Is suffering an obstacle or a path? If it’s an obstacle, we spend our lives trying to avoid it. And once we experience it, we try to rush through it. We want it out of our lives as fast as possible. It only gets in the way of what we think really matters. But if suffering is a path, then we walk it with purpose. We trust someone else knows the way and will lead us wherever we need to go. So, is suffering an obstacle or a path?
We cannot answer that question without assuming a purpose for human life, which the biblical writers called our telos, our end—the destination towards which we are moving. Telos tells us why we are here and what we should do. Whether it’s finding pleasure or gaining fame or loving our family, we all assume a reason and direction for living. And that determines our approach to suffering. Our telos shapes our trials.
Let’s look at the telos of the Christian life in order to understand suffering as a path to becoming more like Christ.
The Point of Life: To Glorify and Enjoy God
What is the goal of the Christian life? What is our telos? Why are we here? The Westminster Larger Catechism calls this “the chief end of man.” It asks, “What is the chief and highest end of man? Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever” (WLC, Q.1). That is a beautifully simple answer. Why are we here? To glorify and enjoy God. But it leads to more questions, doesn’t it?
First, how do we glorify God? To glorify is to worship, to give someone (or something) admiration or praise. Everyone worships. The question is not whether you worship; it’s what you worship. Worship is the expression of worth, and we express worth with everything we do, both in our bodies and our minds. The Apostle Paul calls us each a temple—a place of worship. He asks the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20). The whole human body is used to glorify God, to worship him. Later in the same epistle, Paul says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31; emphasis added). Paul even says that he worships God with his mind (1 Cor. 14:15). As humans made in the image of God and remade in the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18), we have the ability to worship God in everything.
As humans made in the image of God and remade in the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18), we have the ability to worship God in everything.
Now, consider this. Because God is the most glorious, and Jesus Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), the more we glorify God, the more we come to resemble him. The more we worship God—the more we express his worth, the more we praise him, the more we admire him—the more we are restored to resemble him. As Greg Beale once wrote, “What we revere [worship] we resemble, for restoration or for ruin.” So, glorying God means embracing God-likeness in ten thousand ways. Paul says we specifically resemble God’s Son. He says that those whom the Father “foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). Our glorious destiny is to be conformed to the Son of God. That’s how we glorify the most glorious being! And why do we do this? So that we might enjoy fellowship with the Trinity and to call Jesus our brother! That is what we call communion with God. And according to Geerhardus Vos, that’s what it means to be made in God’s image. He writes, “That man bears God’s image . . . means above all that he is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God” (Reformed Dogmatics, 231). We are made for communion. And in a sinful world, we have that communion through Jesus Christ, to whom we are being shaped.
There are lots of implications here, all of which deal with becoming like Christ in every area of life: in our successes, in our failures, in our pleasures, and in our pain. For example, I once heard a student praise the work of my favorite theologian, Vern Poythress. “I loved this book!” she said. “Thank you so much for writing it!” Dr. Poythress smiled bashfully and said, “Well, praise the Lord.” He deflected the praise he was given and sent it Godward, where it belongs. Praise the Lord. That was a clear picture to me of what it looks like to become like Christ in our successes. When we do something well, do we praise God or accept the credit?
In what follows, I will focus on becoming like Christ in our pain. Pain takes many forms: grief, anxiety, doubt, cancer, disease, broken relationships. But in all of our pain, we ask two basic questions: Why is this happening? And how can I get through it? Christians, however, can ask a better question: “How can I be shaped to Jesus Christ through this experience?” We ask this because we know that is God’s purpose for us: Christ-conformity. That is our telos. For example, I have dealt with a lot of grief over losing my father to cancer when I was eighteen. It took me many years to stop asking the why question and to start asking the how question. When I asked the how question and read the Bible, God began to show me that part of conforming to Christ is embracing God’s Fatherhood. We can never lose our true Father—not to cancer or a car accident or even to our own doubt. He is steadfast. He cannot be threatened.
We’ve asked how we glorify God, but how do we enjoy him? To enjoy is to find pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment in something or someone. And the Bible tells us that true joy cannot be found in any earthly thing; it can only be found in a divine person. Joy is found not in having something but by living in someone. By abiding in Jesus Christ—living in him as if he were the vine from which we receive every ounce of vitality (John 15:5)—we find our greatest joy. Listen to what Jesus says to his disciples, and note especially how joy is bound up with glory and love:
If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (John 15:7–11).
