The Gift of Suffering (05/29/24-05/31/24)

Working through my preparations on these verses, I couldn’t help but be put in mind of the title of R.C. Sproul’s book, ‘Surprised by Suffering’.  Isn’t that us?  I don’t know whether those in the early church would have been so surprised by it.  After all, it is pretty much the constant story of Paul’s career.  If he had been the one to plant your church, then you had been witness to his suffering for Christ.  Wherever he went, wherever this Gospel took root, opposition was close behind.  Trouble came.

But trouble was weathered, overcome, and the church grew.  It’s not a message we like to hear, but the church grew not in spite of those troubles, but because of them.  Faith is strengthened by trials because trials remove any misconceptions that we had about being able to stand in our own strength.  Trials force us to our knees, but not in capitulation, in prayer.  They make us much more aware of our Savior and His power, and make us much wiser in our dependence upon Him for strength, for direction, for deliverance.

In the West, it seems we have largely lost sight of this, or at the very least, lost our taste for such messages.  Seriously, how do you respond to that message from Acts 14:22?  Through many tribulations we must enter the kingdom of God?  This is what’s ahead?  If you set that before the congregation with any force of seriousness, half would probably up and leave on the spot, and those who remained would be most unlikely to be drawing comfort from it.  And yet, we are told this was Paul’s message of comfort to the churches, and I have no doubt that for them in their circumstances it truly was just that.

Faith can become costly.  We don’t always see it thus.  We can pretty readily slide through life with faith veiled before the world.  It might cause some embarrassment if it came up in polite society that we attended church on the regular, but it’s not really a threat to our safety.  We are not, as yet, likely to find ourselves cast out of our jobs for the simple reason of believing Christ.  We are unlikely to find ourselves refused service at the grocery store or the gas station because it has become known that we’re one of those believers.  But in other regions?  Confessing faith in Christ could prove deadly.  Make that announcement in the midst of a Muslim nation, and it could prove costly indeed.  Make that confession in a place like China, and it could result in your being sent off for corrective training.  But us?  We consider it a nearly intolerable burden that we may have to sit through an hour long ‘training’ exercise on the tenets of DEI.  It’s offensive, and amounts to something of an attempt at brainwashing, but suffering?  It barely manages to rise to the level of annoying.  It’s maybe at the level of Paul’s reaction to all the idols raised up around Athens:  Offensive, yes, and frustrating in that it is indication of hearts hardened against the truth, but suffering?

So, yes, we may be surprised by suffering.  We may be surprised by small annoyances.  Why is it like this?  If I am a child of God, what’s up with this nonsense?  Why should I have to put up with it?  I should be living the victorious life, above it all.  It takes a bit for us to recognize that this is to be expected.  You stand as evidence of a holy God.  You have been set as a sign.  Indeed, if you have been seriously seeking to fulfill the great commission in your life, then you have been instrumental in bringing folks to a point of crisis.  This, too, is something we rarely recognize.  The gospel is to be preached, and the gospel preached will have its God-intended result, but that result is not always unto salvation.  Sometimes it’s unto condemnation.  Go back to that message of the previous verse.  Your unity and steadfast faith are ‘a sign of destruction for them, but of salvation for you’ (Php 1:28).

You are a sign!  You represent!  When you bring somebody face-to-face with the gospel, the time for decision has come upon them.  It is ever and always a ‘choose you this day’ moment.  But the choice is not always going to be the Light.  Many will show a marked preference for their darkness.  No, but I will continue my course.  The variations on this are many.  Some will insist God wouldn’t want the likes of them, that they are too far gone to be saved.  It’s nonsense, and really only indicates that they are on equal footing with us who have already known salvation.  Others may insist they want nothing to do with a God who would permit this, that, or the other perceived evil to come into existence.  But they set themselves as arbiters of what is good, and they are by no means fit to make that determination.  They, like ourselves, are too shortsighted, too limited in understanding and awareness, to perceive the larger scope of God’s purposes.  Even for believers, it is exceedingly difficult to look upon this assurance of destruction for so many and conceive of any good in that assurance.  Oh, it may have been alright for those earlier civilizations, I suppose.  They still had that tribalism in them, you know.  What is bad for my enemy is good for me.  But we are more enlightened than that, surely.  And are we not called to love our enemies, even by this God of yours?

Why, yes, we are.  And that is why we insist on proclaiming the true Gospel, even when it is decried as hateful.  For we understand only too well the consequences of your refusing God’s offered forgiveness, and we would not wish that on even our worst enemy.  We, too, know what it is to have this loving offer made to us when we were so utterly opposed to all that God represents.  But we also know what happens when His love breaks through our defenses.  We know the wonder of His forgiveness, and we would have you to know it as well.  We pray that you will receive this stunningly good news, but we must also accept that in the end it is up to God whether He chooses you for salvation or for destruction.  And we must, as well, come to the perception of this determination from His perspective, and conclude that He is glorified in both results.  His will is done.  That is the final reality.  But yes, I can understand your anger at this message.  Been there, done that.  I can understand you walking away in disgusted rejection.  Been there, done that.  But I can pray that somehow, whether sooner or later, this message of hope might find a receptive place in you, that the Holy Spirit might yet be sent into your heart to prepare you for receiving the gift of faith.  All hope is never gone so long as breath remains.  But still, choose you this day.  And may God be so gracious as to lead you to choose life.

