Floyd & Sally McClung

By Floyd McClung

Hebrews 13:12 and following says,

“So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates in order to make his people holy by shedding his own blood. So also Jesus suffered and died outside the city gates in order to make his people holy by shedding his own blood. For this world is not our home; we are looking forward to our city in heaven, which is yet to come. With Jesus’ help, let us continually offer our sacrifice of praise to God by proclaiming the glory of his name.”

To paraphrase John Piper, the value we place on something is determined by how much we are willing to sacrifice to have it and keep it. If we are willing to give up everything to have something, then it has ultimate value to us. To that degree, we are passionate about something we believe in.

In Matthew 13:44, we read about a man who was willing to sacrifice everything he had to buy a hidden treasure. The extent of his sacrifice and the depth of his joy at finding the treasure displays the worth he put on the treasure.

The same is true for us. If we value the worship of Jesus above all things among all peoples, we will sacrifice and suffer in order for him to receive the worship he deserves. Such willingness to suffer will intensify spiritual passion in our lives. We will be more focused and more determined to obey the great commission and the great commandment if we are truly passionate about the treasure we have found in Jesus.

To take up one’s cross and follow Jesus means to join him in his obedience to do the will of the Father, even to the point of death. It means a resolve to suffer and even die if necessary so that others might know and love him.

“The cross is not the terrible end to an otherwise God-fearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship, MacMillian, p.99)

Mark 8:34, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take us his cross and follow me.”

This is why I believe we in the West should be involved in front line service among those who have never heard the good news. It is not enough to send our money to those who can more easily adapt to the cultures and circumstances found where there are unreached and neglected people groups. I don’t buy into the argument that we should send our money not our people, if for no other reason than the church needs to learn to suffer for Jesus. We must give our best people, not our most money. We must send our sons and our daughters. We must lay down our rights, our careers, our dependence on material possession and comfort and convenience to learn the way of the cross.

PRIVILEGE OF SUFFERING FOR JESUS

Following Jesus means that we go wherever obedience requires, no matter the cost in sacrifice and suffering. It means following him to the garden in the Good Friday’s of our lives. Suffering is the privilege of every believer, but especially of those who are willing to pay the price of finding the hidden pearl of great price among an unreached people.

“For it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for his sake.” Philippians 1:29

The true sign that a person has died and their life is hidden with Christ in God is their willingness to suffer and make sacrifice for Jesus. The whole point of being crucified with Christ is not that it takes the place of physical suffering and sacrifice, but that it prepares us to take risks, to suffer pain, to endure abuse, and to give up rights and even die for Christ.

His suffering for us does not mean we are to escape suffering for him. On the contrary, his sacrifice enables us to leave father and mother and houses and lands, for his sake and for the gospel. It would be a great mistake to say that since Christ died for me, I don’t need to die for others, or since he suffered for me I don’t need to suffer for others.

The reason he died for us is so that we would not have to die for sin, not so that we would not have to suffer or die for others. The call to suffer with Christ is not a call to bear our sins the way he bore them but to love people the way he loved them. Because he died in my place I do not need to cling any longer to the comforts of earth to find my security and significance. I can be content in his love and let things and people go for the sake of making Christ known.

We must not water down the call to suffer nor translate the New Testament call to sacrifice in Western cultural terms, e.g., giving up coffee, a middle-class house, a new car, our hair dryer or curling iron, sports, etc. A few cultural adjustments do not match what Jesus meant when he called us to take up our cross. There is a great danger in making our comfortable lives and the few little things we occasionally give up the standard of sacrifice. Jesus example is the one for us to follow.

Jesus came into the world to die for others. “The son of man must suffer many things.” Mk 8:31. Because this was his vocation, suffering also becomes the vocation of those who follow him. It is implied in his commission, “As the father has sent me, even so I send you.” John 20:21 He made it explicit when he said, ‘A servant is not greater than his master.’ If they persecuted me, they will also persecute you.” John 15:20

If ever there was a need for this message to be heard again it is now. One way we must learn to suffer is to die to culture. When the bible says we should over come the world, has it occurred to you that American culture is the world we are to resist, overcome and die to?

In his two letters Peter makes it clear that the death of Christ is a pattern to be followed by his disciples:

1 Peter 2:21, “For to this have you been called, because Christ suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps.”

We have been called to suffer. It is the vocation of the obedient Follower of Jesus. Don’t make the mistake of saying that Peter’s words were addressed to slaves with cruel masters, so it does not apply to us. In 1 Peter 3:8-9 Peter addresses all of us when he says, “Finally, all of you…for to this have you been called…”(See also 1 Peter 4:1,2,12, 5:9).

PURPOSE OF SUFFERING AND SACRIFICE

1. Suffering and sacrifice teaches us humility and servanthood.

It is through suffering that we learn to identify more readily with those we are called to serve.

2. Suffering and sacrifice leads to a deeper level of faith and reliance on God.

“We do not want you to be ignorant brethren of the affliction we experienced in Asia, for we were so utterly, unbearably crushed that we despaired of life itself. We felt we had received the sentence of death, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead.” 2 Corinthians 1:8-9

God knocked the props of life from under Paul’s so that he would have no choice but to fall on God and get his hope from the resurrection power of Christ that dwelled within him.

Suffering weans us from the world and from fleshly patterns of self-preservation and teaches us to set our hope fully on God alone. If we do not learn to die to the flesh, we will rely on fleshly means of finding our hope. Suffering and sacrifice allows us the opportunity to set our hope fully on God alone.