Full joy. That’s what Jesus offers us in himself. This is different from “happiness.” For Jesus, joy is rooted in his love for the Father. His joy lives in a relationship. Our joy thus lives in a relationship. And because that relationship doesn’t end, our joy can’t ultimately leave. We can be blinded to it, of course. We can feel joyless, but that doesn’t mean the joy is gone. The joy has already been given; it’s never taken away from us. Happiness, in contrast, comes and goes. It flickers like a candlelight.
How exactly do we abide in Christ and thus enjoy God? There are no secrets here. The four pillars of abiding in Christ are (1) reading his words in Scripture, (2) obeying those words in daily life, (3) praying regularly, and (4) worshiping with his people. Those are the rhythms of a Christian life. They have not changed since ancient times.
Enjoying God through Christ means finding ourselves—our pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment—in him. This can be direct or indirect. We can enjoy God directly by speaking to him through prayer and meditating on his words. This is what it means to be in his presence. It is an act of holy listening. We can enjoy God indirectly by finding joy in God through the gifts he gives (other relationships, food, nature, art, beauty). We take our everyday experiences and look for the character of God revealed in them (Rom. 1:20; Ps. 19:1–4). This is difficult because many people in our world chase experiences themselves, and not the God who gives them. Stare at the character of God given through your experiences. Use your experiences as lenses.
Our telos shapes our trials.
In sum, we glorify and enjoy God by communing with God and experiencing Christ-conformity. That is the telos of the Christian life. But it has many competitors, or what Poythress would call “counterfeits.” Some people live as if their telos were to experience success, comfort, and pleasure. That’s hedonism. Others live as if the goal of life is to receive God’s earthly blessings. That’s the prosperity gospel. God wants more for you than earthly blessings . . . so much more. He doesn’t just want what’s good for you; he wants what’s best for you. And what could be better than looking more and more like the Son of God? Others inside the Christian faith live in order to clear away all obstacles of adversity as soon as possible. They want a Savior without the suffering. That’s a child of the prosperity gospel. This also treats adversity as essentially outside the providence of God. And Jesus and Paul, as we’ll see, put adversity in the center of God’s providence, right where Christ is.
Our telos shapes our trials. How we deal with suffering depends on what we truly believe our purpose is. As Christians, our purpose is to glorify God and enjoy him forever. But we can learn even more about how we approach suffering by looking at our perspective and, once more, turning our why questions into how questions.
Perspective and Questions for Suffering Saints
Whenever we suffer, we stand somewhere. We have a perspective. We look at what’s happening in our lives from a specific vantage point. When my father died of cancer, I experienced that event as an immature eighteen-year-old who thought that life was just getting to its most exciting moments, not to its heaviest losses.
In Scripture, we often find two perspectives: the heavenly and the earthly. The former is harder to imagine and takes great faith. The latter is easier to comprehend and takes little faith, but it also grants no hope. We often neglect a heavenly perspective (where we are headed for eternity) and take on an earthly perspective (what we are experiencing right now). Our suffering is magnified when we do this—it looks insurmountable, as if our whole lives revolve around it.
Pause right now and ask yourself what your perspective has been today. What’s your focus? What does your mind keep coming back to throughout the day? Are you focused on the immediate or on the eternal? On your mortality or on your immortality? J. R. Miller once wrote,
Consciousness of immortality is a mighty motive in life. If we think only of what lies in the little dusty circle about our feet we miss the glory for which we were made. But if we realize even dimly the fact that we are immortal, a new meaning is given to every joy of our life, to every hope of our heart, to every work of our hands (The Ministry of Comfort, p. 3).
Our awareness of immortality is bound up with how we are being prepared for eternity right now: Christ-conformity! When we enter the gates of paradise, we will so beautifully portray the Son of God that every angel will notice the family resemblance. But that resemblance is shaped through suffering. And suffering has the power to change our perspective from earthly to heavenly. I have noticed over and over again that Christians who experience great adversity are more and more heavenly minded. Adversity lays bare our longing for eternity. In his providence, God uses suffering to alter our perspective.
Adversity lays bare our longing for eternity.
On any given day, our perspective is tied to the questions we ask. Earlier I mentioned why and how questions. In our suffering, we tend to focus on the why questions. “Why is this happening to me? Why would God allow this? Why am I not finding peace when I’m praying for it?” Why questions are often earthly-minded because they stand in the here-and-now, tempting us to pry into the providence of an all-powerful and all-knowing God. The problem is that we cannot fathom the providence of an exhaustively powerful and omniscient God. While our why questions can be useful in helping us see the causes of behavior or events, they are limited . . . because we are limited. Moreover, God has already given us the answer to the biggest why question and granted us a heavenly perspective of faith. Why do Christians suffer on earth? God’s answer, from his heavenly perspective, is this: To be conformed to the image of Christ so that we can more easily and eternally call him our brother. Look again at Romans 8:26–29.
