Suffering With Purpose
By David Jamison
Someone comes to you at church on Sunday and tells you about their terminal diagnosis they just received this week. What do you say? One of your close friends calls you to tell you about a tragic death in the family. What could you do that would even be helpful? Or perhaps you have had something terrible happen in your own life - how do you respond? Take for example the earthquake in Turkey that just happened. How is a Christian to think about these things? At Saint Andrew’s, we want to be people who know how to truly care for the hurt, wounded, sick and poor. If you’re like me, though, you’re probably tempted to throw out a vague reference to the goodness and plan of God and hope you don’t say something insensitive that worsens the situation. The problem is that we can’t effectively practice the “one anothers” of Scripture without getting into eachothers’ lives, yet we can feel so unprepared for the mess that we end up intentionally keeping people at arms length - both to protect ourselves, but also to protect them from whatever careless platitude we’ll inevitably offer when they let us into their suffering. In considering how to think through suffering in my life and the lives of others from a biblical worldview, I’ve come across four concepts that begin to clarify the place of suffering in the Christian life. Although this is not a comprehensive list, we can know that in our suffering and the sufferings of our brothers and sisters God calls us to grow in at least these four things. He desires in our suffering that we:
Move toward Christ
Mourn with Christ
Mature in Christ
Minister for Christ
Move Toward Christ
This fundamental purpose of suffering is what animates our mourning, maturing and ministering. What I mean by “move toward” Christ is that in our suffering we grow in communion and fellowship with our Lord. In our pains, ills, and turmoils of this life God helps us to turn our gaze and hope to him. Although I’ve not had much tangible suffering in my life, I know people who have - and so do you. When they tell stories of their experience there is always one constant: in the midst of their suffering they have grown in intimacy with the Lord more than at any other time. Why? Because he is the only place of refuge for the suffering saint. We must remember that our God is the “God of all comfort” (2 Cor 1:3). This is the first thing we are meant to do in our suffering or the sufferings of our friends and family: pray to the only One who can offer true comfort. “Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray.” (Jas 5:13). And what is prayer if not an intentional moving toward God? The first step we must take in suffering is to go to the God who suffered on our behalf. When Christians suffer, we join in Christ’s sufferings (1 Pet 4:13; Phil 3:10). So the suffering saint must first go to the Suffering Servant. This is the beginning, middle and end of suffering for all believers: that we would know and commune with Christ more deeply.
Mourn with Christ
In moving toward Christ I do not mean that you must try and ignore the pain and just be happy. No, the first act in moving toward Christ in suffering is to lament the situation. Mourning the brokenness in the world is a major act of worship throughout the Scriptures. Suffering, pain, death, illness, violations and violence only happen because the world is broken by sin. This means that it’s just and right to mourn because things are not as they are supposed to be. The question, though, is how should Christians mourn? How do we mourn specifically as God’s people? God’s Word gives us the model. The hymnbook of the bible, the Psalms, is filled with cries of God’s suffering saints. Oftentimes asking God why things are the way they are, but trusting him nonetheless. Even as their very world falls apart around them, they can trust that He alone is their refuge (Ps 46).
Paul tells us to, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom 12:15). How much more will our God who loves us with inseparable love (Rom 8:38-39) rejoice with us and mourn with us. Mourning with Christ and Christ mourning with us is an aspect of worship and is therefore one specific way that we commune with Christ. The world is indeed broken and the Scriptures give us the words to express the depth of that brokenness and its need for restoration (see Ps 88 or the book of Lamentations). How we mourn matters, so don’t mourn as the world does. Don’t mourn as someone who has no hope, but mourn in worship. Mourn according to the Scriptures. Mourn with Christ, knowing that someday he will wipe away every tear from our eyes (Rev 21:4).
Mature in Christ
Beyond moving toward Christ in mournful prayer, we also move toward Christ in holiness. This is called maturing in Christ, or having Christ formed in us (Gal 4:20). Suffering is one of the main means by which God uses to form us. Several passages reveal this truth but I want to focus on two specifically: James 1:3-5 and 1 Peter 1:6-7.
James 1:2–4 - “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” This passage is fairly straightforward. When we suffer, when we have trials in life, it results in the testing of our faith (which is something God has always done - see Deut 8:2 and how God tested Israel in the wilderness to reveal their heart). When our faith is tested in Christ it produces steadfastness. And the effect of steadfast faith is a fullness of Christian life. This is the reason that suffering can be connected with joy. Because it’s suffering with a perspective of the eternal. In fact, Christ himself had joy set before him on the path to the cross (Heb 12:2) - the ultimate experience of all human suffering. As we are tested by trials and suffering and temptation, we are being formed. We have steadfast faith molded in our hearts. We are being shown that even in the depths Christ doesn’t forsake us, but makes us more like him.
1 Peter 1:6-7 has a similar message: “In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials, so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.” Again there is the theme of joy in the midst of suffering. And this rejoicing can only happen with the heavenly perspective. Just as gold is purified by fire, so are we. In trials, God removes the dross and fashions us more into the image of Christ. Suffering is one of the primary ways that God helps us to put off the old man and put on the new man. There is no joy in the suffering itself, but there is joy in what God is doing through it. That is why we can both mourn the broken nature of the suffering itself and rejoice in the divine metallurgy - God crafting a more Christlike person, forged in the flame of pain.
I’m sure you’ve heard that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. This is often used in such a cliché manner that it’s unhelpful, but it is actually scripturally true. Both in temptation (1 Cor 10:13) and, more to our point, in suffering. 2 Corinthians 4:8-10 says, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies.” We may be afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, and struck down, but in Christ we are not crushed, driven to despair, forsaken or destroyed! God does not allow suffering to come our way that is too much for us to handle in his power. Strengthened by the Spirit of Christ, we can be comforted that God is shaping us by the flame and protecting us from being consumed.
Minister for Christ
Finally, as we move toward Christ, mourn with him and mature to image him more fully, we become increasingly equipped to help others do the same. We are enabled to minister for Christ. Not that Christ is absent, but we are called to be his ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20). This means that we minister on behalf of Christ in the world. As Paul David Tripp puts it, we are “instruments in the Redeemer’s hands.” The final purpose for our suffering is that God empowers us to take his comfort to other sufferers.
Take 2 Corinthians 1:3-5 as the key text for this concept: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.”
Through the process of moving toward Christ we are being trained to help others do the same. By mourning with Christ we are able to more effectively walk others through that process, helping them to lament in worship. In being conformed to the image of Christ by suffering, we are living proof to others that God does have a glorious purpose for them even when they are blinded by the pain. Because God has walked you through this process, you have now been assigned as a guide through the wilderness. You minister for Christ in that you comfort others with the comfort which you have received from Christ. Part of God’s purpose for his body is that as we are shaped, he uses us to shape others, who in turn shape even more.
I pray that as suffering comes our way (and it will - Christ has promised us so) that we will be people who are equipped with these Scriptural truths. Now, when you or someone you know is diagnosed with a terminal illness or there is a death in the family, you will have a starting point to make sense of suffering. It is not just a platitude to say that God has a purpose for your suffering. In fact, it’s a mighty grace of God that he uses suffering to move us toward Christ, help us mourn with Christ, mature us in Christ and allow us to minister for Christ. God cares deeply for his people and will not forsake you. May we be people who are prepared with biblical truth to count it all joy when suffering comes our way, knowing that God will not crush us, but will indeed form us for our good and his glory.
