying some years living on their
pensions. That is their hope for the future. It is completely natural. You
don't need a revelation from heaven to tell you that this lies in the future of
many men and women in Europe . All you need is
observation and deduction. It can all be explained by biological, political,
and economic changes. But the hope of heaven is not like that at all. It cannot
be compared to anything in the natural order, like the caterpillar becoming a
butterfly. It is not like going to bed after a long period of working, sweating
and toiling. It is not like spring following the winter. I don't want any of
you to think of heaven like that. That is a profound and dangerous error.
Heaven means Jesus Christ, that
is, being with Jesus. That is the only heaven there is. It is Christ's home and
he is never away from his home for a moment. What are the implications of that?
The first must be that there is no sin in heaven. There is no unbelief there.
There is no idolatry there. There are no false prophets there. The Beast is not
there. There are no works of Satan there. There is no lying, no lust, no anger,
no violence, no theft, no greed, no drunkenness, no pride, no hypocrisy, no
gambling, no dishonouring parents, no discontent, no fretting, no self-pity, no
frustration. Heaven is an utterly pure and spotless place. "There is a
city bright, closed are its gates to sin. Nought that defileth can ever enter
in." It is a hallowed place.
In other words, there is no
gradual, imperceptible and inevitable transition that takes all mankind through
this life and they all end up in heaven; no universal cosmic conveyer belt to
glory! Heaven is the kingdom
of Jesus Christ
"He died that we might be
forgiven, He died to make us good. That we might go at last to heavenSaved by
his precious blood." (Cecil Alexander)
It is because Christ all by
himself obtained eternal redemption for us that he himself entered into the
heavens. It is Christ, and Christ alone, who has brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel. It is Christ and Christ alone who has gone to
prepare a place for us, that those whom the Father has given him may be with
him where he is. The dying thief cried to Jesus that he would remember him.
"I will certainly never forget you," the Lord replied, "but more
wonderful than that is my grace to sinners. You will be with me in paradise
today." There is no possibility of heaven without Christ getting us there.
Heaven is the achievement of his redemption. Entrance and the entitlement to
remain there for ever is made possible by him. It is made actual by him; it is
the crowning gift of his redeeming grace; it is the ultimate blessing. Christ
brings us to heaven, keeps us in heaven, and Christ is our heaven
Ted Donnelly's father had a
friend named Noble who was a millionaire. "He had not always been a millionaire,
for as young men they had both been poor. But after he became wealthy their
friendship continued. He regarded my father as his best friend, the one man who
did not want anything from him, who liked him simply for himself. On one
occasion, however, he persuaded my father to accept a gift. It was a holiday on
which he wanted company. In the early 1950s the two men travelled by ocean
liner across the Atlantic to the United States America
Heaven is utterly Christ-centred.
The Lamb is in the midst of that throne which itself is at the very heart of
heaven. So Christ is the focal point of heaven. He is its centre, its axis, its
divine energy, and its illumination. He makes heaven live. He makes it sing in
perfect harmony. The Lamb is all the glory in Immanuel's land. Paul's desire,
as death comes nearer, gets increasingly focused. "This one thing I
want!" It is to be where Jesus is, to see him as he is, and to be like
him. It is to discover if there might be anything he can do for Christ, to
serve him with total love as long as he can. His longing is that his serving
the God-man will never come to an end. The Lamb of God is worthy of that, and
Paul can't wait for that moment to begin. "I desire to depart and be with
Christ." That is heaven.
Dr J.I. Packer says useful
things about the variety of delights in glory: "There will be different
degrees of blessedness and reward in heaven. All will be blessed up to the
limit of what they can receive, but capacities will vary just as they do in
this world. As for rewards (an area in which present irresponsibility can bring
permanent future loss: I Cor. 3:10-15), two points must be grasped. i] The
first is that when God rewards our works he is crowning his own gifts, for it
was only by grace that those works were done. ii] The second is that essence of
the reward in each case will be more of what the Christian desires most, namely
a deepening of his or her love-relationship with the Saviour, which is the
reality to which all the biblical imagery of honorific crowns and robes and
feasts is pointing. The reward is parallel to the reward of courtship, which is
the enriching of the love-relationship itself through marriage"
(J.I.Packer, "Concise Theology," Inter-Varsity Press, Leicester,
1993, p.266).
Samuel Rutherford compares our
experience in heaven with a bride's delight on her wedding day. What delights
her the most? Not the service, nor the guests, nor the reception, not the
flowers, and not even her beautiful dress, but her dear bridegroom's face. Rutherford says, "The bride takes not, by a thousand
degrees, so much delight in her wedding garment as she does in her bridegroom.
So we in the life to come shall not be so much accepted with the glory that
goes about us, as with our bridegroom's joyful face and presence."
"They will see his face," the book of Revelation says (Rev. 22:4).
That is how it must ever be in
heaven. It is a fixed place compared to your place and mine. Here our families
may serve other gods, and go from one idol to another. Today our country may
lie in utter darkness. Now different false prophets sway the masses in turn,
tyrants rise and influence millions, and they fall again. Change and decay in
all around I see. But heaven is not at all a place like that. There is nothing
transitory there. You don't graduate from heaven to some other place. There is
nowhere else. You enter heaven after the last judgment. There are no more
purgings of our sins, no more evaluations and examinations; no more tests to
pass; no promotion; there are no more ladders to climb. The moral character of
the believer can never decay. There will be growth in every grace of course,
and in continual delight in God, and in the new heavens and new earth, but
there will be no spiritual declension at all. No one in Jesus' presence can
ever want to sin. Our glorified natures will not tolerate that. We will be so
constituted and reconstituted that we cannot sin. We will not even wish to
desire to sin. In other words, being with Christ we shall be like him the very
moment we see him. Christ was tempted, yet he could not sin; God cannot sin. So
we will be in that condition for ever, growing in our knowledge and love of God
and of every other creature, working for our Saviour and with him, but without
a spot or a wrinkle or any such thing to mar the beauty of the place.
