No 37: To Call Us to Follow His Example of Lowliness and Costly Love

To recognise and honour the redemptive power of suffering is by no means unknown before or outside the influence of the Christian message, as we find out if we read the literature of other cultures.  But Christianity places it at its heart, and reveals something previously unknown to mankind: that God Himself suffers - has suffered - before we ever do.  That is why the simplest and most complete expression of the gospel is and always has been the image of Jesus crucified.  It has been painted and sculpted and filmed, hung outside and inside churches and homes and places of government.  St Paul said: "I resolved to know nothing except Jesus Christ and him crucified" (1 Corinthians 2:2).  Jesus prophesied: "When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all men to myself" (John 12:32).

We have to go through suffering ourself to discover the transformational power of this part of the gospel.  Many of us welcomed the message of God's love and forgiveness, and entered life in His Kingdom, without noteworthy prior suffering; nevertheless Father God doesn't hold back His intimacy and blessing to us.  Life may go on in calm waters, in a well-governed era in our native country.  But that doesn't last forever: "Man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward" as one of Job's friends philosophically observed (Job 5:8).  If we care about others, there is suffering to be witnessed all the time, perhaps in other lands.  Suffering is well known to every son of Adam, and it raises the hardest questions about the goodness of our existence.  It comes up quickly in conversations with unbelievers.

Jesus' life and death tested His faith in His Father's ultimate good intentions to the absolute limit.  He was without sin, so there were no grounds at all for persecuting Him.  Whatever was done or said to Him, He forebore from retaliating or calling upon heaven's hosts to do so.  Like His Father, He never wavered from love.  He stood firm until He died, entrusting His future and His fragile band of disciples to God.

When we face suffering, His faith will be imparted into us to have exactly "the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5), and the same divine power to do so. And then we will have the extraordinary privilege of co-working with Jesus, in our sufferings, to redeem the world.  This is one of St Paul's most faith-stretching revelations:  "Now I am full of joy to be suffering for you. In my own body I am doing my share of what has to be done to make Christ’s sufferings complete. This is for His body which is the Church" (Colossians 1:24).