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

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Supercars and Selfies on the South Coast

We drove south on a wet, wet Saturday in August. The windscreen wipers swished endlessly back and forth, as we debated whether it was worth stopping anywhere except for the overcrowded motorway services. By the time we reached Winchester, the wipers had subsided to an occasional flick across the screen. We decided to stop. Of course, as soon as we left the car park there was a brief shower, but we ducked into the City Mill, now a National Trust property. There was a large room full of the usual kind of displays about flour milling; a recently renovated garden; and downstairs, the mill race running at full tilt. The mill is built right across the River Itchen. Winchester City Mill garden The mill race Water wheel (awaiting renovation) We stayed dry as we explored further into Winchester. There was even some blue sky for our selfie by the cathedral! But as we walked back to the car the rain hit us like a hose on full blast. An overhanging building provided some slight shelter, but the wa

Reading for Spiritual Formation 2023-24

I wasn't sure whether to read another set of theology books this year. Could the time I spend on it be better spent on something else? At what point does it become reading for the sake of it, without having much impact on my wider life? It's difficult to tell. However, as usual, I had a growing list of books I wanted to read. I do need to think about what I'm doing as well as what I'm reading, and I don't expect to continue this specific discipline indefinitely. But I decided there was space for at least one more year of Reading for Spiritual Formation. So, without further soul-searching: The Books. Three Mile an Hour God Kosuke Koyama Japanese theologians are few and far between; Christianity is still very much a niche religion in Japan. Kosuke Koyama was Japanese and appears to be both influential and accessible. Not every theologian is both! So I'm excited to read his recently republished book Three Mile an Hour God. It was originally written in 1979, and is

National Forest Way: Calke Abbey to Ashby de la Zouch

All the best walking blogs have maps on. I finally figured out how to add a route map to mine. If I get time, I'll add them to the previous posts as well, so you can see where I went. So, here are the two walks which made up the next stretch of the NFW. Walk 1  I started from the National Trust property and walked along by the lake, up the hill by the deer park, and down to Staunton Harold reservoir - all very familiar. Calke village postbox featured a highland cow on top. Lake at Calke Abbey Herd of deer   A short stretch on the road took me to Dimminsdale, which was new to me. There are records of mining at the site from the 13th century until the end of the 19th century. It's incredible to think that people worked there for so many hundreds of years. Now it is a secluded landscape of still pools and shaggy trees. Dimminsdale   I crossed a small section of the Staunton Harold estate, then went up a private lane with some rather nice houses. My turning point was where the Nati