If We Suffer With Him

Romans 8:17b, Luke 14:25-33, 2 Corinthians 11:18-29

September 14, 1997

by Dave Wilkinson

I suspect that comedian Jay Leno is a genuinely nice guy. Recently he pulled over for a group of men who were standing around an old Cadillac. He offered the use of his car phone so they could call for help. The men took full advantage of his offer. They called home -- to E1 Salvador. Leno didn't find out until he got the bill.

Jay Leno can easily afford a call to El Salvador. But most of us probably need to think twice before offering the use of our phone to a stranger. How many of us have been burned because we didn't know the cost before we made a commitment?

Jesus knew that people can get caught up without thinking where their enthusiasm will lead. People sometimes leap before they look. But these people are unlikely to stay with the program very long. Their rapid commitment always remains superficial.

At this point in His ministry, Jesus was the hottest ticket in town. He had the crowds. But many followed out of mere curiosity. Jesus didn't want spectators. He wanted disciples. He didn't want gawkers. He wanted people who were willing to put their lives on the line. So Jesus began the process of moving people from the edge of faith to the center -- or, in some cases, from the edge to the outside. "Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple."

The crowd was certainly baffled by that one. Only criminals carried crosses.

And while the crowd digested that zinger, Jesus added: "For which of you intending to build a tower does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, 'This person began to build and was not able to finish.'"

Of course, Jesus is not talking about building towers. He is talking about building lives. He knows that some of the people who are following him have no idea what they are getting into. They are caught up in his works of healing. They are fascinated by the interesting stories that he tells. They like hearing him tweak the Pharisees from time to time. But they do not know what following him will one day include. Jesus knows that there will come a time when people will be disowned by their families because they follow Him. People will lose their property because they follow Him. Many will even lose their lives because they follow Him. To follow Jesus is not a satisfying but harmless hobby. It costs.

The essence of discipleship is union with Christ, and this means identification with him in both his sufferings and his glory. When you united with the church, you were not simply joining a social club. You were not merely joining another organization. Not if you took your vows seriously. To be a member of Christ's body is to be crucified with him. It is to stake your life and everything you have on his call to service. It is to make a decision about your priorities in life. It is a call to commitment. It is to make a decision about who Jesus Christ is in your life.

This may seem like a hard sermon to preach this morning. Quite a number of you are fairly new to Moorpark Presbyterian. You may have been here just a few times. You may see yourself as being on the edge -- looking in and evaluating to see if this is where you want to continue to worship.

Am I trying to chase you away by preaching on this hard subject? Not at all.

What I am seeking to do is to honestly tell you what the Bible says. We want you to be here but you will only benefit from being here if you hear to whole gospel. Two things you will learn if you come for a period of time is that we take the Bible seriously and that we seek to allow God to make His own point through His Word. We don’t just chose the points of teachings that are easy to preach and hear.

The reason I am dealing with suffering this morning, is that this is where we are in the eighth chapter of Romans. It’s what God tells us at this point.

In Romans 8 Paul has been talking about the promise of glory -- the assurance of our glorious inheritance in Jesus.. There is a qualification, however. Paul writes in Romans 8:17: "if we are God’s children we are also His heirs, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Jesus Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings."

This is a hard statement. And I need to be very clear here about what Paul is and isn’t saying. Paul is not suggesting that we are saved by suffering. We are saved by God’s grace through faith -- not by God’s grace through faith --- plus pain. The suffering that saves us is the suffering of Christ on the cross. "By his stripes we are healed" -- not by our own.

However, while suffering is not a condition for being save. It is a result. If we are united with Christ we will suffer with him. Paul, and also Peter and James, cannot talk about our inheritance without at the same time telling us that the path to glory involves a cross. We’ll talk about what this can look like in just a moment.

But first I want you to note something. If we were trying to assure Christians that they really are Christians and their salvation is secure, as Paul is doing in Romans 8, suffering is probably the last thing we would mention. We think of it in the "problem category" -- the thing that raises doubts about God’s care. Few of us would think of mentioning suffering as a proof that the suffering person is a true child of God.

Paul brings it up because of the simple fact that the people to whom he first wrote this letter were suffering. The early ministers of the gospel began to suffer as soon as they began to obey Christ's Great Commission. Peter and John were jailed. Stephen was killed. Paul himself was imprisoned, beaten, shipwrecked, starved, threatened, and exposed to the elements. And what was true of these early preachers soon became true of their followers as well -- including those in Rome. They were ridiculed, hated, abused, and eventually martyred for their faith in great numbers.

There are many kinds of suffering in the world and not all suffering is "with Christ." There are sufferings people experience whether they are Christians or not. All people suffer pain and loss in the world. We talked about this on August 31.

