Reading: 2 Corinthians
1:3-5; 2 Corinthians 6:8-13; 2 Corinthians 2:4; 2
Corinthians 11:23-28; 1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 2 Corinthians 1:8-10
"The
sufferings of Christ abound unto us." 2 Cor. 1:5
There is a very great
deal summed up in the passages we have just read, but
what I have on my heart to say will be confined to two
things; firstly, the sufferings and the suffering, and
secondly, the need and the values of suffering.
The
Fact And Range Of Suffering
Little need be said, I
think, as to the fact of the sufferings. We know the
people of God are not exempt from sufferings. That, I
think, need not be laboured. But there are many
sufferings into which they enter because they are the
people of God; and that, perhaps, needs a little
thinking about. There are sufferings we may bring upon
ourselves, sufferings which need not be, but I am not
thinking about those. I am speaking about the sufferings
of Christ, of the fact of these, and that they are the
common lot of the people of God, and that when they come
upon us, there is nothing wrong in that. Indeed, we shall
see before we are through that it is quite to the
contrary.
But when you think about
these sufferings, with Paul as the great example and
interpreter, you are led to see that these are not just
incidents, local or earthly things. Even when they take
legal and earthly form and colouring by reason of
situations and circumstances and events, they have a far
greater range than anything incidental, local, temporal,
earthly. The range of these sufferings is no less than
the spiritually universal. They reach out beyond
ourselves, our circle, our lives, our time, and beyond
anything here and now. I would use the word
'dispensational' but for its being perhaps misunderstood.
Paul's sufferings comprehended the dispensation and are
virtuous to-day after so many centuries, and have touched
every realm of the celestial and the diabolical. These
sufferings are more than just incidents in life, painful
as they may be. They are set within a vast realm of
significance and effectiveness. They are, in the main,
the 'kick-back' of a vast and mighty system of antagonism
to everything that is of Christ.
We must therefore accept
the fact of such sufferings, and adjust to the spiritual
significance of it. If you and I ever do get the idea
that the Christian life is to be a perpetual picnic, we
shall get ourselves into all kinds of difficulties and
perplexities and disappointments. If we seek to escape
from the sufferings of Christ, we are going to cut the
very vitals of our spiritual worth-whileness. Take heed
to that. We have to accept the fact that, being the
Lord's here, our inheritance is an inheritance of the
sufferings of Christ, and we must not seek to avoid them.
The
Suffering Within The Sufferings
But then I used the
words, the sufferings and the suffering; the plural and
the singular. The suffering-that is, the suffering which
is within the sufferings. Sometimes it is the suffering
which brings about the sufferings. Take Paul, for
instance, and the suffering to which he refers in II
Corinthians 1:8-10 "our affliction which
befell us in Asia". The word 'affliction' there
is from a Latin root which means 'a flail', and it
pictures the wielding of a flail upon the naked body of a
bound man, bruising and breaking and battering; it is a
strong word. Paul says that is what happened to him in
Asia. "Weighed down exceedingly, beyond our
power, insomuch that we despaired even of life: yea, we
ourselves have had the sentence of death within
ourselves..." 'We had the answer to our enquiry;
the answer was - It is death!'
Now, that is the
suffering within the sufferings. You do not think for a
moment that that was just a physical matter. A man who
could go through all those experiences which are recorded
of Paul, and who could say that to depart and be with
Christ was far better, was not afraid of dying. Not at
all! There must have been some suffering within the
sufferings. 'Weighed down exceedingly, beyond our
power": that was something inward; it was not
because he was desperately ill and might die at any
moment. What then is this? It may have been due to the
report that came to him of conditions in Corinth, for it
was at this time that he received the news of the
terrible state of things in Corinth recorded in these
letters, and he speaks of "that which presseth
upon me daily, anxiety for all the churches "(2 Cor. 11:28). Even if it was physical sickness
that assailed him, we know that sickness in the body is
very often caused by grief of heart; the outward
sufferings are sometimes the result of inward distress.
