Persevering in pain

A friend came over to visit the other day. She was sad and although normally stoical, the struggles of life for once bubbled up and overflowed into the conversation. She is going through a difficult time. Real, hard struggles, not first world problems and I was privileged that she shared them with me. After she had given vent for a while, I attempted to validate her pain, to show I empathised, I said, “life is hard”. She is not a native English speaker and she responded in the negative, no, life was not hard, what was stronger than hard? I reflected for a moment, how would we say it in English more strongly? What is one stronger than “life is hard?” I tried, “life is very hard” and then my brain suggested, what about “life is pain”? I tried it out on my friend. We both laughed, acknowledging the hyperbole of it, but it was also a laugh with a layer of recognition. There was a reality to that statement for both of us.

In her life experience and in mine, for different reasons there is a validity in that statement. Life is pain. Of course it’s not the whole truth. For both of us, there have been moments of joy, of peace, of happiness and times of neutrality, where the business of living absorbs all the energy and focus and life is merely life, doing the next job, meeting the next expectation. But for both of us also, there have been an awful lot of very hard times. Lengthy periods when hurt and pain have been the dominant emotions, frustration and impatience, loss and loneliness. We come from different continents, radically different cultures, hugely different life experiences, and currently have immensely different circumstances, but we are united in that moment by a recognition of the fact, that life is easier when you accept as a basic fact that life is pain.

Life is particularly painful if you are a Christian. Does it surprise you that I should say that? I’m convinced from my reading of the Bible that it is true. Victory comes through suffering, before the crown comes the cross (Philippians 2), if the resurrection is untrue then truly we are to be pitied above all men (1 Corinthians 15:19). The pattern of suffering before satisfaction is the pattern of the gospel, the imitation of which Christ calls us to when he calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him (Luke 9:23). We often think that the suffering of the Christian is mainly to do with persecution, so if we are not faced with significant persecution within our culture we tend to think, “phew, dodged a bullet there,” that we don’t have to endure the suffering that Christ talks about, but I think this is a fundamental (and convenient) misunderstanding. The suffering of taking up our cross is the suffering of dying to self and our own desires. It is the suffering of doing battle against sin, of saying no to the temptations of the flesh which offer pleasure and comfort, of choosing Christ and his work rather than our own glory and success.

When you fight to rein in your tongue and use it to build up rather than knock down, forfeiting the chance to make yourself feel superior. When you earn your colleagues’ and bosses’ scorn and disfavour for refusing to lie for their convenience or benefit. When you say no to temptation to indulge in sexual fantasy or flee rather than flirt with relationships that you know could lead you into a situation where you will be tempted to sin. When you hand over your anger and your right to vengeance to the Lord and choose forgiveness. When you choose to believe God’s words rather than your own interpretation of a situation, forfeiting the sense of control that gives you and the comfort of blame, guilt, anger, envy or whatever other emotion you were allowing to rule you. When you sacrifice a comfortable income, time to spend on things you enjoy, personal comfort, to invest in the kingdom of God. When you learn the hardest lesson of all, to change your “why, Lord, why can’t I have the things I want, that I feel sure will make me happy,” into “Thy will be done.”

God’s way may be good, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt. We beat our bodies to make them our slaves (1 Corinthians 9:27), we resist sin to the point of shedding blood (Hebrews 12:4), we pluck out our eyes (Mark 9:47) and cut off our hands (Mark 9:43), we turn the other cheek (Luke 6:29), love our enemies(Matt 5:43), go the extra mile (Matt 5:41), we make ourselves servants, slaves, the least (Mark 10:33-34), we put to death the lusts of the flesh (Col 3:5), we deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow in the path that Jesus trod before us (Luke 9:23). We die to ourselves, elevate others’ needs above our own (Phil 2:3-4), bear one another’s burdens (Gal 6:2), lay down our lives for our friends (1 John 3:16). Or at least we should, and to the extent that we are successful our reward will be that the world will despise us, put us out of the synagogues and believe that it does a service to God when it exterminates us (John 16:2).

