The Fellowship of Suffering
I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead (Phil. 3:10-11).
In the previous post (“Your God is Too Small”), I related my struggle to reconcile Jesus’ words about being His disciple (Luke 9:13; 14:23) and (also His) words about receiving for whatever we ask in prayer, which many in the prosperity gospel movement rely heavily on. I mentioned that to experience the power of the resurrected life, we must first endure our cross and the crucifixion of the flesh. In this process, our desires are changed to His desires.
There is, however, another part of the cross-driven life that we often overlook–and from a human perspective it’s quite understandable why we overlook it. We overlook the place of suffering in our transformation on the road to resurrection. It’s not a topic anyone enjoys thinking about. The truth is, though, that we all suffer–the just and the unjust, the righteous and unrighteous, the believers and unbelievers. For the one who follows Christ, his sufferings have a purpose. Says one writer about suffering,
God calls us to participate with Him in the process of our spiritual formation, but we do not initiate some of the most life-changing experiences in our journey. They are unexpectedly thrust upon us in the form of failure, loss, injury, illness, pain, exploitation, and unfulfilled desires. These painful experiences can shake our foundations and expose our deepest longings and weaknesses. Because suffering affects us deeply, it can also be profoundly transformative, giving us opportunities for knowing our inmost selves, deepening our experience of intimacy with God, and growing in Christlikeness.[1]
Even though our sufferings are not pointless, we cannot nor should we minimize them or try to give “pat” answers for the difficult questions that arise. But what we can do, and should do, is join the fellowship of suffering. As believers we can all relate to loss, pain, trials, and grief. Suffering not only unites us with Christ (as we share and identify with His suffering) but also unites us to one another. We are told to weep with those who weep (Rom. 12:15), in addition to rejoicing with those who rejoice.
Paul often spoke of the church as the Body of Christ. In the body, when one part is hurt or injured, the rest of the body not only compensates but sends aid to that part. So it is with the Body of Christ, the church (1 Cor. 12:26). In the midst of the community of grace, the fellowship of suffering is where we find the most transformation. As we encourage, we are encouraged and transformed. As we wrestle with the difficult questions of “why?” we come, both individually and as a community to a deeper understanding of God’s goodness and the fact that “this is not the way it’s supposed to be.” The same author, speaking about suffering, says,
While we have the great promise of Romans 8:28 that God may redeem suffering by bringing good out of it for those who love Him, it is not what we want, nor should want, and it is not what God wants or originally intended. . . . [Our sufferings] remind us that we are human, that we cannot know all that we are desperate to understand, and that we desperately need God. As we grapple with doubts and questions that arise out of our own suffering, we are changed in the process and are given an opportunity to incarnate the gospel for our generation. As others witness our struggles and faith in adversity and see God’s sustaining grace bringing light to dark, painful places in our lives, they receive hope that God can be trusted in their own broken lives.[2)
What does it mean to “incarnate the gospel”? It means that we live out the very gospel. Jesus learned obedience by what He suffered (Heb. 5:8). And so we too learn obedience and the deepest form of trust by suffering. And at the end of the tunnel we find that unshakeable faith that God really is that good, and the unspeakable joy that He is with us in the midst of the darkest nights.
[1] Dallas Willard, Keith Meyer, et al. The Kingdom Life: A Practical Theology of Discipleship and Spiritual Formation, p. 172.
[2] The Kingdom Life, p. 172-173.
