Divine and Human Suffering
It's an undeniable fact that suffering is the most pervasive characteristic of the human experience. True, there is a lot of joy in human experience. Thank God there is. But the fact remains that every human being is extremely vulnerable to life-changing suffering. And the way we handle that fact determines so much the quality of our lives.BY JOEL NEDERHOOD Hebrews 2:10
I am talking to you who are cancer patients and dialysis users, you who are in deep depression, and you who cannot find any relief for your pain. And I am also talking to you who are the friends and family of such people.
How do we handle all of this suffering? Well, we can't handle it by ourselves or among ourselves. But we don't have to. As a matter of fact, we are approaching the time of the year when we especially remember the person who suffered on our behalf. His name, of course, is Jesus.
The Supreme Sufferer. Looking at Jesus, you see sorrow and pain written all over His face and body. This is how Isaiah 53:3 puts it: "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not."
It is as if all the suffering of all times and places surrounds Him and focuses on Him. Walking through the pages of the Bible, Jesus makes His way along a sorrow-filled path. And finally, hanging on the cross in agony, Jesus suffers the depths of hell. Yes, Jesus is indeed the Supreme Sufferer of all times. By understanding the suffering of Jesus, therefore, we can better deal with our own.
In Hebrews 2:10, the Bible gives us some insights into Christ's suffering. That verse reads, "In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering." Let's see what truth we can learn from that verse that can help us.
I. God is involved in our suffering
Instinctively, most of us tend to think that God is somehow involved in human suffering, but often in the wrong way. Let me tell you what I mean.Let's say that a young mother has suddenly discovered that she is terminally ill. She has a husband and a couple of young children, all of whom need her very much. Just last week, the family was going through life routinely; now everything is in a turmoil. She asks, "Why did God do this to me?" Her husband and all those who love her ask that same question.
Now, if she knows something about Christianity, she may later say, "No, God couldn't have done this to me. I think the devil did this." After thinking some more, however, she says to herself, "But that's not right either, because I believe God controls everything." So she goes round and round.
Meanwhile, knowing that she will die and will meet God soon, she had better not say bad things about Him.
You see, we all sense that God is somehow involved in our suffering, but we cannot figure out what that involvement is. No one, it seems, could answer those deep "God questions" that we raise when we are suddenly hit by a major adversity.
Jesus suffered with us. Viewed in the light of Hebrews 2:10, however, all our questions about whether or not God has caused our suffering recede into the background. For this verse tells us that God actually entered this world and suffered right along with us. Christ Himself has experienced the fullness of human suffering.
The entire book of Hebrews discusses how the eternal God revealed Himself to us in His Son Jesus, who became the Great High Priest by sacrificing Himself for the sins of His people.
It says, for example, "During the days of Jesus' life on earth, he offered up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to the one who could save him from deathAlthough he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him" (5:7-9).
The overwhelming fact is that Jesus Christ suffered. He suffered so much that He had to offer up prayers and petitions with loud cries and tears to God the Father. And this suffering Jesus, Hebrews 2:10 reminds us, is none other than the the very one "for whom and through whom everything exists".
He suffered voluntarily. With that in mind, what you have to do then, when you are overwhelmed with suffering, is to fix your eyes on Jesus. God wants you to know that Jesus went through even more than what you are going through. And He wants you to know that Jesus did that voluntarily to ultimately deliver you from your suffering.
During His ministry on earth, Jesus suffered every step of the way, not only at the crossthough the cross was surely the culmination of His suffering. Jesus' suffering spanned a wide variety of human experience.
Not all of our suffering is physical; some of our most intense suffering can actually be emotional and mental. Well, Jesus suffered in those ways too: He experienced loneliness, despair, anxiety, fear, betrayal, temptation, and depression.
II. Suffering perfects people
According to Hebrews 2:10, God used suffering to make Jesus, the author of our salvation, perfect. Verses 8 and 9 of Chapter 5:8,9 adds, "Although [Jesus] was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him."What this means is that when Christ was born, He was not yet a perfect Savior. True, He was the sinless Son of God from birth. But had He been offered as a sacrifice then, He would not have been our Savior. Jesus had to go through a process. Only if He experienced the sufferings of His people could He save His people.
There is a lot here that I do not understandnobody really does. I can tell you only what the Bible says. And it tells us that in some mysterious way and for some mysterious reason, before Christ could be our perfect Savior, whose sacrifice would be enough to pay for the sins of all His people, He had to undergo suffering.
Now, if the sinless Son of the living God needed suffering, I need it too, as much as I cringe from it, as much as I hate to go through it. And you need it, too.
Purposeful. When we belong to God through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, we can know that none of the suffering that we experience is senseless and meaningless. God will use it to make us the kind of Christians He wants us to be.
Admittedly, what I'm saying here is probably just a bunch of words to you. And what do words mean when someone you love is dying right before your eyes? Well, if these words were mine or some other human's, they wouldn't mean a thing. But these words come from the Bible, the word of God.
If we put our trust in Jesus, then in the middle of our trials, we can hold our suffering up to Him and ask Him to bless it. Of course, we ask Him to take our suffering away, as Jesus Himself asked His Father to do. But if He does not see fit to take it away, we can then ask Him to receive our suffering as a sacrifice. We can ask Him to use our suffering to refine us so that we too may be perfected, as Jesus Himself was perfected.
Before Christ could be our perfect SaviorHe had to un III. Suffering prepares us for glory
According to Hebrews 2:10, God called His Son Jesus to endure much suffering in order to bring many sons to glory. And verse 12 of Chapter10 tells us that after Jesus had gone the distance, He sat down at the right hand of God in glory.Jesus suffered more than any other person who has ever lived, but through it all, He saw the glory at the end of the road. Time and time again, the Bible mentions glory along with suffering. The apostle Paul says, for example, "I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us" (Romans 8:18). Indeed, suffering prepares us for glory.
For one thing, suffering makes us realize that all the seemingly glorious things in this world are actually very empty. For another, suffering focuses our attention where it ought to be; it makes us long for glory.
Gateway to glory. Suffering somehow helps prepare us for the new order that we will enter into when our suffering is finally over, when we come to the point that Jesus came to at the end of His suffering-filled lifedeath.
Dying is a scary thing. One reason why the suffering that we go through while we're in this world is so horrible is that every moment of it reminds us that we are going to die. And what then?
The truth is, for those who love Jesus and who have the Spirit of the living Christ within them, dying is the gateway to glory. We must, therefore, never let our eyes stray from Jesus. In our suffering we must see the glory that followed His suffering. And we must believe that He will surely give us victory over our suffering.
If you are in the depths of suffering right now, my heart goes out to you. I know how you feel; to some degree I know what you are going through. I have suffered too, and I will most likely suffer morethere's no escaping it. But we have a Savior who knows what suffering is like, because He's been there! o
Dr. Joel Nederhood is radio minister on The Back To God Hour. For broadcast information, write to 6555 W. College Drive, Palos Heights, IL 60463.