So, what’s the deal with this suffering?  If God is my Savior, my Protector, my Strong Tower, wherefore these trials?  Surely, He Who has redeemed me is quite capable of ensuring that things like this don’t come my way, right?  Well, yes.  That is absolutely correct. He is perfectly capable.  He Who calmed the seas could surely arrange for an easy path through life.  Yet, if we take Scripture at its word, He does not.  Indeed, we must arrive at the conclusion that He not only does not arrange an easy path for us, but actively undertakes to arrange these very trials and sufferings.  Mind you, we cannot, by our considerations here, arrive at God authoring or undertaking evil against us.  But He can and does permit those with evil intent to pursue their ends in regards to us.  Yet, as Paul tells us, He also works all things, even those evil intentions towards our good, who love Him and are called according to His will (Ro 8:28).  We have plentiful examples of this in Scripture, not least, that of Christ our Lord, put to death on the cross at the hands of sinful men, at the instigation of the devil, and yet, through this greatest of sufferings, brought through to the utmost good of being resurrected to life and taken back into heaven, having achieved by His tribulations our salvation.

Now, we can turn to the lessons He taught, that the servant will in no wise find himself better treated than his master, the disciple can expect no better reception than his teacher.  What prophet was there, after all, that man did not despise, reject, and torment?  The record we have of them shows that they faced trouble and even deadly opposition regularly.  The Son Himself, as we just observed, was met not with welcome but with rejection and with calls for His death by the hands of those whom were most despised by them who howled for it.  And do we, then, expect to be so well treated?  Do we expect to have an easy go of it as we follow this One Whose own people so roundly rejected Him?

Finally, we can come to the shocking observation Paul makes here.  Suffering is a gift.  It is not a rebuke for our having done wrong somehow, nor the response of an angry God because we’ve gone after other gods.  Mind you, if this is our story, then we can at best expect that there will come some disciplinary action.  But if we are believers, it comes not to destroy, but to restore.  It comes to wake us up out of our spiritual stupor and remind us Whose we are.  So, while we can and must come to this understanding that suffering at least can be a gift of grace, we must simultaneously understand that there are bounds set here.  Not all suffering comes as a gift of grace.  It is that suffering which is for His sake which is to be accounted such a gift.

So, let’s pick this apart just a bit.  What does it mean, this granting?  It means He who grants is doing you, the grantee, a favor.  It is a kindness bestowed, and it is given freely.  So, on the one hand, it is not something done under compulsion, as if God could be compelled to act by anything other than His own essential nature.  On the other hand, it is a kindness done.  Suffering, a kindness?  Yes.  It comes for our benefit.  It comes to produce mature fruit in us.  It may be a pruning process, undertaken in order that we might be that much more fruitful in our attachment to the Vine (Jn 15:1-2).

It may be that by this suffering we have our strength revealed to us, our maturity in the Spirit.  If we come back to the scene of Paul and Silas, jailed in Philippi on illegitimate charges, it’s clear that there was suffering.  What had they done, after all, to be deserving of official attention?  Paul had rebuked the spirit in some young slave girl, and her master thereby lost the profits he made by her fortunetelling (Ac 16:16-19).  That may have cost this man some income, but he had not laid hand on anybody, had not physically accosted either girl or master.  Oh, but he would have his revenge, and laid false charges against Paul and Silas, or at least charges of dubious legality, stirring the crowds to anger, threatening a riot, and the magistrates responded as magistrates tended to do, seeking to avoid riot by whatever means.  So, they had the two men beaten with many blows, and then imprisoned (Ac 16:20-24).  And how did these two respond?  They prayed.  That much, I don’t think, would come as a surprise.  The content of their prayers might, if we were privy to them, but that they were praying is natural enough.  We would likely be doing the same, seeing absolutely no means of escaping events.  But were these that sort of prayer we think of as foxhole prayers?  Perhaps they started there.  But things escalated.  They moved to singing hymns of praise to God (Ac 16:25-26), and it’s quite evident that God was listening, not that He had been caught out by these things.

I have to wonder, though, how their thoughts had traveled through these events.  I don’t suppose Paul was surprised by them at this stage.  It had been the same, it seems, everywhere he went.  If the Jews weren’t stirring up trouble against him because of the gospel, then the Gentiles were.  But he had been sent here by a clear vision from God Himself.  Mind you, his entire mission had the same force of revelation at its base.  He knew his mission, and he knew His God, and he had no intention of changing course from his assignment.  But still, he’s human.  He’s every bit as human as you or me.  This had to sting just a bit.  Why, God?  What did I do to deserve this?  Perhaps it swiftly moved from that to, what am I supposed to learn from this?  That’s kind of our pietized alteration of, “Why me, Lord?”  I mean, we know we’re not supposed to respond that way, and yet the question is there, so how do we put it to Him without offending Him?  And this is our answer.  “What are You teaching me, Lord?”  And honestly, it’s a good question to consider.  If, indeed, He arranges all things for our good, it is well we should ask how we are supposed to respond, that we should seek to perceive the good coming out of these trials.

But I incline to think that at some level, these two were surprised, both by their steadfast response, and by God’s actions undertaken on their behalf.  Have you ever been in such a situation, conditions that you know full well would have had you reacting in a most ungodly fashion only a short time ago, and yet here it’s come against you, and your response has surprised even you.  I think back to that time being rear-ended as I waited to pull into my father’s driveway.  I know myself only too well.  Even now, the propensity to respond with loud cursing and anger are too much the norm.  And yet, at least on that occasion, my response was nothing of the sort, but rather concern, first for my own family, but also for those in the car that had hit us which would have, after all, suffered more damage.  And I could not, even in the moment, attribute that to anything in myself.  Rather, it was quite evident that this was God working in me, demonstrating to me a maturity I would not have thought myself to possess.