However, to the extent that we are not like this, like Christ, a large extent let’s face it, our loving heavenly Father is disciplining us to make us more like him. So we endure pruning, knowing the outcome will be fruitfulness (John 15:2), we endure suffering which produces perseverance which produces character which produces a hope that does not disappoint (Romans 5:3-5), we endure discipline, which is not pleasant at the time but in season brings forth a harvest of righteousness to the glory of God (Hebrews 12:11).

Furthermore we live in a broken and fallen world, a world where we experience sin against us from the cradle, warping our personalities, instigating damaging interpretations of the world and harmful coping mechanisms and depriving us of resilience to the losses and injuries we will experience in life. A world where we are damaged by the selfishness and sinfulness of others, where we suffer from a creation bound over to decay that brings injury, disease and death to ourselves and those we love.  We suffer from the longings for intimacy of our creation nature thwarted by the impossibility between humans of truly knowing and being known due to the way we are compelled to hide from one another because of the ugliness of our sinful nature (Gen 3:10). We suffer injustice, oppression, isolation, indifference. And to the extent that our understanding of the gospel is imperfect we suffer the pain of shame, guilt and fear. As Christians we endure all this, knowing that we have a good God who has absolute power over all of these things, and yet allows them to continue. We have to endure not only the experience of suffering from the brokenness of the world but also know that God can act to end our pain but often does not.

Life is pain, particularly for the Christian. The pain of living in a broken world, fallen, sinful and labouring in the pains of childbirth of God’s kingdom. The pain of being broken people, bound to disease, decay, death, labouring in the agony of giving birth to new life as our flesh fights to hold on to its old desires and ways every inch. The exhaustion of doing battle daily against temptation, evil thoughts and desires, Satan, to take up our cross and follow in the way of the sacrifice, of Christ.

And yet:

22 We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. 23 Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption to sonship, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? 25 But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.

26 In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.

28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.

Romans 8:22-30

Life is pain, the statement is true but thank God, not the only or ultimate truth. Because into this context God speaks his most profound promises, promises to hold us with hope through the darkness. First the promise of meaning. That what feels senseless and empty and full of frustration is actually achieving something profound and glorious. That into a pain that doesn’t even have words to express itself, God says all things including surely, particularly these things, are being worked together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. God redeems the agony of the battle, the pain of the sacrifice, the tears and the groaning by making it part of his good purposes, to make us more like Christ. To build us into the image of his perfect Son, to fill us with his goodness and ultimately his glory. There is no suffering that is without meaning, however apparently senseless, when as it is submitted to God it is re-purposed to bring his kingdom within his people, to grow his church.

It’s a communal blessing, not necessarily an individual one. All things work together for good for those who love him. The community of believers is built up by the perseverance, character and wisdom gained in suffering by each of its members. We can avoid being reductive and trying to identify a blessing of growth proportional to the suffering in our lives if we realise that the fruit of my suffering impacts far more than myself and ultimately contributes to the growth in Christlikeness of the body and through that the glory of Christ through the church.

This first promise re-orientates us away from introspection in suffering and points us to a greater meaning, that the refiner’s fire may blister and burn (Mal 3:2), but what is left when it is finished is the pure gold (1 Pet 1:7) of an inheritance kept for us in heaven that can never spoil, perish or fade (1 Pet 1:4).

31 What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? 33 Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. 34 Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. 35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? 36 As it is written:

“For your sake we face death all day long;

 we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

37 No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. 38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8:31-39

The second promise spoken over us as we join the battle to live by the Spirit and put to death the sinful nature (Romans 8:13), a battle that will be hard and bloody and as long as life itself, is the promise of ultimate victory. In the last section of Romans 8, Paul systematically takes all of our fears, the things that may hold us back from committing to the war lest in the end we might find we fought in vain.