Our joy will stem from the
vision of the invisible God's glory in the face of Jesus Christ. We will
increasingly grow in Christ's love as he ministers to us. We will fellowship
with our loved ones in Christ and with the whole body of the redeemed. There
will be continual growth, maturing, learning, enrichment of abilities, and
enlargement of powers that God has in store for us. But there will be no
unfulfilled desires, and this blessedness will never end. Its eternity is part
of its glory. Endlessness is the glory of glory. Hearts on earth say in the
course of joyful experience, "I don't want this ever to end," but it
invariably does. The hearts of those in heaven say, "I want this to go on
forever." And it will. There can be no better news than this.
This is the Great Story going
on forever, each chapter being better than the one before. Doesn't the thought
of heaven take your breath away? "O think! To step on shore, And that
shore heaven! To take hold of a Hand, And that God's hand! To breathe a new
air, And feel it celestial air. To feel invigorated, And to know it
immortality! O think! To pass from the storm and the tempest, To one unbroken
calm! To wake up, and find it GLORY."
How do you step on that shore?
It must be through you and Jesus Christ becoming united. Hand in hand with
Jesus. You have to receive the one who said, "I go to prepare a place for
you." Now who are you going to believe? The secularists, or the man who
preached the Sermon on the Mount? Who is going to influence your life? The one
who spoke and the winds and waves obeyed him, or all the despairing muddled men
who say that ultimate reality is the coffin and the stinking corpse? John
Bunyan at the conclusion of Pilgrim's Progress (Banner of Truth) describes
Christian and his friend reaching heaven in these words: "I saw in my
dream, that these two men went in at the Gate; and lo as they entered they were
transfigured, and they had raiment put on that shone like gold. There were also
those that met them with harps and crowns, and gave them to them, the harps to
praise withal, and the crowns in token of honour. Then I heard in my dream that
all the bells in the City rang again for joy; and that it was said unto them,
'Enter ye into the joy of the Lord.' I also heard the men themselves that they
sang with a loud voice saying, 'Blessing, honour, glory, and power, be unto him
that sitteth upon the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever.'
"Now, just as the Gates
opened to let in the men, I looked in after them; and behold, the City shone
like the sun; the streets also were paved with gold, and in them walked many
men with crowns on their heads, palms in their hands, and golden harps to sing
praises withal. There were also of them that had wings, and they answered one
another without intermission, saying, 'Holy, holy. holy, is the Lord.' And
after that, they shut up the Gates; which when I had seen, I wished myself
among them."
We see a boat leaving
Aberystwyth harbour and setting sail across the Irish Sea .
It is a fine sight in the summer wind as she sails away and becomes a dot on
the horizon. "There . . . she is gone," says my best friend alongside
me. Gone where? Gone from our sight, that is all, but at that moment standing
on the cliffs of Ireland
Unbelievers,
hear! O that God might open the gate of heaven a little tonight, and show you
what glories lie before favoured sinners, so that you could start to think,
"Would God that I were there! I wish myself among them." Longings
like that are the first encouragements that the grace of God is at work in your
life. But you might be thinking, "Would there be room for someone like me
there? I have many doubts and
have been a real
hypocrite." Hear a distinguished Welsh preacher answer your question:
"Friend, heaven is an enormous place: 'in my Father's house are many
mansions', said Jesus Christ. God told Abraham how numerous his children would
be (that is, his children by faith, the elect that would be in heaven): they
would be as numerous as the sand of the sea or the stars of the firmament.
[Can't you be contented to be a little grain of sand on the streets of heaven?
Wouldn't you be happy to be a tiny star twinkling quietly in the new heavens?
Wouldn't you be pleased to be even a bruised reed that was on the banks of the
rivers of life that flow from the throne of God and the Lamb? That is
salvation!) John in his Revelation saw a multitude that no one could count. It
is a big place; do not entertain the thought that heaven is small. God's grace
is never-ending and men and women invited to believe in Christ are welcomed
there" (Gwyn Williams, "Heaven", Bryntirion Press, 2000, p.18).
But you have to entrust
yourself to Jesus Christ alone. You have to cry mightily to him until you know
that he has given even you the right to heaven. If Christ were just one of many
illuminaries of heaven it might be possible to think of reaching heaven without
him. But the Lamb is the single Lamp of heaven. No other unoriginated light is
found there but Christ. "Can you visualise yourself explaining to God why
he should admit you to heaven while you remain an unbeliever? 'I had no
interest in your beloved Son' you will say. 'I repudiated him, made little of
his death, shut my ears to his invitations, disregarded his warnings. Jesus
Christ meant - and means - nothing to me. As far as I am concerned, your
sending of your Son to earth was unnecessary, a pointless waste. But in other
respects I have tried to be a decent person. For some of the time, I have done
my best. So I expect you, O God, to allow me into the heaven of the Christ I
despised and refused.'
"Doesn't the idea of it
make you shudder? Can't you hear how crassly blasphemous such words sound? Yet
that is, in essence, the unbeliever's plea, and nothing could be more foolish.
Without Christ there is no hope of heaven. So come to him now. Cry to the
Saviour of sinners to change and forgive and receive you. If you ask him with
all your heart, he will do it, and heaven will be yours" (ibid., Donnelly,
p.94).
Smart
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