Jesus-Centered Suffering (Centered #5)

Years ago, when I was the young adult pastor at a church in another Iowa city, a young woman made an appointment to see me. She walked in, sat down on the couch, and told me she just felt lost.

She had spent a year in seminary but did not have the money for the second year, so she was not sure what she was going to do. Her boyfriend — they were talking marriage — was working a job in town, so she moved to be close to him. She got a job. She was doing life. And she felt completely adrift. For some reason she thought maybe I could help.

So I started asking questions. Why were you in seminary? I want to be a hospital chaplain. Why do you want to be a hospital chaplain?

And she told me this story.

In high school she volunteered at her local hospital and ended up working in the chaplain’s office. One day she was in the office alone, doing some organizing, when a nurse walked in and asked where the chaplain was. He was gone. The nurse said, That’s too bad, because we have a woman who is actively dying and the family is asking for the chaplain.

She apologized — he’s not here right now. And then the nurse looked at her and said, Well, could you come?

Internally she panicked. No. I’m not a chaplain. And the next thing she knew, she heard herself say, Okay. Sure.

So she grabbed a Bible off the shelf and followed the nurse down the hall, terrified the entire way, with no idea what she would say or do.

And then she walked into the room. I still remember exactly how she said it to me: I walked into a room where a woman was dying, and I came alive.

She said it was as if the Holy Spirit took over. She knew exactly what to say, what Scripture to read, how to pray. She stayed with that family for a couple of hours, until the woman passed. They prayed together. They hugged her. They were in tears.

And when she walked out of that room, two thoughts hit her at once. First: What in the world just happened? And second: Now I know why God created me.

Hope in the Least Likely Place

Think about what that moment actually was. She walked into a room where a family was suffering, where a beloved mother and wife and grandmother was breathing her last breaths, where everyone was grieving.

And she came alive. There was hope in the middle of darkness. Joy in the middle of sadness. Light in the middle of suffering.

I do not expect you to have an exact replica of that story. But it is very possible you have been in the midst of some suffering and found hope, joy, or peace right in the middle of it.

Here are two examples I thought of.

If you are a parent, maybe your child was seriously ill. And in the middle of their suffering — and by extension your own suffering — you felt closer to that child than you ever thought possible. You had no idea your heart could hold that much love. And while you hope your child never has to go through it again, and you would not wish it on anyone, you are still grateful for what happened between you.

Or maybe someone loses a job, searches for another, and cannot find one. God, why did you let me lose my job? How am I going to make ends meet? And then an opportunity appears — someone needs help, something needs attention — and because you are not working, you can give it your time. And you find yourself genuinely thankful you were out of work for that season.

We Spend Our Lives Avoiding This

Suffering is part of life. From the moment we scream our way out of the womb to the moment we take our last breath, we encounter it.

Some people actually seek it out. A friend of mine who was the youth pastor at a church where I served is one of them. I love him dearly. He loves Jesus and he is now a counselor I would recommend to anyone without hesitation. He is also completely crazy.

He once decided, for no particular reason, to fast from food for two weeks. When he took student groups on mission trips, he would sleep on the floor the entire week — concrete, dirt, did not matter. He also would not shower the whole week, and I am glad I was never on those trips. One day he woke up around four or five in the morning, decided to go for a walk, and took nothing but a water bottle. Two days later he called his wife to tell her where he was and ask her to come get him.

I asked him once: why do you do this? Why do you go looking for suffering?

He said, Because when I’m struggling, when things are difficult, that is when I feel closest to God.

The rest of us — those of us with some measure of sanity — do the opposite. We avoid it with everything we have. The house is two degrees too warm and we are already at the thermostat. The first hunger pang hits and we are in the kitchen. The thoughts will not stop and the emotions are out of whack, so we numb it with a streaming service or music. The relationship gets a little difficult, so we do not reply to the text, we avoid social media, we do whatever we can to not talk to them.

The problem is that if we spend our entire lives running from suffering, we rob ourselves of the kind of moment that young woman had. The moments when you suddenly see glimmers of hope and joy and peace in the least likely place. Those are the moments you remember. And if all you do is dodge, you miss them.

