The Suffering Son
By Andrew Ready
On the day of Jesus’ crucifixion there were three men nailed to crosses. Either side of Jesus was a thief, being crucified for his crimes. Three men hung there, each facing an identical physical circumstance. Each was facing incredible pain, suffering and humiliation. Amazingly, though, all three of these men had a different outcome from their suffering.
The first thief rebelled against God right to the end. He suffered and died for his sins, and then went on to face an eternal suffering. The cross to him was nothing but death, and the doorway to a greater death. The second thief cried out to Jesus in repentance and went on to eternal life. He still had to suffer those final hours of physical death but his experience at the cross brought him to Jesus and subsequently to eternal life. Jesus’ suffering, however, worked something even greater than that, and it is the outcome of His suffering which He wants to also work in us.
When Jesus suffered He was doing something unique and absolutely radical. Without His death any suffering is simply the consequence of sin, brought upon the human race by the human race as we live our lives alienated from God. When Jesus suffered He was able to shift the outcome of suffering from being a process of death leading to death to a process of death leading to life. The suffering was no longer confined to being the penalty of sin. As He died a sinless death, He answered the law which condemns us in our sin and instead received the suffering as chastening.
What is the difference between suffering a penalty and suffering chastening? A penalty is a punishment. It does not bring life or change, but “evens the scales” to compensate for the crime. Chastening, or discipline, is suffering which bears fruit. The book of Hebrews says, ‘no chastening seems to be joyful for the present, but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it’. (Heb 12:11)
To help understand chastening the illustration of a seed used by Jesus in John 12:24. Most assuredly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces much grain. When Jesus died for us His life was multiplied toward us, so that as we join Him in the faith of His suffering as a willing, obedient offering we can partake in His holiness and become mature sons of God.
This isn’t to say we need to go around looking for suffering or deliberately making ourselves miserable. We would then be trying to chasten ourselves, or even worse we would glorify suffering as some kind of noble path to enlightenment. This would be to miss the point entirely. Suffering of itself is useless. It is the result of the fall of mankind. When we face suffering with the faith of Christ, however, it is to believe that in the midst of difficulties God is wanting to work something of eternal value in our lives. He is able to use these circumstances to refine our faith as gold. 1 Pet 1:6-7.
It is this fellowship of His sufferings we are called to walk in so our testimony can be that of the apostle Paul. He said, ‘that I may gain Christ … and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith; that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death, if, by any means, I may attain to the resurrection from the dead’. Phil 3:9-11.
As we learn the fellowship of Christ in the sufferings we face we can know the power of resurrection life, life more powerful than our surrounding circumstance. We can be conformed to His death, His willing point of offering in obedience to the Father, and therefore begin to live by the power of His life and not our own righteousness or measure of ‘good’.
Suffering is common to every member of the human race. The question is whether it is going to lead to death or to life. Remember there were three men on the cross, all suffering the same physical afflictions. One was a suffering of death to death, another was a suffering by which a thief learned to cry out to and come to know the Lord. In contrast to these, the sufferings of Christ was a point of willingly surrendering His life as an offering to see life multiplied.