There is also an experience of particularly Christian suffering that is not suffering with Christ. This is the discipline from our Heavenly Father because of our misdeeds. This isn’t suffering with Christ because Jesus never needed discipline.

But the scriptures also talk about suffering that is not only particularly Christian but is also a suffering with Christ -- which we share with Him.

When we think of this, we tend to think of only the biggie of persecution and martyrdom. We read verses about suffering with Christ and we end up doubting our own walk. "No one is trying to put me in jail or feed me to a lion for my faith so I must not be a real Christian."

But there are actually three experiences suffering with Christ the Bible talks about -- only one of which is persecution. And I believe that Paul is talking about all three in Romans 8:17.

The first of these sufferings with Christ is the pain that comes from loving the people of God. If we are followers of Jesus we will share the pain of others who love our Lord. And when we are a part of the church, we potentially become exposed to the pain of a very large family. We cannot wear a tee shirt that reads: "Apparently you’ve mistaken me for someone who cares." We must care. And as we learn to love the people of the church as Christ loves them, we will find that the places where we can be hurt become very large.

After cataloguing his personal experiences of suffering in 2 Corinthians 11 Paul adds these words: "Apart from such external things, there is the daily pressure on me of concern for all the churches. Who is weak without my being weak? Who is led into sin without my intense concern?

Because Paul loved people, he was vulnerable to feeling other’s pain. He didn’t wall himself off so that nothing short of a direct hit on his own life could touch him. Paul was connected to God’s people. So, as others suffered he also suffered.

As a Christian, not all of the pain we experience is our own just as not all the pain Jesus experienced was His own. When we bear the loss of others, we profoundly participate in the sufferings of Christ -- for Christ also took upon Himself the pain of others.

The second kind of suffering that we share with Christ is harder to understand. This is the kind of Christian suffering that is quite frankly designed to produce growth in us. Paul wrote back in Romans 5: "We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope." James writes: "Consider it pure joy, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." In other words, God wants to toughen us up. He wants to turn us into veterans. And He does this through sufferings.

Now we can understand that even if we don’t always like it. But what is hard to understand is that when we experience this toughening process, we are actually experiencing what Jesus also experienced. Jesus passed through the same thing for the same purpose. That’s amazing. But it is what the Bible clearly teaches.

We learn this from the Letter to the Hebrews. In Hebrews 2:10 the author writes in reference to Jesus: "In bringing many children to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering."

Perfect through suffering

Now Jesus was without sin. Scripture makes that clear. But to be sinless is apparently not the same thing as to be perfect in this sense. Perfection means wholeness. And Jesus, while on earth, grew into a wholeness of experience and trust in the Father through such things as poverty, hard work, temptation, misunderstanding, loneliness, abuse, and betrayal. God used these and many other experiences to "perfect" Him. There is a profound difference between knowing something in theory and knowing it in experience. And Jesus lived what we live.

As a Christian, God sends you through the same process. God is not simply interested in solving your problems. He’s interested in developing your faith. He knows exactly how to do that.. God brings storms into our lives because you don't develop faith in the calm. You develop faith in the crises. You develop faith when you have no other way to look but up to the only worthy object of faith.

Remember that Jesus Christ, although he was a Son, "yet learned obedience by the things that he suffered." So we pray, "Lord, make me like your Son." And the moment he goes to work, we say, "Lord, what happened?" God says, "It's nothing. I'm just answering your prayer."

There is finally a third kind of suffering that we may also experience with Christ. That is flat out persecution.

Are there any consequences to Christian faith?

People in many centuries would see that as a silly question. They know the consequences. Many people in our own century who have suffered for their faith in Jesus would see it as equally silly. More people have died for their faith in this twentieth century than in all of the previous centuries in history combined.

But it may not seem like a silly question to us. Because we don’t tend to experience dramatic suffering for Christ here in suburban late 20th century America. We may someday but we don’t now.

The Romans had a coin that showed an ox facing both a plow and an altar. The inscription of the coin read "ready for either."

That coin has a message for us. As the people of Christ we need to be ready for the altar -- for the relatively brief experience of very literal martyrdom. But we must also be ready for the plow -- the slow martyrdom of a dedicated lifetime of Christian service. This includes the giving of our money, the giving of our time and the extension of our love.

Persecution can take many forms. Not all crosses look the same. It can be a subtle scorn at the office because you can’t just "go along and get along." It may be derision even in the larger church because you refuse to compromise Biblical standards for the sake of appeasing the popular culture. It may be a loss of economic opportunity. It may be opposition from city officials and planners who don’t like churches in the community. Or it may be what millions of people have experienced in our own century -- torture and death for the name of Jesus. That level of persecution is happening right now in the Sudan, in Pakistan, in Arabia, and in China. We need to be in prayer for these suffering brothers and sisters.