3. Suffering and sacrifice is a primary means of building compassion into the lives of God’s people.

Notice that Paul did not see his suffering as an attack of the enemy but as a God-given opportunity to grow in his faith. See 2 Corinthians 1:9 and 4:17. Paul also recognized that it was from faith in God that compassion flows. If you do not believe in God you will not love people. If you are not thanking God for difficult circumstances, you will blame people for your suffering.

God’s people down through the centuries have found that suffering and sacrifice is the school of Christ for learning to love in ways that could not be learned in any other way.

Colossians 1:4-5 “…we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love you have for all the saints…love that springs up from the hope that is stored up for you…”

4. Suffering prepares us for eternity.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18, “This slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen…for the things that are unseen are eternal…”

Paul is not merely saying that he has a hope that allows him to suffer. He says that suffering has an effect on what happens in eternity. There seems to be a connection between suffering endured and the weight of glory enjoyed in heaven. In Romans 8:18 he says, “I consider the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.”

Suffering in this life produces rewards in the next life, if they are embraced in faith and done for the sake of his name. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when men revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your reward is great in heaven.” Matthew 5:11-12

The reward promised seems to be a specific recompense for the suffering. Our experience of God’s glory in heaven is in direct relationship to our suffering and sacrifice for his name sake in this life. As John Piper says, it would be strange to tell the Christian who suffers and the one who does not to rejoice in the thought that they will be rewarded, that they should be glad when men persecute them. There is no reward promised for those who do not suffer.

5. God uses the suffering and sacrifice of his people to awaken others out of their indifference and make them bold.

Paul says his imprisonment has been used by God to make others bold to preach the gospel, “Most of my brothers have been made confident in the Lord because of my imprisonment and are much more bold to speak the word of the God without fear.” Philippians 1:14

6. Suffering opens people to the gospel

There are countries that were one proud and resistant to the good news of Jesus that are now far more open because of war, famine, and hardship. There are people’s who would never have turned to God without God withdrawing his grace from their lives and allowing them to endure the devastation of war or the ruin of natural disaster.

Economic hardship humbles self-reliant people and brings them to a place of recognizing their need of the good news of God’s love.

I hate to the see the hopelessness that is the result of poverty and famine and disease. I don’t believe God causes it, but it does happen, and God uses it to turn people’s hearts to himself.

7. Suffering repositions people to go where they might not otherwise go.

Persecution scattered early believers and sent them as far away as Antioch of Syria from Jerusalem. As they moved they preached, and many responded.

The HIV/AIDS crisis in Africa has mobilized the attention of many believers and made them willing to get involved. God didn’t cause it but he allows it and he uses it to mobilize people to go to Africa.

PREPARATION FOR SUFFERING

1. We are prepared for suffering by being armed with this truth: we are called to suffer and sacrifice for Jesus.

Suffering is the vocation of the obedient follower of Jesus. Peter prepared the believers in his day for the suffering they were to endure by arming them with this thought: since Christ suffered in the flesh, we should not be surprised that we will also suffer. 1 Peter 4:1-12.

Richard Wurmbrand endured 14 years of imprisonment and torture in Romania between 1948-1964. Wurmbrand stresses the tremendous need to get spiritually ready to suffer. He says,

“What shall we do about these tortures? Will we be able to bear them? If I do not bear them I put in prison another fifty or sixty men whom I know, because that is what the communists wish from me, to betray those around me. And here comes the great need for the role of preparation for suffering which must start now. It is too difficult to prepare yourself when …they have put you in prison…

I remember my last confirmation class before I left Romania. I took a group of ten to fifteen boys and girls on a Sunday morning, not to a church, but to the zoo. Before the cage of lions I told them, “Your forefathers in faith were thrown before such wild beasts for their faith. Know that you also will have to suffer. You will not be thrown before lions, but you will have to do with men who would be much worse than lions. Decide here and now if you wish to pledge allegiance to Christ. They had tears in their eyes when they said, “Yes.”

We have to make the preparation now, before we are imprisoned. In prison you lose everything. You are undressed and given a prisoners suit. No more nice furniture, nice carpets, or nice curtains. You do not have a wife any more and you do not have your children. You do not have your library and you never see a flower. Nothing of what makes life pleasant remains. Nobody resists who has not renounced the pleasures of life beforehand.”

“Preparing the Underground Church,” in Epiphany Journal,5/4, Summer, 1985, p. 46-48. Quoted by John Piper in Let the Nations Be Glad.

2. We are prepared for suffering by being aimed in the right direction:

“outside the camp.”

We receive grace for suffering by going outside the borders of comfort and safety. Hebrews 13:12-14 says Jesus gave an example; then the verse says ‘therefore’. Outside the camp means pushing the envelope, going beyond what we are accustomed to. Outside the camp are unreached nations, the poor, those who have never heard, those different than ourselves. Therefore, we are to do the same.

Because Jesus went through what he did for us, therefore let us go with him “outside the camp.” Outside the camp are the places and the people who will be costly to reach and will require no small sacrifice to reach them.

3. We are prepared for suffering and sacrifice by acting in faith

A careful look at Hebrews 11 makes it clear that those who walked in faith suffered. Real faith is claiming the grace of God to do the same. Ask God to give you grace to suffer and sacrifice for His sake.

Portions of this article are adapted from Let the Nations Be Glad by John Piper

Floyd McClung

All Nations

floyd.mcclung@gmail.com

January, ‘07