So today we are going to talk about suffering. We are not going to glamorize it. We are certainly not going to seek it out. Life has plenty of it already. But we are going to ask what to do when it comes — because I do not think running is the answer.

The Text: Colossians 1:24–29

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church, of which I became a minister according to the stewardship from God that was given to me for you, to make the word of God fully known, the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory. Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

The Verse That Confused Me for Years

A few years ago, if I had been sitting where you are and heard a pastor preach this passage, I am not sure I would have heard verses 25 through 29 at all. I would have gotten stuck on verse 24, because verse 24 confused me completely.

I used to tell people that Colossians was one of my favorite books, which was true. What I did not add was that there was one verse in it I simply did not get, and I quietly avoided it because it made me uncomfortable.

Here is why. As I studied the Scriptures, I came to believe they teach that the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was sufficient — enough for the forgiveness of our sins and for our complete sanctification. And then I read Paul saying he is filling up in his flesh what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions.

So which is it? Is the cross enough, or is something lacking that Paul has to make up? And by extension, does that mean you and I have to add something too?

You can understand why Peter, in 2 Peter 3:15–16, said that some of Paul’s writings are hard to understand. I think he may have had Colossians 1:24 in mind.

Let me take you on the journey I went through to work this out, because it also unlocks the rest of the passage.

Put It in Context

One of the key things to do when you hit a difficulty like this is to put it in context. So often we struggle with a passage because we are looking only at the passage — we have ripped it out of what surrounds it.

That, incidentally, is a great way to start a cult: find a verse, pull it out, and build an enormous doctrine on it while ignoring the entire rest of the Bible.

There are several kinds of context. There is the immediate context — what comes right before and right after. There is the context of the entire letter or book. There is the context of everything else that author wrote. And there is the context of all of Scripture — because if we believe God wrote these Scriptures, he has been consistent, so let us see how this fits with everything else. There is also historical context: what was happening when this was written, who the author was, what his background was, and who he was writing to, all of which flavors how things get said.

The immediate context

The easiest one is the immediate context, so that is where I started. And I noticed that back in verse 23, and again in verse 25, Paul calls himself a minister. In verse 23 he is a minister of the gospel. Verse 24 ends with the word church, and verse 25 begins “of which I became a minister.”

That was my first clue. When Paul says his sufferings are filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions, he is tying it to his calling as an apostle, a pastor, a minister. Maybe this is not so much about Jesus as it is about Paul.

The context of the letter

If you were with us two weeks ago, you heard Paul’s stunning poem about Jesus in verses 15 through 20 — that Jesus is God, that he is over all things, creator of all things, sustainer of all things, and in verse 20, the reconciler of all things. And Paul makes it explicit that these things are reconciled to Jesus by the blood of his cross.

If something were lacking in the cross, Paul could not possibly write that Jesus reconciles all things. That was another clue that I was misreading verse 24. Nothing is lacking in the cross itself. Something else is going on.

What “body” means here

Go back to verse 24. Paul says he is filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body.

When we hear “Christ’s afflictions” and “body,” most of us picture the passion — a bloodied figure, the crown of thorns, the shredded back. A grotesque image. But that is not what Paul means. He defines the body right there: that is, the church.

He is not talking about the physical body of Christ. He is talking about the spiritual body of Christ.

Why That Makes Sense of Paul’s Story

Before he became an apostle, Paul was a Jewish man rising rapidly through the ranks — on track to become one of the greatest rabbis Judaism had ever produced. He was known then as Saul, and the Jewish leadership deeply respected him. He was so zealous for his faith that he approved of the execution of anyone proclaiming that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, and he went around having such people arrested.

We meet Saul in Acts 8. In Acts 9 he goes to the high court and asks for letters granting him permission to travel to Damascus, where he has heard some people are claiming Jesus is the Messiah. He plans to arrest them and drag them back to Jerusalem.

On the way, Jesus meets him. A blinding light. Saul on the ground, shielding himself, wondering what is happening. And out of the light comes a voice:

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me?”

“Who are you, Lord?”

“I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.”

Now, Paul had never met Jesus. He thought the whole thing was a fabrication. Yes, there was a carpenter named Jesus from Nazareth. Yes, he had heard the stories about the supposed miracles. But the man did not rise from the dead. This was all invented, and it was a threat to the faith.