Now not all persecution is for Christ and is not suffering is with Christ.. Peter writes "if you suffer, make sure it is not as an evil doer." In other words, don’t do a wrong thing and then claim that you are suffering for the Lord. The Mormons, for example, point to experienced persecution as a demonstration of the truth of their message whereas an objective look at history shows that the sufferings they experienced were a result of their leader’s misdeeds like destroying newspaper offices and armed rebellion..

But there is persecution that genuinely is "with Christ." Whether persecution comes in the form of mere verbal abuse at one extreme or as martyrdom at the other extreme, no believer is exempt from the possibility of paying a price for his or her faith. And the witness of a Christian carries particular weight when it is evident to everyone that it would be easier and apparently more rational to back off.

In 1982 a Christian community in central China established several new churches. But then most of the senior pastors were arrested. They were imprisoned for four years. However, their arrest forced the younger pastors to take over the leadership positions, and as a result not only were the home churches cared for, but the mission expanded and the growth in that area was phenomenal. People were persuaded to believe in Christ by the quality and duration of their leaders' suffering.

One fourteen-year-old girl understood this. She was one of nine young evangelists who were arrested by the local police and forced to remain kneeling in one place day and night. On the third day of this torture she fainted and was released. The others were made to suffer the same continuing torment for nine days and eight nights. Eventually they, too, were released, and when they were reunited the fourteen-year-old girl began to cry.

"Why are you crying?" they asked.

She replied that she was crying because they had been called on to suffer for nine days while she had only been called on to suffer for three. Fourteen years old! But she understood the point of suffering for the sake of Jesus Christ and counted it not a burden but a privilege.

During the time of persecution the church in China has grown from a few hundred thousand to over fifty million. It was the suffering of the church that produced character -- the ability not only to survive the persecution but also to win many others even in hard times.

Is it any wonder that the church in China is growing at a tremendous rate today while the church in America is barely holding its own. Most of us want only the good life, not godliness. And our fourteen-year-olds think they are suffering if they have to turn off their personal TV and do their homework.

However, while suffering is necessary (and has value), suffering is not the end of the story for Christians. The final goal isn’t the pain but the glory to follow!

Paul writes in Romans 8:18, "I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed in us." Our sufferings do not match up to the glory we will receive in intensity, in quality, or in duration. Next week we will look at the nature of this glory. We will see how the longing that we have for meaning, for excitement, for glamour is meant to receive tremendous fulfillment in God. This is the longing that led millions to line the funeral route last week for a princess who symbolized an approximation of those things. We don’t have it yet, but in Jesus Christ we will.

We suffer in this world. But if suffering were the goal, then Christianity would be a form of masochism. Suffering for suffering's sake and even suffering with Christ isn’t the goal. The pain is merely the consequence of being claimed by God from the midst of a fallen world.

There are two ways of life. There is the slide along way that leads no where. There is the hard way that leads to God. Sometime the church needs to give you the bad news that the market driven drive to meet your own needs isn’t God’s plan for you and is destructive to your long term good. God has a very different agenda for you than what you get on television -- but one that respects you more, loves you more, and leads you somewhere worth going through a life that is worth living.

We have a choice. And Jesus tells a parable about the dangers of impulsiveness. However, Jesus knew that impulsiveness was not the biggest barrier most people face. The biggest barrier is inaction. For every one who leaps without looking there are a dozen more who never leap at all. They stay on the sidelines.

Jesus knew that impulsiveness was a problem for a few. But many are hindered by their unwillingness to make a commitment.

This brings us to the important conclusion that we can draw from Jesus' teaching. Sometime or another, we must make a decision about following Christ. We must decide whether we will be spectators or gladiators in the arena of his service. We must decide whether we will be mere observers of the passing scene or movers and shakers for the kingdom. We must decide whether we will stay among the curious or take up a cross and follow in his steps. There is no standing on the sideline, Jesus tells us. Either you are in the game or you are not. You and I have a decision to make. Christ has set before us an open door. Christ has given us the opportunity to pursue the kingdom life or to spend our lives as spiritual couch potatoes. Only we can make that choice.

Let me put that question to you, even as I put it to myself. "If you were to die today, what will your life have stood for?" God won’t ask me why I wasn’t Mother Theresa. But he may well ask me why I wasn’t myself.

I don't want your answer to be an impulsive one. You need to count the cost before you answer. To say yes to one thing is to say no to many others. But the greatest danger is not impulsiveness, but inaction. Thousands heard Jesus preach and teach. But only a relative few followed. Those few changed the world.