SUFFERING: THE ULTIMATE FELLOWSHIP

 

Suffering is surely one of the great curses of mankind. Rare is the person who has little suffering to endure. When one close to us is afflicted, what can we say that will be of comfort? Words are so empty. And when it is evident that there is no solution and no ending in sight, will not our ill-advised speech create new anguish, rather than healing?
But there may be another and perhaps a better way. It is the path of challenge. It replaces the woe of agony with the strength of courage. It pierces the black cloud of despair with the torch of renewed resolve. And instead of lonely hopelessness, it creates a purpose for which to endure.
What is this challenge? When I face the unendurable future, how can I convert my own anguish into a new burst of ambition?

There was once a man who endured suffering as a way to achieve an higher call. It was his new understanding of his situation which enabled him to take a new direction for his life.
Who was that man?
It was the Apostle Paul.

After reviewing the successes and achievements of his life (and they were many,) he came to realize that all his human achievement was actually an handicap, holding him back from what he really desired. He said, “What things were gain to me, I count but loss.” (Philippians 3:7.) In life’s ledger he found all his credits were really debits.
What goal had he not achieved? What ambition remained unsatisfied? What purpose in life was unfulfilled?
The Apostle put it this way: In his own words, we find his resolution, saying, “That I may know Him” (i.e., Jesus the Christ – of course a worthy ambition; but more than that): “and the power of His resurrection” (but even this does not exhaust the need of wanting more. -- Is there nothing higher? Yes, there is an higher plateau of living. So Paul continued): “and the fellowship of His sufferings.”
The suffering of Jesus! The pain of His treatment: the floggings, the insults, the piercings, tested His human endurance. The agony of His Cross, which has been unsurpassed in all human history. There has never been in all mankind’s saga a more intense hazing. The experience of Jesus plumbs the depths of all suffering.
And now Paul’s ambition was to experience, to endure, a like suffering to that of His Lord. He wanted to suffer like Jesus, in order to understand, to appreciate, to enter into a fellowship with Jesus that only they could understand.
Those who experience pain can fellowship with Jesus in a way that one who has never endured physical affliction can ever know.

Are you suffering? Jesus suffered more. Are you in agony? There was no agony like to that of Him. Do you feel you cannot go on? He endured.
That is His challenge. He wants your fellowship with Himself; and as you suffer, you begin - just begin - to experience true fellowship with Him. It is a comradeship of suffering.

Paul sought out this fellowship, even to the ultimate. He wanted to conform his life to that of Jesus, even unto the agony of death. He concluded his ambition by writing, “being made conformable unto His death.” (Philippians 3:10.)
How could Paul seek such a life commitment? It did not come easy, even for him. He had to learn it, learn by experience.
Much earlier in life, when Paul was arrested by Jesus as he approached the city of Damascus (see The Acts, Chapter Nine) he was stricken with blindness: a blindness which lasted three full days. Then God spoke to a certain Christian named Ananias, and directed him to lay hands on Paul. Ananias demurred, but God told him that Paul was a “chosen vessel.” God was going to teach Paul “what great things …. ”
What great things? To be a great preacher? No! To be a great evangelist? No! To be a great missionary? No! To be authorized to write half of the New Testament? No! What great things, then?
God (Jesus, the Lord) was going to show Paul “how many things he must suffer for My Name’s sake.” (Acts 9:16.)
It required years of trouble that Paul had to endure. He was frightened, he was despairing, he wanted to quit. On one occasion Jesus Himself had to appear to Paul, and say to him, “Stop being afraid, but go on speaking, and hold not thy peace: for I AM with thee.” (Acts 18:9-10, literal translation from the original language.)
Hear Paul’s own description of some of the trials he endured: he was engaged “in labors more abundantly, in prisons more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day have I been in the deep; in journeyings often, in perils of rivers, in perils of robbers, in perils from my countrymen, in perils from the Gentiles, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in labor and travail, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness.” (II Corinthians 11:23-27.)
On another occasion Paul spoke of being given “a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me.” Paul went on to say, “Concerning this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me. And he hath said unto me, ‘My grace is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” By way of conclusion, Paul wrote, “I take pleasure in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses, for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.” (II Corinthians 12:7, 8, 10.)
Through it all, Paul was learning. He was learning by experience. He was learning the meaning, the significance, the value of suffering. And then at last, alone in prison in Rome, he came to accept - no, to embrace - his career of suffering. Writing to his Christian friends in Philippi, he acknowledged that he had not yet achieved God’s role for him, but was still striving to grasp, to lay hold of, to claim that status that Jesus had intended for him when He laid hold of him on the road to Damascus. Here are Paul’s exact words: “I press on, if so be that I may lay hold on that for which also I was laid hold on by Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:12.)
Paul has caught the vision, he now understands the meaning of suffering …. No, the meaning of his, his own, suffering. He is now ready to “lay hold on” the meaning of all his suffering and trouble, which is to know, not just the meaning, but “the fellowship of His suffering,” even to the extent of martyrdom, in which he will be “becoming conformed unto His death.”
Paul thus has met the challenge, spoken of at the beginning of this essay.

But what about us. Can we accept such like challenge? Some of us can, and must. But some of us cannot endure such hardship. And God knows it, and may spare some of us, but to our ultimate loss.
But to those who suffer, and who must endure, God is calling upon them to a new bond of fellowship with Jesus, a special fellowship with Him that others may not know.
If you are “fortunate” enough to be called upon to suffer, you are blessed. You are a chosen one with Him: that is, if you will grasp, lay hold of, your suffering. And the blessing may not be known, may not be evident, may not be revealed, until you reach eternity’s shore.
It is written that “all chastening seemeth for the present to be not joyous but grievous; yet afterward it yieldeth peaceable fruit unto them that have been exercised thereby, even the fruit of righteousness.” (Hebrews 12:11.) May God bless you, not in spite of, but through any suffering He calls upon you to endure.

--- Norman L. MacLeod Jr.

July, 2004

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