At the heart of the fear he opposes is the idea that there is anything on earth that might cause God to cease to love us. This fear holds us back from pressing on in the battle, from counting the cost rightly, from choosing the hard and narrow path to glory. Because if after losing our lives for Christ we might at last lose our reward, we are surely to be pitied above all men. The lack of conviction that at last the battle will be won, the moments of discouragement and despair, will rob us of our strength, courage and effectiveness as we labour to put to death the deeds of the body.

So Paul dismantles our fears, first a fear for our salvation, that any, including we ourselves can stand between us and God’s saving power for our lives. Paul wants us to be absolutely confident in our salvation, unshakeable in our conviction that we will receive God’s blessing and grace. Because only in this knowledge is there the power to wage war against the flesh. We have an obligation to the Spirit because of who we are, not who we want to be. We have been made alive in Christ, we have been given life by the Spirit, we have died with Christ and the evil of our flesh has been paid for. We are utterly and completely secure in God’s mercy and forgiveness, because the cost of our redemption was too great for God to think of giving us up. Christ has died. It is finished. Sin is paid for. How can God the Father fail to deliver the redemption for which Christ gave his life? What’s more once God has spoken all other voices are silenced. Where God has paid the cost and declared not guilty, who will dare to speak out in condemnation, not Satan, man, myself. And beyond this, that same Christ who died to secure my acceptance, stands even now in the presence of God to argue for us by his wounds, to claim us as his own and maintain his claim by his eternal presence in the throne room of the Father.

If sin cannot hold us back from salvation, from life, what then about the world. Can the suffering of hardships, pain, hunger, nakedness, persecution and death? Can homelessness, barrenness, statelessness, poverty, exhaustion, illness, unemployment? Can the enemies of God, the servants of God, the powers God has created, the painful past, the fearful unknown future? No, none of these things, nothing in creation, can rob us of the blessings purchased by Christ’s blood and sealed by his love.

There is nothing that can come between you and Christ, no sin of yours, no suffering, no power, not death itself can keep you from his love. His love is uncontainable, immovable, immutable. It is declared by the cross, guaranteed by the Spirit, it overwhelms all opposition and sweeps away all objection. You cannot overstate it or overrate it. And it is yours, now and forever. It secures the victory, nothing can stand in its way, not sin, not suffering, not creation. The most fundamental fact of your existence if you have declared your allegiance to Christ and trusted in his death for you and believed in his resurrection is that you are loved by your God. Loved to the cross, loved without limit and without the chance of relenting or defeat.

So do not be afraid to sacrifice it all for him whose love is so guaranteed to you. Your pride, status, money, security, ambition, hopes, honour, relationships, life. You can give it up gladly, because your reward is securely vouchsafed to you already. It is yet in your hand, the love of Christ is your own. You do not need to seek elsewhere for your security, your needs. Join the fight, put your idols and desires to death, sell it all and give to the poor and follow him. Don’t be afraid it won’t be worth it. Listen to the call of his love, listen and listen and listen again. For in it alone is the power you need to live the life to which you are called, the life of obligation not to the flesh but to life by the Spirit.

As long as you labour in fear, fear of God’s judgement, fear of his rejection, fear that ultimately you will be found unworthy, fear of his powerlessness you will be held back from the life of the Spirit, from the righteous life Christ has purchased for you, from your inheritance of sonship. As long as you doubt God’s ability to use all the circumstances of your life, to exert his sovereign power over pain to bring blessing more than equal to the cost you will hold back from the risk of a life lived in love.

Life is pain, and particularly choosing the road of the cross will mean pain, but it is a pain redeemed by God’s power and goodness, “to live is Christ” will mean loss but is it is a loss made up in surfeit by the assurance of his love. All things work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose and nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus are the twin engines that power a life lived by the Spirit, a life lived for Christ, a life like his own.