Here is a short paper written by a youngster (me), but I think there are some good points in here about suffering. I am open to criticism on this work brothers; by the will of God may it bless some. I apologize about the formating...
The Glory of God and the Fluid of Suffering
“But the fruit of the Spirit is... longsuffering...” (Galatians 5:22)
Suffering has been largely overlooked in modern European and Western Christianity despite the
clear details that the Israelites, the followers of Jesus, and Jesus himself as God were all characterized by a spirit of suffering. This sufferance, ipso facto, has allowed them to attain the level of supernaturalism and unity with God which is attainable to anyone who is willing to enter this level of sonship. The sonship of God is other than what the world would perceive it to be; it requires revelation of and from God to understand the fulfillment of his will and the requirement thereof. Suffering is required for his glory; there is no substitute. The suffering that precedes his glory is not self inflicted religious ascetic suffering; it is God inflicted, resulting in his name alone receiving glory forever. Many professing Christians do not adhere to the God who would allow Israel to be so utterly reduced as a nation. Likewise, the Jews cannot stand a God who would come as a man and suffer as a half piece of flesh, naked, and humiliated, it contradicts every notion in their erudition of who the messiah would be. That is why it is written, “we preach Christ crucified, unto the Jews a stumblingblock, and unto the Greeks foolishness; But unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God” (King James Version, 1 Corinthians 1:23, 24). There is no need to argue the presence or definition of suffering. Both believer and nonbeliever encounter it regularly enough to know exactly what suffering is. The suffering this essay will address is the disliked kind, not like the type that one feels when they go lift weights to strengthen their mussels (Lewis 2001, 88). Christians are not to seek this disliked suffering which often comes in
forms of waiting, trials, and tribulations; rather, a Christian should embrace all forms of suffering as to glorify God through whom is life indeed whether one suffers or not. Suffering is evident only since Adam and Eve ate of the tree of good and evil, A. G. Hogg writes: “The story of the Fall of Man has for its centre of interest not the orgin of sin, of which it offers
no explanation, but the orgin of suffering”(Hogg 1922, 88). The Old Testament gives repeated accounts of human suffering. Maybe one of the greatest accounts is of the Israelites in the desert after fleeing Egypt. It is in this time of blindly traveling, waiting and depending wholly on God, that the Israelites receive the law of God and revelation of His righteousness. God allowed the Israelites to suffer so that the universe would experience the revelation of his manifold wisdom (Katz 1995). There is a clear doom/salvation union throughout scripture, and especially present with the Israelites (Raitt 1977, 11) which deserves attention that I cannot give it in this paper because of the complexities and misinterpretations found in it. On the other hand, the Israelites have made it axiomatic in the Old Testament that some form of sufferance precedes glory. The saga of Israel is still in motion and is being prophetically fulfilled, even now. The prophets spoke of the Israelites being scattered all over the earth (Amos 9:9) and also of God's redeeming power which will gather them together again (Jeremiah
31:10). Until the day when God restores Israel he will allow them, by delaying his action, to be
scattered and reduced until they have become a stench to all nations. Isaiah said about Israel:
“Therefore is the anger of the Lord kindled against his people, and he hath stretched forth his hand against them, and hath smitten them: and the hills did tremble and their carcases were torn in the midst of the streets. For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still” (Isaiah 5:25). Only until it becomes utterly impossible for Israel to even cry out, “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off...” (Ezekiel 37:11) will God receive glory in the regeneration of his chosen people. Some scholars suggest that Israel must suffer because they are God's chosen people; that, “whom the Lord loveth he correcteth; even as a father the son in whom he delighteth” (Proverbs 3:12) and, the historic condition of the Jewish people – the destruction of the Second Temple and the exile of the Jewish people from the land of Israel – is not the direct result of the sinfulness of the people but of their favored status. The suffering of the Jewish people is a sign of their chosenness and future redemption, as well as of God's love for the people” (Batnitzky 2000, 208).