And that recollection has its own warning note for me, as I consider that even this morning, at the slight perturbation of some cables snagging yet again as I raised my desk up to standing position, that my response was again of frustration and foul-mouthed reaction.  Given this reflection on the past, I must recognize that I can and should react better.  I might perhaps be advised to consider why this reaction has become my norm yet again, and what needs to change that it be not so.  But I can’t be angry at God for it, anymore than I had cause to be angry at Him in that accident.  And to the best of my knowledge, I had no anger towards Him on either occasion.  But even anger at myself, or at what we would call circumstance, needs to be done away.  The proper response is not that of asking why this happened, nor even how I can prevent it happening again, but rather, what is God’s purpose in this, and given that, what should I do?

Now, I have to say, things being pulled off the desk due to snagged wiring is hardly some unbearable injury done my person or my spirit.  But it reveals something that needs addressing.  The question is not how to reorganize that side of the desk to prevent this happening again, though that is certainly a matter to be addressed.  This is happening entirely too often, and needs to stop before it does damage.  But the question that really needs addressing is why am I responding in this fashion?  Why am I so often on edge, so readily moved to cursing, to frustration, to anger?  This is not where I should be, and as I say, I can look back and see times when my progress in this area was far better.

If my proper goal is maturing in the Spirit, and in the pursuit of godliness, then I should not be tolerating such negative progress.  I should be undertaking to seek out my God, query my Tutor, the Holy Spirit, and pursuing such corrective actions as are needful to return to that place of calm that I knew in that time of greater trial.  And I’m not so much concerned with mundane matters like working too hard, sleeping too little, or what have you.  Those are symptoms, not causes.  It’s the spiritual underpinning that needs attending to.  It’s the connection to the Vine that wants checking and strengthening.  Now, I must recognize that the strength of that connection is really not in my power to improve.  But somehow, it is in my power to weaken, and it seems I have perhaps done just that.  So, let me at minimum set myself to discover what it is in me that is weakening that vital flow, and undertake to repent and to pursue such actions as befit repenting.

Lord, I should really have taken time to pray about this yesterday, but it is not too late to do so this morning.  I pray that You would indeed show me where this is coming from, this shortness of temper and patience in me, and that You would help me to address it and regain the ground I once had in You.  If there are habits which I have allowed to form which need undoing, show me, and help me to undo them.  You know my weakness, after all, and I know Your strength.  Grant that I may lay hold of Your strength in making progress in those deeds appropriate to a true repentance.  Regret is not enough, and well do I know it.  But I also recognize how readily I stop there, and this, too, must be repented of.  Be my help in this, for my need is great.

So, can I wrap up this topic this morning?  We have this gift to huper, for the sake of, as most of our translations have it.  It’s an interesting phrase, and applied twice; first to the giving of this gift, given on account of Christ, and then also to the suffering which we experience.  This, too, being the gift, is to huper.  It is, as the NET suggests in footnote, ‘the on-behalf-of-Christ thing’.  The gift is given on behalf of Christ, it is an on-behalf-of-Christ thing.  The suffering, then, is also on His behalf.  And here, we come to another aspect of this curious phrase.  It has the idea of being for one’s advantage, for one’s benefit.  Thayer, in conveying this perspective observes the imagery of this one who is ‘the over’, which would be another take on the phrase in its most literal translation, standing over, bending over you to shield and defend. 

This takes me back to one of my favorite images of grace, God bending down to meet us at our level.  It is the picture of condescension.  And let me just say that in this case at least condescension is not the negative it is often made out to be.  No, when one truly superior, and in this case, infinitely superior, condescends to deal with you in your present, infinitely lesser state, it is an occasion for utmost gratitude and humility.  But it bleeds into this reason for the gift.  The gift comes as part of God’s grace, as part of His shielding and defending His child.  And again, as paradoxical as it may sound, we must recognize that suffering also comes as an act of God’s grace, and as part of His shielding and defending His child.

There is the slight possibility, I suppose, that in the case of suffering, we could read this phrase as indicating that we are suffering in His place, or instead of Him.  If we take it thusly, we must see it as a reciprocal action.  He, after all, suffered our due punishment, suffered death in our stead.  He took upon Himself the full force of God’s wrath in order that we might never have to face it ourselves.  There indeed is a standing over us to shield and defend!  But He is now enthroned in heaven, where sin and suffering have no entrance, while we remain present in this world of sorrows.  And we suffer.  But it’s no longer to be suffering due to our sins, for we have died to sin in Him.  Would that this felt more real in daily experience, but it is our real condition nonetheless.  And it is granted us in this new life to suffer in His place, or on account of Him.  The world treats us as it does because it reflects how they wish to treat Him.  But He’s not physically here.  We are.  So, the resentment transfers and we become the target.  But Lo!  This is a signal honor, suffering for Him!  And that is a thought that begins to shift me towards the next leg of this study, so let me hold it to the side for now.

