If We Should Suffer

Read: 1 Peter 4:12-16

There is no word to describe the pain of being separated from someone loved so dearly. It cuts deep into the soul, gnawing at every fiber of one’s being. For me, the pain is most torturous at dusk. There’s something about nightfall that aggravates the torment. Have you ever experienced being away from someone you love so much?

When my mother left for Canada, I hugged her clothes at night for weeks as I cried myself to sleep. 

When my husband and I spent fourteen months 2,500 miles apart, my heart broke into a thousand pieces. Adding to the hardship was the fact that I was in my first trimester with our firstborn when I had to leave the USA and stay for a while here in Canada due to immigration issues.

Yet as difficult as those times were, they’re still nothing compared to the pain of separation Christ felt at the cross. His cry, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?,” speaks so profoundly of His deep agony, an anguish no other human being could ever experience nor understand.

On the cross our Savior was not only physically away from His Father, He was spiritually separated from Him. Sin separates man from God and at that time, the Lord was not only carrying the sins of the entire humanity, He became sin for us. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us…,” (2 Corinthians 5:21). On the cross for the first time in all eternity the Son and Father’s intimate relationship was interrupted no less than by our very own sins. Let’s put it this way: your sins caused a parent to punish his own child to death. Your sins, not the child’s. How painful would that be to the parent and the child? As a mother, the thought is unbearable!

You see, the Father turned His face away from Christ, regarding Him as a sinner, punishing Him, laying down on Him the weight of the curse of sin. “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness,” (1 Peter 1:24).

He who had been with His Father for all eternity, the Darling of Heaven, the joy of the Father, the Father’s object of love. On the cross He felt the wrath of His Father. He was disowned, rejected, dejected, condemned by His own Father. The spiritual agony must have eclipsed the pain of the Lord’s bodily injuries, which were, by the way, extremely painful. Crucifixion is a slow, tremendously harrowing way to die. But the pain of His own Father’s wrath was more painful than His physical injuries. 

We call Christ’s suffering as righteous suffering, because He suffered as He obeyed God’s will. As children of God, we have been called to obey Him, and as we live out our calling we’re bound to endure righteous suffering. 

In this world, we cannot avoid suffering. Outside the church, we will still suffer. Therefore, if we are to suffer, let us suffer in doing God’s will. For righteous suffering saves us from eternal suffering. The Bible tells us that if we should suffer, it should not be because of sin anymore. “If you suffer for doing good and you endure it, this is commendable before God.To this you were called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps,” (1 Peter 2:20-21). 

We are so blessed to have been called to suffer with Christ in this world. Righteous suffering is the only suffering that will have eternal rewards. So whatever kind of suffering you are enduring for the sake of Christ – persecutions, financial hardships, illnesses, physical exhaustion – whatever it is, I want you to remember Christ hanging on the cross. He showed us an example of patience in the face of righteous suffering. 

Don’t worry, He did not remain on the cross. After His suffering, He was raised up by His own Father. The Father did not abandon Him on the cross, nor in the grave. Christ, after doing His Father’s will was welcomed and embraced by His Father in heaven. God is waiting for us in Heaven so that He could say, “Well done, good and faithful servant, come and enjoy your master’s happiness.” So soldier on until the end, for your righteous suffering will never be in vain.

Reflect:

What righteous sufferings are you bearing as you serve? 

How does Christ’s own suffering make you keep going?