| Redemptive Suffering | | Print | |
 Good people sometimes get hurt. It’s a reality in the present world of sin, a reality that offends our sense of justice and leaves us asking, “Why?”An unresolved question is hard to let lie, so, like Job’s friends, we collect truths we think we know and apply them woodenly to the case at hand. “Good people don’t get hurt. There are none who are good. Pain is a punishment earned by one’s sin.” Now, while that is quite true, and Job would not deny his sinfulness, punishment was not the particular reason for Job’s particular pain. Punitive pain, the justly earned wages of sin, was not what Job suffered. Neither was it corrective pain, the suffering meted out by a loving father on his son. Job suffered redemptive pain, a suffering for the sake of others, which was only evident to him near the end of his ordeal when God required Job’s intercession on behalf of his harsh and foolish friends in order that God might accept and forgive them. Redemptive suffering is God’s own invention and the key to his resolution for sin. Jesus Christ would Himself absorb the pain and suffering of our sin so that we, the ones who deserved it, would be redeemed. This was His plan from the earliest of Scripture’s written record, as we’ve noted in the case of Job, and solidly represented through the prophets to the time of the Messiah’s appearance. Surely he took up our infirmities… Jesus suffered and died to pay for sin. He rose from the dead to guarantee to us life -- and that is that. Right. Exactly. But “that” is not quite “that” if by “that” we mean the end of redemptive suffering. Because while Christ’s suffering was adequate to pay for all sin, it is not yet complete in the sense of being finished or full. “What!? The work of Christ is not finished?! That sounds like heresy!” And I would have to agree, that is, if God had not moved the Apostle Paul to write this into the Bible, Now I rejoice in what was suffered for you, and I fill up in my flesh (Paul’s flesh) what is still lacking (emphasis added) in regard to Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, which is the church. – Col. 1:24 And now 2,000 years after the cross, Christ is still suffering in His body, the church, for the redemption of those who deserve the pain of sin. Believers all around the world joyfully absorb undeserved suffering for the sake of perhaps witnessing the redemption of the spiritually lost. Amazing! Surprising? No, not surprising to those who have disciplined themselves to the aspiration of being like Christ. Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ…. – 1 Peter 4:12-13 |
