The Suffering and Sovereignty of God

For class, we have to write a series of responses to the book The Suffering and Sovereignty of God ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor. I'm handing these papers in and I find it rather pointless to voice a heartfelt response to a prof for a grade and never to be read again. At least if I post it in here, I may go back and read it every once in a while. I recommend not reading if you want to get bored :)


Question: What do suppose Paul means in Phil when he talks about a longing to participate in the sufferings of Christ? What would that look like in your life?

To ask God for, let alone long for participation in suffering is entirely counter cultural. Yet, the apostle Paul confidently states, “that I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings” (Phil 4:10, ESV, emphasis added). Paul continues to emphasize the appeal in suffering by saying in 1 Peter 4:13 “but rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings…” (emphasis added). While most people agree that suffering is unwelcome, they would also agree that suffering is inescapable. But the common goal is to relieve suffering and increase pleasure, so why would Paul actually want to share – long to share, in suffering and why would he tell his audience to rejoice in suffering?

While I have not personally endured substantial suffering, even with the small bouts of suffering that I have already experienced, the first response that I bring to God is a whiny little “whyyyyy?” Like my initial reaction of “why me”, it is the normal human propensity to ask “why me God?” David Powlison, in his article “God’s Grace and Your Sufferings”, gives three reasons as to why God “designs” our suffering: “to reveal his abiding generosity, to remove all that is ungenerous in you, to make you abidingly generous” (162-3). Powlison uses the term ‘design’. God designs our suffering. In God’s design, as Powlison claims, we are made “abidingly generous”. We come to be abidingly generous because of God’s grace that he has embedded into our design through suffering. This abiding generosity, stemmed from God’s generosity (or grace) to us, is not an obligatory generosity. It becomes, as Paul writes in Phil 3:10, a longing.

When a sufferer goes through suffering, the initial response is to ask “why me?” But as the sufferer walks the lone, agonizing road, God enters into his suffering. When the sufferer stops to be still and listen, it becomes clear that God is with him. God already entered into our suffering (Phil 1:6-8) by way of his son, Jesus, and revealed that he is the Immanuel – he is “God with us” (Matt 1:23). Moreover, through Jesus’s suffering, he became the source of eternal salvation, “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him” (Heb 5:8-9). As Powlison rightly asserts, by the suffering example of Jesus who cried out to God, the natural bent towards the curvitas in se turns inside out, and rather than turning in to oneself, the sufferer can cry out to God, Immanuel, who is with us in our pain (155).

While God does not give us a full answer in our suffering (i.e. see Job), through suffering, we are made aware of our mere humanity and the sheer glory and grace of God. We realize we are weak and utterly sinful, yet God, in his compassion, came down to us and generously gave us grace. If we did not suffer, would we even recognize our need of saving grace? And if we did not recognize our need of grace, would we recognize the abidingly generous mercy and lovingkindness of God? Yet through his revelation (that is, through suffering), we can we can bless our Lord and Savior and understand his generosity.

When Paul writes to the Philippians about his desire to share in suffering, he has already suffered greatly. He wrote this letter while he was imprisoned around A.D. 60, which is almost 5 years after he wrote about his endurance through “far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death . . . in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure” (2 Cor 11:23-7). Yet, he is not talking about “when this suffering gets over…”, rather his longing to suffer is in the here and now, “that [he] may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death” (3:10).

Paul understood something that I find very difficult to grasp. He calls the life apart from suffering “a loss” compared to the “surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord”. There is something very significant found in suffering. Through our suffering, we find our dependence on God. Through our suffering, we are able to know Christ, and that is what Paul describes as a “surpassing worth”. He has already suffered immeasurably, yet he longs for more. Is it the actual suffering he longs for? I venture to say not. But the reward, or the gain, found in suffering is so much greater – and that is what the human heart longs for – to know God. I can assuredly say that I too, long to know God and I long for a greater capacity of being able to know him each and every day. But I can also assuredly say that I am constantly at war with my flesh. I don’t like to suffer. Yet, through my obedience, like Christ who “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb 5:8), I gain Christ – I gain the ability to know Christ. And with that comes the hope of the glorious inheritance for the saints (cf. Eph 1:17-19).

Instead of asking “why me?”, the question should be like what Powlison writes, “why not me?” (173). There is so much more to gain in suffering. If I longed to suffer greatly, the me inside, the curvitas in se, would fade away. The fear of suffering found in my being obedient would diminish. Is it really suffering to have a reason to cry out more to God? Is it a really a loss to rejoice and participate in suffering – to give a more of myself, to lavish grace on others, to be rejected, to have less things, to see pain and loss for good, to endure hard circumstances, to share my weaknesses and failures for the edification of others, to humble myself and confess my sin, to allow myself to be scrutinized – or am I actually receiving gain through my obedience in suffering? In those things and many more, I can cry out to God to carry me through, because I am weak – I am nothing without him. Moreover, in my participation and rejoicing in suffering, I find God, I realize my utter dependence on God, and I know him, and that is what I long for.