The Israelites then and Jewish people now, live out of the ability of their mind; they seek to do and to know but are not willing to be and to wait (Katz 1995). Jewish tradition perceives the people of Israel to be the suffering servant;1 they did not, and do not desire a son from God who would fulfill that position to prelude God's coming glory. Hogg suggests that the Israelites sought the supernatural Messiah, but not the suffering servant. If they would have known the later was a prerequisite for the former they would not have missed the time of their visitation: In spite of this apostasy God's kingdom would still come in that generation; but
because of this apostasy it would be a kingdom strangely different from that of prophetic vision. It would be a kingdom in which Israel as a nation could exercise no distinctive spiritual function, for as a nation she had now finally sacrificed her birthright by failing to recognize the time of her visitation, and has doomed herself to political extinction (Hogg 1922, 100). Judaism has never been blind to theological and ethical value in suffering, but unlike Christianity, has maybe never drawn a direct line between suffering and God (Batnitzky 2000, 205). The disciples of Jesus, being raised in the Jewish community, expected a political king Jesus rebuked them saying, “O fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken: Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory” (Luke 24:25-26). Jesus Christ, was fully aware of the role of suffering in his life and knew that his death would be ignominious. Jesus is no where better summed up than in the cross and: “Suffering and rejection sum up the whole cross of Jesus” (Bonhoeffer 1995, 87). The early and present theology of the cross of Christ has not been radical enough according to Jürgen Moltmann; the cross is more than a door to
salvation for humankind. Moltmann, like Luther in his theologia crucis,2 states that: The death of Jesus on the cross is the centre of all Christian theology. It is not the only theme of theology, but it is in effect the entry to its problems and answers on earth. All Christian statements about God, about creation, about sin and death have their focal point in the crucified Christ (Moltmann 1993, 204). Moltmann makes it clear in The Crucified God that it truly requires a trinitarian view of God to
understand the fullness of Christ crucified; that God also suffered what Christ suffered on the cross. Jesus suffered more than humanistic shame and pain on the cross, he bore the wrath of God as Isaiah prophesied, “it pleased the Lord to bruise him” (Isaiah 53:10). It was the death of God in Jesus Christ on the cross that makes God who he is. God is only as powerful as Christ was helpless on the cross, as great as Christ was humiliated, and as divine as Christ was human (Moltmann 1993, 205). It would be
worth while to go beyond these conclusions of Moltmann and say that as much as Christ was rejected by his own people will God be praised by them in the final age. The centrality of the cross in everything is no better summed up than in the last words Jesus spoke on the cross, “It is finished” (John 19:30). To the same measure that the cross of Christ is in us, so will God be in us in his fullness. Art Katz makes note of the lack of the cross in modern Protestant and Catholic Christianity: “Maybe we’ve been able to accept it much too readily and easily. It’s just not offended us as much as it ought. We really have not been stabbed by the repulsiveness of it, nor been stunned by its horror. Our faith has
become domesticated” (Katz 1997). The Church truly needs a revelation of the true cross of Christ not only for personal redemption from this world3 but also in order to fulfill God's universal purpose for the Church. The Church can only overcome by her willingness to suffer, not by determination. Also, the Church can only provoke Israel to Jealousy by the glory of God revealed through her sufferings, which is the eternal purpose of the Church (Katz 1997). This is what Jesus called the Church to do, “If any
man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me. For
whosoever will save his life shall lose it: but whosoever will lose his life for my sake, the same shall save it” (Luke 9:23-24). The motivation of the Church is not Israel's restoration, but the glory of God in Israel's restoration, as Katz explains: “The only explanation of a Gentile Church willing to embrace a calling so demanding as this is that the issue is not Israel alone, per se, but the glory of God that is obtained through Israel’s redemption” (Katz 1995). Perhaps the reason the Church has overlooked the eternal purpose of its existence and been unwilling to consider the dramatic future of Israel is because each member of the Church has not welcomed the same apocalyptic and violent end in their own life
by the hand of God. God is wanting to repeat a demonstration which he made in the creation of the world through his work of redemption. God's glory as creator can only be revealed in his complete redemptive work in men, women, and nations when they have become reduced to nothing and cry out in repentance, asking that God would supernaturally make their dead bones live.
Christ said to his Father, “let this cup pass form me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt”(Matthew 26:39). Just as Christ drank down this cup, so must all who claim to follow him; for Paul said: “Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecution, in distress for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10). God's glory is revealed in our suffering de facto the strength of a true Christian flows from Christ who is life, and he is life indeed! When the Church takes hold of this truth they will experience the supernatural life of God
through Christ which will lead Israel to jealousy, thus resulting in the fulfillment of the restoration of Israel – which is the ultimate purpose of the universe and through which God will receive ultimate
glory.
