‘Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings...’ (1 Pet. 4:12–13).
Peter can urge us to rejoice in our sufferings not because he’s a religious masochist but because he knows: Christ is the firstborn, our forerunner, and where He goes, we follow. He is our Head, and like in a birth, the body must follow where the head goes. This is the pathway through suffering to glory.
A new direction of travel
Everyone suffers, gets ill, and grows old, but for the Christian, all of this is changed. For us, none of this is pointless. Born again into Christ’s new humanity, we’ve been taken out of the simple downward slide into death.
