God suffers with us

1 Peter 1:3-6- Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade- kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.

Let me attempt a paraphrase of that. Peter is saying to us here, ‘praise and worship God and greatly rejoice in God, because He has given you new birth into a living hope and eternal life, even though now, in your life, you may have had to suffer in various ways’.

One of the major themes of the writing of Peter is suffering. Peter understands that even though we have been given ‘new birth into a living hope’ and even though we have been given ‘eternal life’, on this side of glory, there is suffering. That’s an important point.

Paul wrote this to his protégé Timothy;

2 Timothy 4:2-5 ‘’…preach the word; be ready in season and out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort, with great patience and instruction. For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires, and will turn away their ears from the truth and will turn aside to myths. But you, be sober in all things, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, fulfil your ministry.

What I would say is that the time when people ‘will not endure sound doctrine; but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires’ that time is not coming- it has come.

Some people teach the Bible in a way that causes believers to believe what they want to believe; that the Christian life is supposed to be free of suffering; that the Christian life is free of grief. They teach that Jesus came and suffered and was grieved, so that you don’t have to suffer or be grieved and that a life on earth, lived with God, will be free of suffering and free of grief. People flock to this sort of preaching and teaching. Who wouldn’t want to follow a God who offers and delivers life, right away, completely free of suffering and completely free of grief?

But there’s an obvious flaw in this teaching- it’s untruthful.

The Christian life is not, and was never promised to be free of suffering.To teach that is ear tickling. It is a myth. Its false teaching and it’s destructive.

Let me quickly give you just a couple of reasons why it is destructive.

First, if you swallow the lie that when God is in our lives, grief and suffering is not, when life doesn’t go well and when we suffer and are grieved, we rationalize the advent of suffering with destructive and faulty lines of reasoning. Let me give you a couple of examples of what that might look like.

If I believe that when God is with me, I will not have to endure suffering or combat feelings of grief, when times of suffering and grief do come through no attributable fault of my own, I might come to the conclusion that God is no longer with me- that God has abandoned me. Typically then, what can happen is that God gets blamed for the failure of promises that He never made.

Or maybe, if I believe that when I live in faith and abide in Christ, that this will shield me from suffering and grief, when times of suffering and grief do come through no attributable fault of my own, I might arrive at the superstitious conclusion that I am doing something wrong. I am doing something I shouldn’t be doing. I’m not doing something I should be doing. Because if the hallmark of the Christian faith was the absence of suffering from our life on earth, when I suffer, I would be right to conclude that perhaps Christianity is not working because I am not doing it properly.

If you’ve been lead to believe that suffering is not a normal part of the life of the believer, you’ve been lead to believe a lie. It may be a blissful ignorance when things are going well, but it will be a destructive and confusing point of contention when things are not going so well.

Secondly, for the believer to go on believing the lie that when Jesus is in their life, grief and suffering and hardship is not, they will have to ignore the witnesses of the evident truth, which testify to the contrary.

For example, they’d need to

• dull the conviction of the Spirit,
• read the Word of God selectively,
• turn a blind eye to the suffering of their fellow believers

All of which testify to the reality that a life free of suffering is not promised to believers on this side of Christ’s return.

Where does that lead? Now you’ve got a believer who

• has habitually ignored the conviction of the Holy Spirit to the point of desensitivity.
• has turned the Bible into a collection of half truths
• is blissfully ignorant to those that they ought to be yoked to

Yeah, they’re believers all right- but believer in what?

Like Paul foretold, they’ve ‘turned away their ears to the truth to turn aside to myths’- that’s idolatry.

I’d love to follow a Jesus who promises that in this world we would have no trouble- but that’s the precise opposite of what Jesus actually promises. If the Jesus that you’re following is offering a starkly different deal than the Jesus that we read about in the Bible, perhaps you need to ask ourselves whether we are actually following the Jesus of the Bible, or just some invented idol of our own desires that we’ve anointed with a name it isn’t fit to carry.

The Bible talks a lot about suffering because it is an honest text and it acknowledges that a lot of life is suffering- all of us, in life, experience difficulty and hardship. It’s part of life. But in these words of Peter, we find that Jesus gives us cause to have a great ‘living hope’ despite of and in the midst of our suffering- in the understanding that the suffering that we endure in this fallen world, where life isn’t always right, will not compare to the glory of our inheritance in heaven, where God will right every wrong and where suffering will be no more. So we greatly rejoice in what God has done in redeeming us and giving us new birth into a living hope and while this does not remove suffering, it outweighs our suffering in its glory.

1 Peter 1:6-7- ‘…for a little while (there, he’s talking about life on earth) you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These (trials) have come so that your faith- of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire- may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Whenever I read this verse, I think of the story of Job. God himself declared that Job was ‘blameless and upright; a man who feared God and shunned evil’ Satan accused Job’s faith of not being genuine; he told God that if he ‘stretched out his hand and struck everything he had, that Job would curse Him’ And so God allows Job to go through a trial and suffering; and it was this process of trial and suffering that proved Job’s faith genuine.

In talking about trial, Peter picks up this analogy of refinement- a process where, by intense heat, precious metals are made more pure and more valuable. He teaches that God uses trials to refine our faith, in order that it would ultimately be proved genuine. Just like our friendships are refined and our love for our friends is proved genuine when we stand together through hard times. Just like our marriages are refined and our love for our spouse is proved genuine when we stand together through hard times together. So too our faith in God is refined and our love for God proved genuine when we stand with and for God through trials.

So God allows even fiery trials in the anticipation that we would emerge from them with a refined faith that will endure, and not perish, to the end. That is that on that day that Jesus returns and His eternal kingdom is fully revealed, we would be found, though having suffered grief in all kinds of trials, to be praising, glorifying and honouring Him with a faith, hope and love proved genuine by fire.

1 Peter 1:8-9- Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy for you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

I love this.

My understanding is that happiness is circumstantial. If things are going well, we’re happy. If things aren’t going well, we’re unhappy. It’s alright to be happy. It’s just not enough to be happy. Because life will throw curveballs at you that happiness won’t be able to bunt. Happiness is not enough. Happiness will fade in hard times, but joy can be present, and even thrive, during times of deep suffering and difficult trial.

I believe that God want us to know what it is to be filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy from the Lord that sustains and strengthens us in our time of need. For example, the day that Jesus went to that cross was not a happy day for Jesus. Happiness was not enough for him to endure the cross- it was ‘for the joy set before him’ that he endured. I believe that God wants to give us joy, glorious, inexpressible in the midst of our suffering, so that we will not grow weary and lose heart. And this joy can weather and suffer this world’s circumstances without losing its hope, because it knows that you are receiving the goal of your faith- the salvation of your souls.

It would be great if it were true that God causes our life to be free of suffering- but it isn’t.

But even more wonderful, I think, is the truth- that God suffered for us. And God suffers with us.