Let us settle in on this point:  This suffering is a gift, and one given for our advantage.  What Paul lays before us, both the belief and the suffering, are ours, “because to you has been graciously granted on behalf of Christ” that it should be so.  That comes from the Lexham translation.  But I think perhaps I shall give the GNT the last word on this part of my exercise.  “For you have been given the privilege of serving Christ, not only by believing in him, but also by suffering for him.”  I emphasize the matter of privilege here.  But let me also emphasize the matter of serving Christ.  Your belief is your primary duty, it seems to me, in serving Him.  It serves Him that you believe, and in believing, you render service unto Him.  By trusting yourself to Him, taking Him at His word and relying upon Him in all things, you render service unto Him, for in all of this, you demonstrate both to yourself and to the world around you that He truly is God.  But, also, this suffering that comes about for His sake, whether we take that as being on account of our being His, or whether we take it as being instead of Him, does Him service.  And this, we might put down to the fact that in suffering for Him, rather than denying Him to maintain our comfortable existence here, we acknowledge His Lordship.  We acknowledge by our willingness to join Him in His humiliation, that we honor Him more highly than ourselves, than the world, than anything, up to and including life itself.

And that, I should have to say, links us to the third topic I have slated for this part of my study, which we shall get to in due course.  Hold to this, though.  Let us perhaps combine these two versions.  To you has been graciously granted on behalf of Christ the privilege of serving Him not only in your belief, but also in suffering for Him.  You know, we get this talk of rewards in heaven, and I suppose there is some degree of motivation in that, though I’m not convinced it ought to be strong motivation.  Having eternal life and a place in your Father’s house already, what further reward is needed?  And you are coheir with Christ!  Honestly, in some sense at least, all that is His is yours as well.  Do you really need more?  Do you really need to compete with your fellow believer, to be found in the end to have won in some greater sense than he?  That’s not godliness.  That’s pridefulness, and needs to go.  Yet, nobody wants to come to the wedding empty-handed.  It’s a time for the giving of gifts, and the one gift we can bring will be those things done for His sake, the record of our lives lived for Him.  And in that regard, these times of suffering for His sake, when belief in Him was tested most severely and found true will be the greatest gift we can lay before Him.  That being the case,

Lord, may it please You to grant that we might have a bountiful supply of such gifts to set before You when we arrive home.  It does not come easy, this saying thank You for these things we suffer.  Yet, thanks are due.  Our forebears understood this well, and even rejoiced as they were being put to death for Your sake.  May we likewise play the man, should it come to that.  And may we, regardless of the circumstances of life, hold fast to faith in You, and do so unashamedly.  Thank You for this gift of faith.  Thank You, as well, for all that attends upon this gift, yes, even the suffering.  For in this, we are enabled to identify that much more fully with You, our gracious Lord and King.

The Honor of Testing (05/31/24-06/01/24)

I have suggested for our consideration already that this matter of suffering is a matter of honor for us.  If suffering comes as a test of our faith, it comes as one that God has determined we are fully capable of passing.  God has looked upon your progress, progress which He is intimately familiar with, given that it has come about by His work in you, and has seen that you are up to this.  You are able to endure, faith intact.  And in this, you have been counted worthy to stand the test.  God is showing His trust in you, and beloved, His trust is not misplaced.  He is not one to make mistakes, not even in His estimation of you.  No.  He knows your continuing weakness.  And here’s the thing:  He knows that you don’t yet know your own strength.  Perhaps, though, this suffering that comes your way may give you opportunity to see for yourself just how much you’ve grown in faith, just how greatly He has endued you with power to stand.

If you have come to believe in the God Who Is, then you must, I should think, have come to the conclusion that He is in control.  He is all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-wise.  Nothing has escaped His notice, nor anything disrupted His plans.  Nothing could.  In Him we live, move, and have being (Ac 17:28).  I occasionally hear somebody try to reverse that equation, and make it out to be that in us He lives, moves, and has being, but that is a gross misunderstanding of the situation.  Does He live in us?  Yes.  But not as having any sort of dependence on us, rather as occupying the temple He Himself established and upholds.  No, He lives in us, and as Paul observes in his letter to the church in Galatia, “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal 2:20).  I died with Him, crucified in His crucifixion, and now I live because He lives.  My actions are by His motion, my circumstances by His arranging.  He is in charge, not only of me, not only of those who, like me, acknowledge His lordship.  No, He is in charge of all, being Creator of all, and He positions and arrays all things according to His good and perfect will.

Do you believe this?  I would have to say that if you do not, then you have not as yet come to know the God you serve, which is not a great place to be.  This is His promise.  This is the core of Romans 8:28.  Without that declaration of Acts 17:28, Romans 8:28 is nonsense.  But our existence and our actions are in Him.  And again, I have to stress that this applies every bit as much to the nonbeliever as to the believer.  Pharaoh was just as much under His control as you or me.  Balaam was as much directed by God as was Moses.  But it must be observed that not all who are thus set in position by Him are thereby deemed godly in their actions.  Can we really suppose Judas as blessed of God?  Yet, he, too, could not have done otherwise than he did, for it was God’s plan and purpose that it should be so.

What makes the difference, then?  On what basis are we deemed morally culpable for our actions if our actions are thus conscripted by irresistible power?  I would maintain that it comes down to this.  The believer undertakes of his own good pleasure to pursue those things which God has purposed for him to do.  His motivation in this is, ideally at least, to please God and to demonstrate by his actions that he is indeed a child of God.  The unbeliever, on the other hand, undertakes of his own good pleasure to pursue a course of evil, a course antithetical to that which God is.  That his deeds turn out to be in accordance with God’s plan and purpose is due entirely to God’s power to work all things together for the good of those who love Him, those called by Him in His purpose.  They cannot but play into His hand, yet they act from no desire that it should be so, and in many cases, they act from the intense desire to thwart Him.  But they cannot.  God is God.

