What does the Bible say about suffering for Christians?
The Bible teaches that suffering is a means by which believers become partakers of Christ's consolation.
When faced with trials, believers need more than superficial religion; they require a genuinely transformative experience of the Holy Spirit. As affliction brings an individual low, it often leads them to seek a deeper relationship with Christ, revealing the vital essence of faith that is otherwise obscured by comfort and complacency. Thus, suffering is not just a hardship, but a pathway to spiritual vitality and closeness to God.
2 Corinthians 1:7, Matthew 14:33
Why is the deity of Christ important for Christians?
The deity of Christ is crucial as it assures believers of His power to provide salvation and reconciliation with God.
Christ's dual nature as both God and man offers believers an intersection of divine merit and human suffering. This profound mystery provides reassurance that His sacrifice on the cross is fully sufficient to cover our sins and restore our relationship with God. The assurance of salvation rests on the reliability of Christ’s deity, as it allows us to see Him as the refuge from sin, death, and hell. Thus, understanding Christ’s divine nature is not merely theological; it is essential for living a faith rooted in hope and assurance.
2 Corinthians 1:7, Matthew 14:33
How do we know that God works through suffering?
We recognize God's work in suffering through the deepening of our faith and reliance on His grace.
Moreover, the transformative power of the Holy Spirit during times of affliction enables believers to experience vital godliness that may otherwise remain dormant in times of ease. In this way, suffering can lead to a greater awareness of God’s presence and power in one’s life, reinforcing the belief that God truly does use such experiences to draw us closer to Himself. Thus, while suffering is often perceived as a burden, it carries with it an opportunity for spiritual conformation to Christ’s image.
2 Corinthians 1:7, Matthew 14:33
"And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing, that as you are partakers of the sufferings, so shall you be also of the consolation."
— 2 Corinthians 1:7
The Lord has appointed the path of sorrow for the redeemed to walk in. Why? One purpose is to wean them from the world; another purpose is to show them the weakness of the creature; a third purpose is to make them feel the liberty and vitality of genuine godliness made manifest in their soul's experience. What am I, and what are you when we have no trials? Light, frothy, worldly-minded, carnal, frivolous. We may talk of the things of God, but they are at a distance; there are no solemn feelings, no melting sensations, no real brokenness, no genuine contrition, no weeping at the divine feet, no embracing of Christ in the arms of affection.
But when affliction, be it in providence or be it in grace, brings a man down; when it empties him of all his high thoughts, lays him low in his own eyes, brings trouble into his heart, I assure you he needs something more than mere external religion. He needs power; he needs to experience in his soul the operations of the blessed Spirit; he wants to have a precious Jesus manifesting himself to his soul in love and blood; he needs to see his lovely countenance beaming upon him in ravishing smiles; he needs to hear the sweet whispers of dying love speaking inward peace; he needs to have the blessed Lord come into his soul, manifesting himself to him as he does not manifest himself to the world.
What brings a man here? A few dry notions floating to and fro in his brain, like a few drops of oil in a pail of water? That will never bring the life and power of vital godliness into a man's heart. It must be by being experimentally acquainted with trouble. When he is led into the path of tribulation, he then begins to long after, and, in God's own time and way, he begins to drink into, the sweetness of vital godliness, made manifest in his heart by the power of God.
"Then those who were in the ship came and worshiped him, saying, Truly, you are the Son of God." Matthew 14:33
What a beauty and blessedness there is in the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ, when viewed by the spiritual eye! Our reasoning minds, it is true, may be deeply stumbled at the doctrine of an incarnate God. My own mind, I know, has sometimes been driven almost to its wits' end by this great mystery of deity and humanity combined in the Person of Christ, for it so surpasses all human comprehension, and is so removed beyond the grasp of all our reasoning faculties. It is not, indeed, contrary to reason, for there is nothing in it impossible or self-contradictory; but it is beyond and above the reach of human thought and tangible apprehension. But when we are led to consider what would be the most certain and most fearful consequences unless the Lord Jesus Christ were what he declares he is, God as well as man, we are compelled, from the very necessity of the case, to cast ourselves with all the weight of our sins and sorrows upon an incarnate God, as the shipwrecked sailor gladly casts himself upon the rock in the ocean as the only refuge from the devouring sea.
When we feel what sinners we are, and have been, look down into the depths of the fall, and see in some feeble and faint measure what sin is in the sight of a holy and pure God, what can save us from despair unless we see the deity of the Lord Jesus Christ investing his work upon the cross and his obedience with a merit that shall suffice to justify our guilty souls, wash away our aggravated iniquities, blot out our fearful crimes, and make us fit to appear in the presence of a righteous God? Thus we are sometimes absolutely compelled to throw ourselves on the deity of Christ, as ready to perish, because in such a divine Savior, in such precious blood we see a refuge, and we see elsewhere no other.
We then feel that if the deity of Christ be taken away, the Church of God is lost. Where can you find pardon? where justification? where reconciliation to God? where atoning blood, if there is no Savior who merited as God, and suffered as man? We might as well leap into hell at once with all our sins upon our head, as a sailor might spring over the prow of a burning ship into the boiling waves, to meet death instead of waiting for it, unless we believe by a living faith in the deity of the Son of God.
But sometimes we are sweetly led into this glorious truth, not merely driven by sheer necessity, but blessedly drawn into this great mystery of godliness, when Christ is revealed to our souls by the power of God. Then, seeing light in God's light, we view the deity of Christ investing every thought, word, and act of his suffering humanity with unspeakable merit. Then we see how this glorious fact of deity and humanity in the Person of Immanuel satisfies every need, puts away every sin, heals every wound, wipes away every tear, and sweetly brings the soul to repose on the bosom of God. Sometimes, therefore, from necessity, driven by storms of guilt and waves of temptation, and sometimes sweetly drawn by the leadings and teachings of the Holy Spirit, we lay hold of the hope set before us in the essential deity and suffering humanity of the Son of God, knowing that there is a refuge in him from sin, death, hell, and despair.
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