And yet when Jesus appears, he says, why are you persecuting me?

Because when anyone believes in Jesus — when they put their faith in him as the Messiah God sent, not only for Jewish people but for Gentiles, to die on a cross for our sins and rise again from the dead — they become part of the church. And the church is the body of Christ. So when Paul inflicted pain and suffering on followers of Jesus, he was doing it to Christ himself.

Jesus changed his life in that moment. Paul began traveling around not to arrest Jesus followers but to make them — and eventually he was arrested himself. And he came to understand something: when I suffer, Christ suffers with me. The persecution done against him as a minister of the gospel is as though it were done to Jesus.

Which means this: if you follow Jesus, any time you suffer, Christ is right there with you. What is being done against you is, in a real sense, being done to him — because he is with you, he is for you, and through his Holy Spirit he is in you. You are never alone.

So whatever deep struggle you are in, remember: Christ is with me.

But How Do You “Rejoice”?

As I worked through all that, I became more and more comfortable with verse 24. But one piece still made no sense to me: the very first phrase. Now I rejoice in my sufferings.

I do not rejoice in my sufferings. How could Paul say that?

Think about what he was enduring. As he writes this letter he is imprisoned in Rome — under house arrest, which was probably more comfortable than chains in a cell with no food, but still. He is always under guard. He can receive visitors, but he cannot travel. He cannot go plant another church. He is stuck. And if he steps out of line, it could cost him his life.

And even if house arrest were the worst of it, look at the rest of his story. Twice he received thirty-nine lashes across his back. He was shipwrecked on a vessel that broke apart, expecting to drown, and washed up on an island — where, while trying to survive, a venomous snake bit him on the arm. And this man who was supposed to rise to the top of Judaism is now mocked, with former friends saying the most vicious things about him.

And he says: I rejoice.

How? I think it is because he believed his suffering was actually advancing his cause. Look at verses 28 and 29: “Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom, that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me.”

Paul believed the suffering pushed the mission forward. He recognized that being in prison took him off the church-planting circuit — so his attention was no longer on which city to go to next, or how to afford passage on a ship, or where the next meal was coming from. He was stuck. And so his ministry became writing letters.

The majority of Paul’s letters that we have were written from that imprisonment. He is writing to churches like the one in Colossae saying, follow Jesus, him we proclaim. And he realized that if he had simply continued doing ministry the way he always had, he would never have had this opportunity. So he was grateful for the forced time-out, because it gave him the chance to focus.

He also knew that word of the beatings and the mocking had spread. Other people, when the suffering got hard enough, recanted their faith. They gave up. They quit. He did not. He kept going, and people could not stop remarking on it. How does he do it? And that kept the word spreading. For that, he rejoices.

If You Are Not There Yet, That Is Okay

I will be honest: I am not there either. Some days it is just hard.

Some of you have heard this, but the first few years of planting this church were brutal. People I thought were fully in with us left. Supporters who said they were behind us quit, or never showed up at all. And things were said. I had pastors telling me it was too small, not viable, and that I needed to quit.

I remember sitting in a workshop at a church planting conference and hearing the presenter say that the three most effective factors in a successful church plant are the church planter, the church planter, and the church planter. No pressure. So if it is not going well, it is because the planter is not good enough. He does not know what he is doing. He does not dress right. He does not have the right facial hair or the right tattoos. He does not even drink coffee. Clearly unqualified.

So I struggled. I was down. It was hard. And when people asked how the new church was doing, the honest answer was, people are telling me I should close it, and frankly I want to quit. Instead I did the Iowa thing and smiled. Good. Good. Yeah, things are going good. And then I would go cry in the pool, because nobody can tell when your face is already wet.

I remember meeting a pastor who asked how long our church had been going. Three years at that point. So what are you running now, about 150? No. About thirty.

I felt like a failure.

And here is why I could not rejoice in it: my eyes were on me and my circumstances. The church was not going the way everyone said it should.

If Paul’s eyes had been on himself and his circumstances — I am in jail, I have been shipwrecked, I have been beaten, I am mocked, my name is a curse word — he would have given up. Instead he says he rejoices, because he got his eyes off himself and his circumstances and put them on Christ.