Thus we have the suffering within the sufferings.
There is a spiritual
suffering for Christ's sake; and that which Paul speaks
of in this portion as "the sentence of death",
though beyond our explanation, yet does seem to suggest
that he got into a terrible state spiritually because of
certain conditions. If I were to try to reshape this
situation, I should say, Paul had received this terribly
bad news about the state of things in the church at
Corinth, with more perhaps from other directions as well,
and he had gone down under his suffering and said, 'Is it
worth it? Is it not all in vain? Is it not an utterly
hopeless situation? Am I not wasting my life in pouring
it out for such people?' When you start like that, there
is no end. You can go down and down until waters of
despair gradually close over you. You try to pray and you
cannot, for a doubting man can never pray. He may cry,
but he cannot pray. A man who has let go to that sort of
thing cannot pray; heaven is closed. And Paul, so to
speak, interrogates himself and says, 'What is the
meaning of this?' The answer is, 'It is death; along that
line it is death; if you get down there, there is no way
through and no way up; that is the end of everything -
death!'
I am not going further
with that to see how Paul came to the turning point and
to the so great deliverance. That is not in our present
consideration. My point at the moment is that death here
was spiritual, not physical. He was tasting something of
the real nature of death. Death is a sense of being
excluded from God, of heaven being closed, of there being
no way through and no way out, shut up and shut in, at
the end of everything; and that registered in or upon
your soul. That is more than physical death. Some of us
more than once would have been glad to die physically.
But this other thing is spiritual death, and it is
terrible, it is awful; there is no gladness about that.
To taste that is to know something of the sufferings of
Christ. Those sufferings may be known along other lines,
but we are not attempting here to define in detail the
whole range of Christ's sufferings, but only to stress
the fact of them.
The
Need And Values Of The Sufferings Of Christ
What is the point for
us? Everyone of you will have to make your own
application, for I do not know why I am led to this
message; the Lord only knows His own wisdom. But there
are some very practical matters bound up with this; and
so we come to the second part of our subject, namely, the
need and the values of this kind of suffering. Let it be
settled with us once for all that the sufferings 6f
Christ are an absolute necessity. I am going to say a
very strong thing, and it is this-that if you know
nothing about the sufferings of Christ, there is
something wrong with you as a Christian. I am not, of
course, speaking of such as have only just entered upon
the Christian life, though suffering is sometimes
encountered right from the first. But obedience and
faithfulness soon lead to the experience of some form of
Christ's sufferings. If you are avoiding those
sufferings, if you are rebelling against them, you are
taking an entirely wrong line. They are the true lot of
children of God. I do not say that you will each have
them in the same measure or of the same kind, but you
will have them. Ask the Lord if your bad times may not,
after all, fit into this. You have been thinking of them
merely as circumstances, as disappointments, working out
to your misfortune, your disadvantage. But wait; see
whether these are not, after all, bound up with your
spiritual life, whether they do not bear a relationship
to your spiritual growth. Interrogate yourself, examine
this question.
Reality
By Suffering
They are necessary for
several things; first of all, to keep things real,
practical and up-to-date. The Lord is not going to allow
any one of us to live upon a past, upon a theory, upon a
tradition, upon a doctrine as a doctrine. He will allow
us to live only on what is real and practical and
up-to-date, and, being made as we are, we do not so live
unless we are made to. I could make a lot of personal
confessions now, but they would not be of very much value
except by way of illustration. If I know even a little
about the Lord and the Lord's things, I can tell you
perfectly frankly it is because of suffering. I could not
and would not have learned unless the Lord had made me
learn, and taught me in a very deep and practical school
where things were kept right up-to-date, and where every
bit of ministry sprang out of some new experience. It is
a law which applies to us all. The fact is that these
sufferings are absolutely essential to keep things real;
and you know as well as I do that people want reality.
