Skip to main content

Jesus came to earth… to suffer with us




For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through suffering.  Hebrews 2:10

It’s an intriguing verse, isn’t it?  We might think of Jesus’ suffering as regrettable, even unavoidable, but fitting?  Why was it fitting that Jesus should suffer?  Why, when the creator of the universe set in place his saving plan, should the pain not merely be necessary, but somehow deeply right? 
 
It is certainly not that all suffering is essentially good.  Any response to suffering simply must cry out against the children maimed by war or disease, the lives forever shadowed by abuse, the hearts shattered by one blow after another, and say: This should not be happening.  This is not right.

So God in Jesus didn’t say, it’ll be all right in the end.  He said something greater:  I am in it with you.  Jesus’ job was to plunge into the depths of all that wrongness, all that godforsakenness, and experience it fully, with us and for us.  He took on the pain of loving the unloveable and forgiving the unforgiveable.  He became the God alongside us, the God who understands.

And then – miraculously – this deepest experience of suffering became the victory over it.  The cross smashed a hole in the compressing darkness, and the resurrection let in a beam of light from beyond. Now the message was not just, I am in it with you.  It had become greater still:  You are in it with me.  The creator God had submitted himself to the worst of his creation and had suddenly, startlingly, come out the other side.  Not only that, but he had brought us with him.  

The New Testament letter-writers tried to convey this new idea by talking about sharing in Jesus’ suffering.  Jesus revealed the fullness of God’s love by blazing a new path through death and into glory, they said, and we can follow him.  As we share in his suffering, we share in his death, we share in his resurrection, and most of all, we share in his love.  John summed it up in his first letter:  We love, because he first loved us.

And that becomes the key to it all.  The suffering becomes fitting if it is undertaken out of love.  A love which was willing to be born in a stable, to feel pain along with us, and to bring us, along with Jesus, to perfection in love.

So this Advent, as we still struggle with all the pain in the world, we look again to the one who came to suffer with us.  And we find hope that as we share in his suffering, as he shared in ours, we too will come to know that perfect love. The love which loves the unloveable, and brings them to glory.

Photo attribution: By Vicki Nunn (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Portway: Down to the Derwent and back up again

I've never been to Holbrook before. It's a small village on a hill, just south of Belper, and I instantly like it. Look at the view! And interesting buildings too. I leave my car to enjoy the scenery and head down Stony Lane. Good thing I didn't bring a vehicle for this bit - there are several signs warning me that This Is Not A Road. I pass a few farms and the back of Holbrook School for Autism and come out on Port Way, just where I left it last time . A short distance up the road is St Michael's Church, which has a semi-circular window, a secret tunnel, and a sprawling graveyard. The church is closed today. I'm now back in the centre of Holbrook. I take a left on Mellors Lane and soon leave the houses behind. There's a good playground. I still find myself rating play equipment, even though my boys are far too old for it now! I cross a couple of fields, then the ground starts to slope downhill, with a fantastic view across the Derwent Valley. There's a squa...
Post a Comment
Read more

Baby Language

For some reason baby equipment is an area in which American English differs markedly from British English. As well as learning how to care for a baby, we had to learn a whole new vocabulary! Fortunately we are now fluently bilingual, and I have compiled a handy US-UK baby dictionary for you. Diaper n. Nappy Mom says if you can read this change my diaper. The first time you change one of these you will be all thumbs and stick the little adhesive tabs to yourself, the baby and probably the changing mat before you get them where they ought to go. A few years later you will be able to lasso a running toddler and change them before they even know what's happened (yes, I have seen it done). You will also get through more diapers than you ever thought possible, creating scary amounts of expense and waste. Hence we are now mostly using: Cloth diaper n. Reusable nappy Cool baby. No longer those terry squares, the main drawback is that there are now so many types it can be qu...
5 comments
Read more