“Christ in You, the Hope of Glory”

Look at verses 26 and 27: “the mystery hidden for ages and generations but now revealed to his saints. To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

Do not be thrown by the word mystery. We think of a mystery as something unsolved — and the moment it is solved, it stops being a mystery. But the Greek word here means hidden or secret. It was simply not known. People assumed God was a God for the Jewish people only. And then Jesus dies on the cross, and God makes clear that this was for everyone. Suddenly the secret is out. It has been revealed.

Some people hear that revealed secret and still do not believe it; it remains strange to them. But then there are people like Paul, and like the Colossian believers, and like some of you — people who had a moment when they realized it is true. There really is a God who sent his one and only Son to live a sinless life and then die in the sinner’s place. And when they realize it, they are undone. They cannot believe the story is actually true, and it is right there in front of them.

Paul is sitting in that cell marveling: this Jewish Messiah died for the Gentiles, and the same Spirit that came to us has come to them as well. This mystery is Christ in them, the hope of glory.

Even in the middle of the suffering, Christ is at work. And if Christ could forgive a man who used to travel around killing his followers — and then send that same man out to make followers — he can do it for anyone. That is what keeps Paul going.

Lift Your Eyes

If you are here and you are not a follower of Jesus, here is my encouragement: lift your eyes off your circumstances and off yourself, and put them on Christ. Look to him. God loves you so much that he did not want you separated from him by sin. He gave his life for you. He paid the penalty to bring you back into relationship with him.

Most people, when they realize this story is true, mark the moment in prayer. They confess their sin, acknowledge how they have fallen short, recognize that Jesus did this for them, and give their life to follow him.

Now, some people will tell you that if you give your life to Jesus you will have peace and joy and happiness — and they make it sound like all the suffering disappears. But look at Paul, in deep suffering. Giving your life to Jesus is not magic. What it is, is this: Jesus is now with you in the middle of it, and you have something to lift your eyes toward that will carry you through.

And you might experience what that young woman experienced, or what I have experienced, or what many others have — that in the middle of the hardest thing, you suddenly see glimmers of hope. You have moments of joy. You experience a peace that surpasses understanding. You sense God’s presence with you. And you find yourself unexpectedly thankful for the suffering.

That is why the psalmist wrote in Psalm 121, “I lift up my eyes to the hills. From where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord.”

If you are struggling, if you are suffering — lift your eyes. Get them off yourself and your circumstances and put them on Jesus, and let him carry you through this.

Come to the Table

I cannot think of a better way to put our eyes on Jesus right now than through communion.

Father, minister to your people. Draw their hearts and minds to you, Jesus — you who were crucified for us, and whom death could not hold, who raised yourself from the dead and now invite us to follow you.

For the person here, or online, or listening later, who has not put their faith in you — bring them into your family, just as you did for Paul and for countless others. Help them right now to confess their sin and put their faith fully in you.

And for my brother and sister in Christ who is struggling: as they hold that bread and hold that cup, let them realize it represents the body and blood of Jesus, given freely for them out of love.

It is astonishing how much we can endure for something we want or someone we love. Paul endured his suffering because of his love for the Colossians. And you, Jesus, endured the cross because of your love for us. So fill us with that kind of love, so that we can endure, work through the suffering, and see your goodness, your grace, your power, and your presence in the middle of it.

I am thankful you are an omnipresent God — everywhere, all the time, which means right here. This is your church. These are your people. You know their stories, their fears, their sufferings, and their joys. Minister to them now. In Jesus’ name, amen.

If you need time to pray, stay right where you are. If you need to kneel, do so. If you feel compelled at any point during the song, you are free to come to the elements — I only ask that you be a follower of Jesus.

If you are not there yet, I would respectfully ask you to abstain. It is not that we are keeping something from you. It is that these elements point to Jesus, and in taking them we are saying that his story of dying on the cross for us is part of who we are. If that is not you yet, use this time instead to pray. Ask God whether it is true — whether there really is a God who loved you enough to send his one and only Son into this world to die the death you should have died for your sin, so that you could be forgiven and brought into relationship with him. Talk to God. This time is for you.

But if you follow Jesus, even if this is your very first time with us, come. Because there is no better way to get our eyes off ourselves and our circumstances and onto Christ. Let us do this now in remembrance of him.