But you!  You have been counted worthy.  God has taken your measure and determined that you have grown sufficiently in faith to be able to endure.  You have developed enough sense not to try and meet this challenge in your own strength, but to rely upon Christ and rest in Him, knowing that He and He alone is able to make you stand (Ro 14:4).  And this being the case, as that verse observes, you will stand.  That’s how this test works!  And having stood, you will be that much more aware of that work which God has accomplished in you, that much more aware of your need to rely firmly upon His strength and power, and even more, aware that the trust you have in Him is indeed well-founded.

God knows that you can come through this trial faith intact, undismayed by the adversity, unshaken in your trust in Him, and firm in your convictions as to His truth.  The question is, do you know it?  And I would maintain that it is at least in part because you do not know it that the test comes.  Oh, to be sure, there is also that matter of standing as a sign to those around you, as we saw in the preceding verses.  Your endurance is a sign of God’s reality and of His very real presence in the temple of your person.  But often times, it’s we ourselves who are most in need of seeing that sign and noting its direction.  That, too, was in the preceding verse.  You endure the trial, come through the suffering, and see that your life is trending heavenward.  Those around you see you trending heavenward and must recognize just a bit more that their own lives are trending rather hard in the opposite direction.  There remains the question of how they’ll respond, but we might pray – should pray – that they would be moved to repentance, and to deeds appropriate to repentance; that they might turn around and join us on our trajectory.

Now, I have to consider the obverse of this coin.  If, in fact, we cannot discern any way that we are suffering for His sake, rather than giving a sigh of relief, we ought better to wonder why that is.  If suffering for His sake is a gift, a privilege, then how is it that we have not been granted this gift?  I am not at all certain that we can make this some hard and fast corollary, that the degree of suffering for Christ that we experience must necessarily correspond to the degree of our maturity, such that lack of suffering can only mean that we are immature.  But it surely could be accounted cause to consider the possibility.  Am I indeed growing as I ought, or have I plateaued?  Have I hit pause on my life of faith, become too satisfied with my present state?  Have I lost sight of the goal?

I suppose it’s possible that our particular mindset is such that we simply don’t take much notice of the suffering, but I rather doubt that.  At least, I doubt it’s a particularly common case.  Neither, though, do I expect that the Christian life is required to be one of non-stop suffering.  For some, it may be that extraordinary faith is given such that they may endure even that.  Paul seems to have been such a one.  I can think of a few others in my experience who would seem to fit that bill.  I’ve known others who seem to discern suffering where I see no real suffering at all, only a fragile, wounded self-image.  I’ve known plenty more who react to any sort of suffering with shocked dismay, offended at God for allowing this to happen.  And I do not find it surprising at the least, in myself or in others, that given our preferences, we will gladly opt for the happy course in life, one free of suffering, and filled with good things from God, as we tend to measure goodness.  I mean, honestly, given the choice, it’s a rare bird indeed that will jump up in excitement, saying, “Oh, yes!  Me!  Me!  Give me the suffering!”  I can think of precisely one individual in my experience who was thus inclined, and recall quite clearly the occasion when he pretty much gave that exact answer.  And knowing him well enough at the time, I could only conclude that he meant it.

But the question:  What can it mean that my life has proven so pleasant?  I think there’s another case for God granting here.  If I consider Jesus’ teaching about how hard it is for a rich man to enter heaven, or God’s warnings to Israel as they came into the Promised Land, I must acknowledge that the life of ease and comfort can readily become a trap, a distraction pulling us away from God.  It can come to have too great a pull on our lives, such that we become disinclined to take up our cross and follow Him as we ought to do.  It seems to me that no matter which way you turn, no matter which course your life takes, there are tests involved.  Whichever proves to be the situation He has arranged for you, we know this:  It is good and for your good.  There is testing, but only such as you can withstand, testing intended to be passed.  It’s not like these Internet training sessions I occasionally have to complete, designed to be pretty well impossible to fail.  It’s not like that.  The tests of life are challenging, oftentimes challenging enough to have us saying, “I can’t deal with this.”  And yet, we do.  And yet, we do.  And having dealt, we discover in ourselves a strength, a maturity we had not realized we had.

So, is it a question of comparing gifts received?  Do we, like the Corinthians, compare and contrast, and boast of how much more advanced we must be, given the gifts we have been given?  Oh, you only got the wealth test.  I got the threat of death test.  I must be farther along in my faith than you.   Or, perhaps it’s the more passive form.  Hey, God.  How come he got this test and I only got that one?  I thought You didn’t play favorites.  But there’s no way to win when we play that game, whether we are competing with others or complaining of God’s decisions.  It’s a losing gambit from the start, because it misses the point.  These things are granted you.  It’s not a question of earning them.  Yes, there is likely some measurement to be made, that you are ready for such things as are granted, but it’s not a reward for service rendered.  It’s a gift.

