The good life in Christ: rejoicing in suffering

Is ‘the good life’ a life without suffering? Ease and prosperity in and of themselves are not really what make up the good life. Christ Himself was made like His weak and tempted brothers in order that He might help those who are tempted (Heb.2:16-18), and in the same manner, it is weak and suffering people that God has chosen to minister to the weak and suffering.

The great Refiner uses the days of small things. He uses the setbacks and discouragements, and even severe suffering, for our ultimate blessing. He did just that at the cross: it was through that darkest and most discouraging day that He definitively overturned and defeated the very root of darkness and suffering. Through that death He defeated death; through our comparatively light sufferings He is able to defeat our selfish independence and our foolish wandering and to make us more like His free and victorious Son. For those who have even glimpsed the unfettered beauty of Jesus, that thought itself puts mettle in our joy.

An important response when we encounter suffering is to look to God. When all seems broken, uncertain, or wrong, remember God the unchanging one who, through it all, cannot be broken, uncertain, or wrong.

In 1 Peter 4:13-19, the apostle Peter has given us guidance about something the world cannot understand: how to rejoice in the hard and discouraging times. Let me be as clear as I can: Peter talks about suffering, then glory– but that does not mean that we experience suffering first, and only then joy. No, solid, grounded joy is what will get you through suffering. For Christ and His people, joy precedes, follows, underlies, and encases all suffering. Christ had joy before all pain, before the world existed. And it was joy that strengthened His resolve then to suffer (Heb. 12:2). That is what He shares with us: a preceding joy that enables us to bear hardship.

And something that helps here is to know that Christ is not just the one who is powerful enough to bring us, at last, beyond our sufferings. He is also the one who has gone through suffering. He understands. He has compassion now on His beloved ones who are struggling. He groaned with pity over the leper when He was on earth. He was moved by the harassed and the helpless. And so is He now in heaven: He sympathises with our weaknesses.

The hope ahead

But of course, darkness is not where the Bible leaves things, and neither should we. We must move on from looking at rejoicing in the discouraging and hard days to this ‘exceeding joy’ (1 Pet. 4:13 KJV), this exultation ‘when his glory is revealed’.

This glory is certain. Secure. Steadfast. Christ is in glory now, and one day all the world will see it. And as surely as Christ is in glory, His own must join Him. The head cannot have glory without the body. The Bridegroom does not keep His status and His riches to Himself.

The accuser loves to have people doubt this. He loves to whisper: ‘God is punishing you. That’s why things are hard. He doesn’t love you anymore.’ And we must shout back: ‘Satan, what sort of Christ do you think I have? A faithless Christ? One who makes all depend on me? No, I have one who says ‘‘no one will snatch them out of my hand’’ ’(see John 10:28).

By our nature, and sometimes succumbing to the attacks of the enemy, we are quick to take suffering to mean that God is against us or has somehow weakened in His love and care for us. But that is not so. Nothing in Scripture supports this interpretation of suffering. Instead, we learn from the whole counsel of God that suffering is part of His plan for our redemption and sanctification. If He does not condemn us, on what grounds can we condemn ourselves?

This is one reason that the doctrine of justification is something that we can lean on whenever we face the discouragements of suffering. If we forget that we are justified by faith through grace, every trial becomes a double trial; we increase our suffering as we wonder if God hates us. We take on burdens that we were never meant to carry.

The doctrine of justification lifts our burdens when we come to Jesus for salvation; it also alleviates the weight of false guilt or false responsibility that can overcome us during seasons of difficulty.

Friends, rejoice and share this hope through all trials. And in all you face, fix your eyes on Jesus, our forerunner, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated, beckoning, at the right hand of the throne of God.