“Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.” (1 Peter 4:1,2)
Peter’s mother-in-law wanted to be up and serving. To be sick is to be laid up and taken away from what we would normally be doing. Sickness distracts. Being sick doesn’t even allow us to think on what we’d like to be thinking upon.
All suffering is distracting. Like an oppressive taskmaster, it bends our mind to its will. It delivers us into a prison where we are forced to dwell on some narrow contingency of our life. It places us in a limbo of nothingness. We would be free of it because we want to get a move on. There are places we want to get to. There are things we want to do. We would make better use of our time.
Who would choose sickness over health? Who would choose suffering over freedom from suffering? But Peter tells us to arm ourselves with a mind to suffer in the flesh. What kind of masochistic drivel is this? We wish to say to him, “Get thee behind me, Peter!”
But the Lord, who took up His cross, and tells us to do the same, rebukes our ignorance. He sees something of value where we see nothing but vanity. He sees gain, where we only see loss. The experience of suffering holds a golden promise, but only to those who embrace it.
“… For he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; that he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.”
What a promise! To no longer live to the lusts of men.
What a promise! To cease from sin.
What a promise! To live to the will of God.
Isn’t this what every saint wants? Why then should we despise and shun the places of suffering in our life?
Once we become a new creature we are in position to have our minds renewed. As God renews our mind we see things as He does. The things we formerly called good we now call evil, and the things we formerly called evil we now call good. This includes suffering.
Mind you: there is suffering in the will of God, and suffering out of the will of God; even as there is sickness in the will of God, and sickness out of the will of God. Here is where we need godly discernment.
Peter was not jumping with joy at the prospect of being taken where he didn’t want to go when he was older. But Jesus told him that through such an experience of death he would glorify God. This then is all that matters. How does God want to be glorified in our life? How can the circumstances of our life magnify Him?
Paul understood that the prison he was in served to magnify Christ. In every way, and in every situation, Paul’s commitment was to gain godliness. The confines of prison, the prospect of death, none of these things moved him. “… So now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether it be by life, or by death” (Philippians 1:20). And in this same missive, the apostle of suffering exhorts every believer to know and understand that suffering is a part of their calling: “For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake” (Philippians 1:29).
This then becomes the question at hand: Lord, is this FOR you? Is this “for Your sake” and Your glory? Will it fall out “unto the furtherance of the gospel?” Should it be something I fight or flow with?
Paul had previous experience with this quandary. The thorn in the flesh caused him acute pain and his initial, natural reaction was to want it gone. “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.” (2 Corinthians 12:8) But the Lord, in effect, told him: “Not so fast. There’s gold to be gained here. You need to settle in and get something in this far better than freedom from suffering.”
Our knee-jerk reaction to pain is to remove it from us. Why? It is truly too much for us to take. It drives us mad. We want to protect our sanity. We don’t arm ourselves with a mind to suffer in the flesh, we arm ourselves with a mind to NOT suffer in the flesh. We want “out,” not “in.” We seek escape from painful situations because we feel so weak in dealing with them. But if we are the Lord’s and the Lord is ours, we can do all things through Christ who strengthens us. That word “all” includes bearing a God-ordained cross or thorn in the flesh.
What are the benefits of a crucible of suffering? Christ’s power is made perfect in our weakness. We are empowered to stand where we once fell; to love where we once hated; to bless where we once cursed; to rest where we once ran. Instead of anger possessing us, we possess patience. Instead of madness, we have a sound mind. Instead of finding our own way of escape from pain, we find God’s way of escape to bear it.
And as we endure through our season of tribulation, we learn obedience and find a maturity we did not have before. God grows us up into the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. What was before a terrible distraction, something which intensely bothered us, and we begged to be delivered from, we look upon as a friend, that has ushered us into grace and glory we would not have known without it. We have learned to give thanks not only IN all things, but FOR all things.
The cares of this life, the concerns of the body, can press upon us with a fearful weight. They can cause us to run every which way for a solution. Would it not be so much better if we could take all our cares before the God who cares for us? What promise would He quicken to us? What sweet comfort would we find in His everlasting arms? How wonderfully would He lift us up and out of the temporal into the eternal? Would we then, like Paul, be able to say that our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working in us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory? Surely, pain gets our attention. But God often uses it to focus us on matters more important than the ones we’ve been caught up with. What we deem a distraction is the means He would use to place us at His feet with listening ears.
Let us not be afraid to suffer in the will of God. Let us not put God in a box and tell Him where He can and cannot be glorified in our life. Let us look unto Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, lest we become weary and faint in the midst of suffering. The Father appointed His Son a cross, which He endured with patience. He is now above this world of pain, but He knows how to help His own who are still within it. Great glory is coming to all who suffer with their Lord. But great glory, a glory impossible to be gained apart from suffering, is even now to be had.
May Jesus anoint our eyes with eye salve to see the gold to be gained in fires which will glorify Him. The fiery furnace He chooses to deliver another out of, may be the fire He wants to be with you in. One size doesn’t fit all. May each one of us uniquely glorify God.
“Wherefore glorify ye the LORD in the fires, even the name of the LORD God of Israel in the isles of the sea.” (Isaiah 24:15)
“Wherefore let them that suffer according to the will of God commit the keeping of their souls to him in well doing, as unto a faithful Creator.” (1 Peter 4:19)