I come back to that.  Suffering is a gift, when it comes for His sake.  Ever, that caveat must be noted.  Suffering for being a jerk is not a gift at all, it’s the plain and obvious consequence of your actions, and nothing more.  Suffering for your sins is no gift.  It is a sharing out in part of that punishment which is your due.  Jesus did indeed take the full penalty for your sins upon Himself, but we should be clear that we still have skin in the game.  We are still morally culpable for our moral choices, and even if pardoned in full in the court of heaven, there may very well remain consequences in this life for what we have chosen to do.  The death of David’s firstborn by Bathsheba comes to mind as but one example.

But we’re looking at suffering for the sake of Christ, suffering because we have declared as His, and made it known to the world around us that our faith is in Him.  And don’t lose sight of the fact that Paul makes it equally plain here that your faith is also something granted you, not something you worked up in yourself.  It has been granted you to believe in Him, because of Him, not because of you.  However you choose to take that first ‘for the sake of Christ’, whether on His behalf, because of Him, in His place, or to His benefit, the point holds.  Apart from Christ’s interest in the matter, faith would not have been granted, suffering would not have come.  Both gifts would have been withheld.  Does the one necessitate the other?  No.  I don’t believe we can make that connection.  Certainly, one is unlikely to suffer for Christ if he does not in fact have faith in Christ.  But I don’t find the two so fundamentally close-coupled that faith without suffering is dead faith, to borrow and modify James’ formulation.  That you have been granted both is, then, a greater honor done.  It’s a bigger gift.

Phillips gives us this perspective in his translation of the verse.  “You are given, in this battle, the privilege not merely of believing in Christ but also of suffering for his sake.”  Well, beloved, to be sure, we are in a battle, and as Paul tells us elsewhere, it is not a battle against flesh and blood, but against powers and principalities (Eph 6:12).  And let me tell you something:  The first and bloodiest battlefield in this war is the one within.  Our own flesh and blood wars with the spirit that has been renewed.  In Romans, Paul writes of this.  “I find that evil is present in me, though I wish to do good.  In my soul, I concur with God’s law, yet the members of my body wage war against the law of my mind, making me prisoner to the law of sin in my members” (Ro 7:21-23).

Way back towards the beginning of my believing life, there came a traveling preacher to our church, with the message that our enemy the devil has one primary place to battle us, and that is in our minds.  That message has stuck with me all these years.  I rather wish I still had the tapes somewhere.  It was quite possibly the most powerful, most impactful sermon I have heard to date.  It had notes of, “Your God is too small,” considering our estimation of Him as reflected in our readiness to capitulate.  Of course, the truth is quite different, and it’s only our perception of God that is too small.  And so, these tests come, these tests of wealth or of suffering, that we might learn for ourselves just how big our God is.

But I am starting to shift my focus, to this matter of conflict, or battle, or contest.  We are in a battle.  Thus the need to daily put on the full armor of Christ.  But we don’t need to go out looking to pick a fight.  We don’t need to be casting about, looking for devils.  I’m not saying we can ignore external conditions.  What I am saying is that the primary field of conflict remains our inner condition, our thought-life, our self-perception, and that ongoing running battle between the old man and the new spirit within us.  And with that, I shall take leave of this portion of the study, and pick up this threat tomorrow in the final portion.

The Contest of Faith (06/02/24)

So, now we come to the question of what this suffering is which Paul has in mind, and he points us to a matter of agona.  It takes but a glance to see how this Greek term has become our English term agony.  It has many layers of application, but at its base, it referred to that place where the Greek games took place.  And that gives us a sense of its intended meaning:  a contest, a race, a struggle.  There is application, as well, to ideas of anxiety, or of mental gymnastics.

I think, when we hear of conflict, as the NASB chooses to translate the term, it puts us more on a battle footing, than in a competitive state of mind.  Yet, that seems to be the option most of the translations have chosen, apart from a few that go to the idea of battles, such as the Phillips translation quoted in the prior part of this study.  Okay.  I’ll accept that there’s a conflict in view here, but it is in the battleground of the mind.

Consider where Paul has taken us in arriving at this point.  Yes, he is imprisoned on account of his faith in Christ, but that’s not the struggle, really.  That’s not the conflict.  His conflict, as he has made known, is between the desire to depart and be with Jesus – which he has spoken of as an illicit desire, or a desire after that which is not as yet permissible, and the need to remain and continue ministering.  We could call it the struggle between want and need.  Or, we could view it as the contest between personal preference and the call of duty.  I suppose, given Paul’s assigning of his desire to a more or less illicit hunger, that we could even look at this as the struggle between sinful urge and pursuit of righteousness.  And there, my friends, is a daily exercise at mental gymnastics!

And bear in mind what Paul is presenting here.  You are experiencing these same conflicts as I am.  Well, they’re certainly not in prison.  They’re not facing trial before Nero.  Neither, at this point in history at least, are they at risk of being put in that position.  It’s possible, I suppose.  If they would harass Paul, there’s nothing preventing them from harassing his converts.  But Paul, I think, was a special case, particularly from the Jewish perspective.  He was one of them.  He had been somebody of note, it seems, an up and comer in the ranks of the temple, perhaps even taking a seat on the Sanhedrin.  And yet, now he was, so far as they were concerned, rejecting them, rejecting Moses, betraying the God of Israel!  Granted, this thinking came of refusing to truly perceive his arguments, or perhaps unwilling to accept the implications, given their involvement in seeing Jesus put to death.  Too many of His own remarks had hit home, and they could not bring themselves to repent of their prior deeds.  So, unwilling to repent, their only course was to compound their sins until they reached the full measure.