26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. 28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose. 29 For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Notice how prayer amidst our weakness and suffering is set in the context of three things: (1) God’s intercession for us in the Spirit (God is talking to himself about you!); (2) God’s plan for our good; and (3) our being conformed to Christ, the goal of the Christian life. That final point is God’s grand answer to the great why question. Since we know the answer to that question, we can shift to asking how questions. When we suffer with anxiety, we can ask, “God, how do you want to teach me through this?” When we struggle with a recurring sin, we can ask, “Lord, how do you want me to become more like Christ through this? Show me how to find strength in your Spirit.” When we lose a parent or a loved one, we can ask, “Father, how can I suffer and grieve with hope (1 Thess. 4:13)?” Our how questions can lead to healthy spiritual introspection and concrete action.
Suffering as a Path
All of this sets us up to answer the question I opened with. Is suffering an obstacle or a path? For Christians, it is a path, a way, even as Christ called himself “the way” (Greek: hē hodos). Jesus is the path. Jesus gave us himself as the path for suffering when he said, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matt. 16:24). Denying ourselves means saying “no” to what we might want with our earthly perspective. Taking up our cross means being ready to sacrifice our own will (and even life) at any moment. This is easier to do with our heavenly perspective. And following Christ means thinking, saying, and doing all things based on God’s word—this is what leads us to glorify God and enjoy him forever. In short, following Christ means the suffering of self-sacrifice. But in God’s providence, that suffering will lead to glorifying and enjoying God forever.
Paul takes this same view of suffering as a Christ-path. Why, for instance, does the Apostle Paul want to be “found” in Christ and embrace Christ’s righteousness? Paul says, “That I may know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10–11). Paul wants to “share in Christ’s suffering” and become “like him in his death.” Can you see the resemblance to Matthew 16:24 (self-sacrifice, suffering, and death of self)? And Paul wants this for a single purpose: to become like Christ in the most amazing way possible: resurrection from the dead! Paul wants to die and rise with Christ. And he wants this ultimately because a resurrected person can fully glorify and enjoy God forever.
Paul Miller explores this truth in his book J-Curve. He writes, “The normal Christian life repeatedly re-enacts the dying and rising of Jesus” (p. 20). Think about that. Every day, you and I are dying and rising. Miller portrays this with the shape of the letter “J.” Every day, we are living J-curves. Listen to what he says.
Our J-Curves each have their own unique cadences, but they all (1) enter some kind of suffering in which evil is weakened or killed; (2) weaken the flesh and form us into the image of Jesus; (3) lead to a real-time, present resurrection (p. 21).
That real-time, present resurrection takes the form of growth in Christ—in our thinking, speaking, and behavior. Every instance of Christian suffering begins drawing the letter J. Jesus has drawn the ultimate letter, the letter that saves us. Jesus saves us by his life, death, and resurrection. And now he works inside us by the Spirit to conform us to himself, to make little "j"s from the big J. In Miller’s words, “‘Jesus lived the J-Curve for me, so that he can reproduce the J-Curve in me.’ The foundation of believing the gospel frees us to become like the gospel (the J-Curve). Believing comes before becoming” (p. 50). Miller’s point is that dying and rising with Christ is something that happens every day through our suffering; the J-curve is our path to Christlikeness! Believing in Jesus is only the beginning. Now, by God’s Spirit, we get to become like him.
In our suffering, we see how much God has given us and how hollow it is to be self-focused in a God-centered universe.
In suffering, we repeatedly “die” to ourselves, and are raised up in the power of God for (1) the benefit of our own Christ-conformity or (2) the benefit of others. Suffering is indeed a path, one walked by our suffering Savior.
God the Giver
And what happens as we walk that path and ask our how questions? Something miraculous: God shapes us into givers after his own heart. In our suffering, we see how much God has given us and how hollow it is to be self-focused in a God-centered universe.
Just think about God as a Giver. He gave himself in creation, pouring out the overflow of his fullness into time and space. He gave himself in redemption, offering both hands of his holy Son. And he continues to give himself in our growth, pouring the Spirit into our hearts, letting our veins run with the blood of his giving. God gives himself to make us like himself.
Walking Christ’s path of suffering means transforming into someone who gives—time, patience, grace, mercy, money, teaching, parenting. The list is endless. But so is the grace of God for his people.
Each day, you and I are walking the path of suffering with Christ. By his Spirit, we are shaped and sheltered. And we have the heavenly perspective that points to eternal fellowship with the God who knows us and loves us. Our telos shapes our trials, but our Savior seals our future. He is the one whom we trust will lead us wherever we need to go. On him and in him, we walk. And he will lead us home.
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