In John 12:24-26, Jesus compared His life and the lives of all of those who would follow Him to a grain of wheat, which must fall to the ground
and “die” in order to bear fruit. Just as Jesus laid down His will and His life in order to do His Father’s will, so also all of us who serve Him must follow Him in this way, sharing in His sufferings as we “die” to our own will and what we would choose for ourselves in life, and we accept God’s will and the life that He has ordained for us.
Paul also taught us clearly in Romans 8:17 that we as the children of God must share in the sufferings of Christ, in order that we may also share in His glory. The Scriptures reveal to us that God has ordained it will be through our sharing in the sufferings of His Son Jesus Christ that spiritual fruit will be born, which will bring about for us a share in Christ’s eternal glory.
And as we can also see from the Scriptures, the sufferings that Jesus endured took many forms. In Isaiah 52:14 we learn that “His appearance was
marred more than any man”. He was disfigured, and “many were astonished” at Him.
Continuing in Isaiah 53 we learn that Jesus had “no stately form or majesty that we should look upon Him, nor appearance that we should be attracted to Him.”. He was despised and rejected by others. Men had no
esteem for Him; they hid their faces from Him. He was “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief”.
Though He was “crushed for our iniquities”, we wrongly considered Him as one who was stricken and afflicted by God because of His own sin. He bore the punishment due for our wrongdoing, and “by His scourging we are healed”. He was “oppressed and afflicted”, and He unjustly suffered a death due to the wicked, though He had done no wrong.
We learn in Isaiah 53:10 that it was God’s will to “crush” His Son and cause Him to suffer these things. When we consider Isaiah 53:10, together with the teaching from John 12:24-26, Mark 10:35-40, and Romans 8:17, we can see that it is also God’s will to crush us and cause us to suffer, in some measure, bringing about in our lives a share in the sufferings of His Son in order that we may also share in His eternal glory.
From other passages in the Bible we learn of still more ways in which Jesus suffered. In Matthew 8:20, we see that Jesus had no place to lay His head; He had no home of His own. He was also betrayed by one who was close to Him. He suffered overwhelming sorrow in the Garden of
Gethsemane as He submitted Himself to His Father’s will for His life. He suffered exhaustion, and He was unable to bear the weight of His cross the whole way to Calvary. He suffered great pain in His physical body as he was scourged and then crucified according to God’s will, though He had done nothing to deserve it. He suffered abandonment by His closest friends during the time of the greatest trial in His life. And as He hung on Calvary’s cross, He suffered the desolation of feeling that He had been abandoned even by His Father God (Matthew 27:46).
As we consider the many ways in which Jesus suffered during His life on earth, we may be able to see reflections of His sufferings in our own lives. Maybe we have or we will at some point experience being “despised
and rejected” by others, through no fault or wrongdoing of our own. Maybe we will suffer the consequences of a betrayal. Maybe we also, as Jesus did,
will suffer abandonment by those who are closest to us during a time of great trial in our life. Maybe we have, or we will at some point in our lives, suffer any other aspect of His sufferings as we have seen revealed in the Scriptures.
With these things in mind, some of us may notice that the particular sufferings we are enduring are not among those mentioned in the Bible as something that Jesus suffered. As we consider the troubles, hardships and afflictions that our sovereign God has allowed to affect our own lives, we should understand that the sufferings we endure as we walk in obedience to God, whatever form these sufferings may take, are for us a share in the sufferings of the “Man of Sorrows”, who was Himself familiar with grief (Isaiah 53:3).
As we have seen from the Scriptures before, everything that God allows to touch our lives as His people, even the hard and painful things, will be made to work together for our eternal good and glory together with His Son. And once again, this is exactly why Paul taught that our sufferings in this present life are “producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison, while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not seen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:17-18)
The Christian life is not a matter of having enough “faith” to “believe” God for the things that we want out of life, as some would say. Instead, the mindset and understanding that we should have regarding our Christian faith is reflected in Paul’s exhortation: “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men.
Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8, emphasis added).
Jesus Christ is our example of what the Christian life is all about. He took the form of a bondservant, and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. As those who have come to faith in Christ, we also are to consider ourselves as bondservants of God, obediently serving Him in the place and the capacity that He has ordained for each of us individually.
God our Father calls upon us to submit ourselves to His will for our lives, as Jesus did. We are called upon to humble ourselves and become obedient to the point of death, taking up our cross daily to follow Jesus (Luke 9:23-24). This death involves our death to that which the Bible calls sin, and it also involves our being willing to “die to” anything that God may choose to take from us or withhold from us as part of His will for our lives.
We are called upon to die to that which we would choose for ourselves, and as obedient servants, we are to accept the assignments and place of service in life that God has ordained for us. This obedient
acceptance of God’s will for our lives is the way that we carry around in our body “the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body.”, as Paul taught us in 2 Corinthians 4:7-11.
Even though these “deaths”, or this share in the sufferings of Christ, is God’s will for each of His people, we are not left without comfort. Once again, we recall the encouragement that Paul gave to us when he said: “For just as the sufferings of Christ are ours in abundance, so also our comfort is abundant through Christ.” (2 Corinthians 1:5).
This comfort that “is abundant through Christ” is provided to us through His grace and power, which is given to us in a measure sufficient for our every weakness and need in life (2 Corinthians 12:9-10). And this comfort is also given to us through the word of God as revealed in the Scriptures, because Jesus Christ Himself is the living Word of God (John 1:1, 14). As we study God’s word, we find many promises of His help, mercy, forgiveness, restoration, and provision for our lives, and we take comfort in knowing that every one of these promises is given through the One who is called Faithful and True (Revelation 19:11-13).