They had faced this same conflict of mind, and failed utterly.  We all face this conflict.  I often hear the teaching that the very fact that we are concerned about our sin, and struggle with it, is already evidence that we are among the redeemed, for prior to that, there was no struggle.  We happily accepted it, if we even noticed it at all.  And there is truth to that, to be sure.  Yet, the deeper truth is that this conflict is still there, between sinful flesh and the pursuit of righteousness.  It’s just that the contestant in pursuit of righteousness is lying limp and lifeless on the track, while the sinful flesh is running far ahead.  The contest, in their case, was over before it started, a foregone conclusion.

And so it had been for us.  But something happened.  God came on the scene, revitalized that limp and lifeless spirit within us, rebirthing us with a fresh vigor, filling us with the power to rise and to compete once more, and so, yes, we are now experiencing the same conflict.  Those in Philippi, proud citizens of Rome by nature, glad citizens of heaven by faith, had a contest to win.  Would their fleshly allegiance to the current social order have priority in them, or would their spiritual allegiance to God win out?

Beloved, we are in a contest, but not with the world.  In that contest, it is we who have already won the race.  Yes, we are still running, still sparring, still competing; but the outcome is certain.  We have the wind of the Spirit behind us, the power of God propelling us, and the promise of Christ pulling us ever onward.  The race goes on, but the outcome is certain.  That doesn’t give us cause to slacken the pace.  It does, however, give us a continuing supply of energy, knowing that we’ve got this, because He’s got us.

We are also not in a contest against one another, vying for prizes or seeking that Dad might love us better than everyone else.  There is no place in this family for such thinking.  It’s well and good to be stirred to greater exercise of faith by what we see in our brothers and sisters, and it’s well and good that they should be stirred by what they see in us.  But it’s not a competition as such.  This is the error that Corinth fell into, using their gifts not to edify one another, not to build one another up, but to show off and feed their own spiritual pride – or their own prideful spirit, which seems a more apt description of affairs.

No, our primary place of conflict is with ourselves.  Whether we are on the big issues, as Paul was, contemplating life or death decisions, or whether it’s the relatively mundane matters of daily life, we are constantly in conflict.  Now, there might be somebody out there who would insist that they’ve progressed beyond such things, that they are now so wholly devoted to Christ that worldly pleasures no longer have hold on them at all.  But I would suggest to you that any such thinking is delusional.  “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1Jn 1:10).  Of course, in that letter, we must keep distinction between the habitual sin, the lifestyle of sin, and those sins which remain our occasional stumble.  It’s a tender balance he maintains.  “I write that you may not sin, but when you do, know that you have an Advocate in Jesus Christ, the propitiation for your sins” (1Jn 2:1-2).  Don’t fool yourself.  Don’t suppose you’ve reached some perfection never before seen in the whole course of human history.  For all that, don’t look at your preferred saints and suppose that they somehow attained to such lofty heights in this life.  You don’t know their internal life.  For most, you know only the hagiography, and by now, we really ought to have a sense of just how inaccurate such hagiographies tend to be.  No, those saints and apostles, and the prophets and kings before them, were men such as ourselves, sinners such as ourselves, and knew the same conflicts within as we face daily.

I can go back to Romans 7.  “I am not practicing what I like to, but find myself doing the very things I hate” (Ro 7:15).  “Nothing good dwells in my flesh.  I wish for good, but the doing of it isn’t in me, indeed I find myself practicing the very evil that I do not wish to be doing” (Ro 7:18-19).  My body is at war with my spirit, and I am taken prisoner.  Who will free me? (Ro 7:23-24).  And now, you are experiencing the same conflict.  That’s what this is about.  That’s what this Christian life comes down to every day of every week, so long as breath remains to this body.  Every day, every moment, is a “choose you this day” moment.

You are in a contest, and like any good contestant, you had best be in it to win.  As I said, you’ve been in this contest all along, but for the longest time, if you even noticed that this was the case, you really didn’t care.  It may be a sprint, or a marathon, but I’ll walk, thanks.  Winning doesn’t interest me.  I’d rather take in the scenery along the way, enjoy the sights.  Now, however, your eyes are open, and the prize is before you, the prize of that upward call, the prize of true life.  And that true life is already begun in you.  Yet, the contest goes on, for the old man is running right alongside you, looking to trip you up, distract you from your goal, so he can have victory instead.

This seems to me to be where Paul takes this image of contest not only here in this passage, but throughout his writings.  Take his letters to Timothy, his young protégé and coworker.  Here is Timothy, a young man, yet one Paul has entrusted repeatedly with difficult assignments.  And what do we have in Paul’s encouragement to him?  “Fight the good fight of faith.  Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called” (1Ti 6:12).  Look.  It’s not as if eternal life begins when we die.  It transforms entirely, but it does not begin.  You have already been reborn into this eternal life.  Your spirit is already renewed in Christ, and in many ways, renewed daily.  Your mind is renewed, though it is still beset by old ways of thinking.  New life, eternal life, is already your story.  It remains, to be sure, for this body of flesh to be replaced or refashioned so as to be fit for eternity.  God forbid we should have to endure forever in this present condition!  But this life is already in you, already yours.  Live it!  It doesn’t come for free.  Indeed, it has cost you everything – everything you were.  But then, everything you were was driving you inexorably down the broad path to eternal perishing.