They have a right to say, 'How did you get to know that?
Have you proved that? How much has that been to you in
the deepest hours of life, when things were beyond your
power? Did that prove to be true then?' If we are not
able to say with all our heart in utter sincerity, 'I
found the Lord to be like that in my actual experience; I
have put that truth to a thorough test and proved it',
then we are frauds. The Lord has no place for frauds;
therefore He keeps us up-to-date. Reality is by
suffering.
Growth
By Suffering
Progress and growth are
also secured by this means. All nature declares it.
Growth, development, increase, is by that expanding power
which creates a creak and a groan and an ache within the
organism; and in the spiritual life it is like that. We
speak about growing pains. I believe that is considered
to be unscientific now, but it is a very useful phrase.
Yes, there are growing pains, and the sufferings of
Christ in the members of His Body are related to growth.
The difference is this, that in what we have called
growing pains it is the growing that is actually taking
place which causes the pains, while here, in what we have
before us, it is the pains which produce the growth
afterward. We grow by means of suffering, there is no
doubt about it. Show me a mature spiritual life, and you
show me the embodiment of much suffering of some kind-not
always physical-a life which has gone through things.
Paul found his turning point there - "that we
should not trust in ourselves, but in God who raiseth the
dead"; a new discovery from the depths. Where he
touched bottom, he discovered God in a new way-"God
who raiseth the dead". Such knowing of Him comes
along that line. The values of suffering are there.
Ability
By Suffering
But then note what he
says in this first chapter again - "God... who
comforteth us in all our affliction, that we may
be able..." Oh, there is a lot in that! That
speaks of stock in trade, the means for service, does it
not? We may often have bad times about our lack of
ability in many ways, comparing ourselves with other
people and deploring our lack of ability in this and
that. Oh, for ability! But what is the greatest ability
after all? The best and most fruitful ability is to be
able to help people in the deep experiences of spiritual
life; to be able to explain to them the meaning of God's
dealings with them, to be able to show them what is
intended to be the outcome of it all, to be able to give
them some support by counsel which comes from real
knowledge - some of that comfort which we ourselves have
received of God. That is real service, that is building
up the Body of Christ, the House of God - being
really able, in a spiritual way, to strengthen the
sorrowing. That comes through suffering.
Now, are you going
through it, having a bad time? What are you putting it
down to? Are you the Lord's? Is your life committed to
Him? Then see if you really can rightly and properly
separate between your bad time and your spiritual life.
If you can, all right, just write it all off as the
common lot of anybody else who is not a Christian. No, you
cannot disentangle this. It is all bound up together. It
is going to have an effect upon you, one way or other,
either to spiritual increase or spiritual loss. But oh,
let us adjust. If the sufferings of Christ abound unto
us, they are the sufferings of Christ. They may be
soul sufferings, they may be in the physical realm, they
may be both combined, but the
Lord is sovereign in these sufferings, to great,
beneficial, valuable ends.
Suffering and Love
I close by reminding You
of this other word which the Apostle addressed to those
Corinthians - "I wrote unto you... not
that ye should be made sorry, but that ye might know the
love which I have more abundantly unto you" (II Cor. 2:4). You cannot have love without
suffering. The two things go together; and mark you, your
willingness to suffer, your attitude toward suffering,
will prove your love for the Lord. Many people are not
experiencing the sufferings of Christ because they have
not enough love for His people. If you really have a
heart love for a child of God, you are going to suffer
for that child of God. If you have a heart love for the
people of God, you are going to suffer for the people of
God. If you have a heart love for a company of the Lord's
people to which He has joined you, you are going to
suffer for that company. If you have a heart love for
your Lord, you are going to suffer with your Lord when
you see His Name dishonoured and His interests reversed.
Our love is the measure of our suffering. If our
suffering is little, it may be the great wrong is that
our love is too small.
First published in "A Witness and A Testimony"
magazine, Sep-Oct 1951, Vol. 29-5