Those of us who came late to faith have some understanding of this, I think, which perhaps those who have held faith from childhood do not – at least not from direct experience.  Of course, we who came late cannot speak from direct experience as to their understanding, either.  But when we came to Christ, when Christ called and we finally heard Him and responded, things had to change.  There were habits that must be left behind, and many of those let go but slowly, and only with concerted effort.  And even then, they only let go when our effort is undertaken in keeping with Christ’s directions.  “Use only as directed.”  It’s as applicable for our spiritual medicine as for any medication we might take in this life.  There were likely acquaintances and associations with whom we found it necessary to sever ties.  Setting off on this new course of life, having done a 180 on our current trajectory, the last thing we need, or can even tolerate, is the pull of that tidal pull of our former companions, still surging down toward perdition.  Have you ever been on a sidewalk, seeking to walk the opposite direction from the vast majority going the other way?  It’s not easy.  It’s swimming upstream.  It takes all the exertion of the salmon seeking to reach its spawning grounds.  And in this pursuit of godliness, it’s every bit as much fraught with deadly perils.  So, yes, fight the good fight.  Pursue your faith in Christ.  Strive towards home, but on His terms and in His strength.

It is in this state of mind that we find Paul writing to Timothy again as he nears the end of his race.  “I have fought the good fight.  I have finished the course.  I have kept the faith” (2Ti 4:7).  Beloved, in this contest, that is the definition of winning.  “I have kept the faith.”  Now, I might turn it around and say that faith has kept me, for faith is, as we must observe even in this passage, a gift given us, not some muscle we have exercised to keep it strong.  I think Paul uses the imagery of gymnastics often enough that we ought to see some application of exercising faith, but in the end, it is a gift, albeit a gift that we must needs put to use, if it is to have value to us.

Listen, the Way, as it was once called, is not easy.  It never was.  It begins with the call to take up your cross and follow Christ (Mt 16:24).  It requires setting aside every earthly entanglement that would hold us back from Him, whether friends, family, habits, mindsets, employments, entertainments.  Everything.  Everything must be submitted to His purpose, His approval.  There is no place anymore for self-satisfying desires.  We are not made slaves, per se, but we are servants in the household of our God, and as such, our proper place is to be watching Him for the least hint of command, that we might comply, that we might swiftly move to satisfy that command, even anticipating it because we know Him so well.  And we are sons of His household.  We are intended to know Him that well.  There is nothing untoward in the son accounting himself bondservant of our Lord.  Honestly, if Paul was unashamed to make that claim, why should it offend us to see ourselves thus?

I know, you will call me back to Jesus teaching His disciples near the end.  “No longer do I call you slaves, for the slave does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I have heard from My Father I have made known to you” (Jn 15:15).  Indeed, it is the case, isn’t it?  He has informed us as to what’s up.  Now, for those who seek deeper, hidden signals for their daily experience, or fresh revelations to interpret the events of life around us, I would have to note that this is not stated in the present or the future tense.  It’s not a promise that, “I shall keep on telling you constantly what My Father is saying and doing now.”  It’s not, “I will at some point make known to you what the next step is.”  It’s an aorist statement, a past, completed action.  “I have made it known to you.”  Turn it around.  “You know, because I have told you already.”

Your problem, my problem, is not one of lacking understanding about what God wants of us, nor is it an issue of lacking wisdom as to how we ought to act in any given situation.  Again, “You know.  I have told you already.”  No, our problem is weakness of the flesh.  Our problem is that we don’t really want that responsibility of acting, or deciding.  For all that folks complain about how the typically Calvinistic view of God being so thoroughly in charge of events renders man but an automaton, when it comes down to it, when it comes down to taking action, most of those same folks are seeking the comfort of being automatons, moved by God with no personal volition involved.  But that’s not how this works, this life.  No, we are called to fight the good fight of faith, to race to win.  We are called to serve our God, and to love Him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength – all our being.  For it is in Him that we even have any being.  If we love Him, we must surely be coming to know Him.  If we don’t seek to know the one we love, then frankly, we don’t yet know what love is.  But if we love Him and know Him, then we already know His ways, His will, His desire for us.  The conflict is not with lack of knowledge.  It’s with lack of obedience.

You and I, if we are indeed sons of God, are experiencing this conflict.  Our awareness of the conflict may ebb and flow, but the conflict remains.  It is our steady state in this life.  You have choices to make in each moment.  As do I.  And in each of those moments, the call is, “choose you this day whom you will serve.”  Will you feed your flesh or your spirit?  Will you follow Christ or the world?  Will you seek to please Him or to satisfy your own desires?  The old song serves.  “Turn your eyes upon Jesus.  Look full in His wonderful face, and the things of the earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace.”  Solid advice, if hard to hold onto at times.

Lord, I so long to serve You as I ought, and You know full well the struggle I have with it in this easily distracted flesh.  So many things pull at my time, pull at my interests.  And so often, I am so pulled in sundry directions that even pursuing my own interests proves more than I can manage.  Oh!  Wretched man that I am, come rescue me!  Set my mind on You.  Strengthen this weak spirit that I might love You more nearly as I ought.  Strip me of all that needs stripping, and refinish me after Your own desires, that I may be that much more suited to Your service.  And in all, Jesus, thank You.  I know that You are with me, even in my weakness, perhaps most strongly in my weakness.  But let me not become cause for others to blaspheme and revile Your good name.  Let me be such as will represent, for I am Yours, such as I am.