As Jesus Suffered, So Shall We

Felicitas, a young Christian mother to be in Carthage, was accused of worshipping strange gods.  Ordered to offer sacrifice Caesar, she refused and was thrown in prison to be used as sport with the lions.  While giving birth in the cell beneath the Coliseum, she cried out in agony.  Her guard questioned her, “If you can’t handle the pain of childbirth, how will you stand up against the lions?”  Thinking of the curse given to mortals as a result of our sinfulness--specifically the pain given women in childbearing--she replied, “Today I suffer the consequences of my own sinfulness.  Tomorrow I won’t suffer alone, but Christ will suffer in me.”

A defeated, powerless Christian is an oxymoron.  Not because he is righteous on his own, nor because he has the strength in himself to overcome sin, death, and the devil, but because Jesus has won the victory on Calvary and works it into him as he suffers with Christ dying daily to himself and daily finding new life in him.  This is no “pie in the sky” overcoming (“everything will be good when you finally die”) or a willful suppression of the difficult facts of our existence (“everything is just rosy in my life”).  Our victory happens now, in time; it is costly and deals with our sins honestly.

We would like victory without suffering, but it can’t be so.  We would like to coast into God’s heaven having hardly broken a sweat, but Jesus says, “Take up your cross and follow me[i].”  A victorious life is one of suffering because it is one of constant struggle against the world, the flesh and the devil. 

Victory comes through combat.  Combat implies pain.  Christ suffered and said that we would too.  St. Peter wrote about this to churches in Asia Minor, “Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking, for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God”(1 Peter 4:1-2). This is the battle—for whom are we living?  For whom are we fighting?

When St. Paul exhorted his protégé Timothy to “fight the good fight,” he twice used the word from which we get the word “agony.”  There is no victory without suffering because it hurts to say no to the temptations of the flesh.  It is not easy to choose the narrow path of obedience over the attractive offers of the world and the devil.  

But to do so in the power of Christ is to participate in his victory.  Note the identification of the believer with his Lord.  Since he suffered, so will you.  We’d rather stress the vicarious nature of our salvation story - “Since he did it, I don’t need to.”  It’s become an article of faith in the weakened Protestantism of today: since we are saved by grace through faith, we had better not attempt to do anything.  This, of course, uses the means of our salvation (Christ’s totally gracious self-offering for us undeserving sinners) as a screen for ignoring the divine command to live a life like Jesus.  No, we can’t earn the merits of the blood of the lamb no matter how perfectly we begin to live.  As Archbishop Cranmer put it so comprehensively, Jesus on the cross “made there by his one oblation of himself once offered, a full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice, oblation and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world.”  But Jesus himself expects us to participate in his life in such a way that the very life of God’s overcoming and victorious power will be made manifest in us:

“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” shows us that he expects our suffering and eventual victory.  “I am with you always to the end of the ages,[ii]” shows that he is with us working his victory out in our lives.

Are you victorious over sin?  Do you care so much for the new life of God in you that you will honor it at all costs—even at the expense of your body?  Why are exposed as weaklings and cowards in comparison to servant girls in Roman times?  The Christian life should be one of training for, reckoning on, and arming ourselves for battle and fighting the fight.  Could it be that the world is not evangelized because we have not armed ourselves?  Because we have not accepted the suffering to which all disciples are called? 

Father God, giver of all virtue and strength, give us grace like Felicitas to hold on to the victory of Christ even while suffering.  Let no fear dissuade us, no pain prevent us, and no memory of past sin hinder us in our struggle against the world, the flesh, and the devil.  As Christ became like me and suffered the death I deserve, let me become like him a son who knows obedience through pain that you might be glorified in me; all this we ask through him who lives in us, even Jesus.

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[i] Luke 9:23

[ii] Mt 28:20

The Fight and Jesus’ power

“I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me”(Gal 2:20).

Joseph was fleeing the war in Rwanda while genocide began.  But he was not afraid of death:  God had rescued Joseph physically and spiritually. Shelled by mortar fire and buried in the earth by the explosion, hunted like an animal, facing danger on many sides, he had come to the end of himself while meeting Jesus.  He pledged his life to share the joy and truth of the gospel for the one who died for him.  So although they were refugees themselves, Joseph and his parents, who were also Christians, hid and fed two women who were running two days ahead of a murderous posse.  

   Hearing that the killers were closing in, Joseph sent them on their way just in time.  “Where are the women the people say you have?” they demanded.  “What women?” He answered.  The men left with threats and a reminder that Joseph and his family would be killed if they helped anyone from the hunted tribe.   

That week he was called to preach to the local Anglican Church.  He chose as his text the story of creation from the book of Genesis.  He preached forcefully that the killing was wrong; that in God’s eyes we are one people with the same blood; that they should help the fleeing tribe; and that murderers, without God’s grace, would go to a fiery hell for destroying the children of God made in his image.  

He said all this in a culture that had become filled with the fear of death, where the gangs were using this fear to force others to join them and to silence all who opposed them.  Though Joseph didn’t know it, the head of the posse was in the congregation as he preached.  This man heard the word of God and was convicted of his sin.  He cried out, 
           “I am a murderer:  I have killed eight people!”  
The congregation surrounded him, prayed for him, and counseled him.  Joseph told him to share the message of Jesus with those in the posse.  He did.  The posse disbanded and many refugees were allowed to escape the country because the killers were changed from the inside out.   Joseph was not afraid of death; what could they do to a man who had been “crucified with Christ,” who had already died to his old way of life and was now living out of the power of Jesus?

From the moment we wake up to reality, we are being attacked, bullied, and besieged by forces that want to keep us from what is true, good and beautiful.  Most of all, these forces want to keep us separated from God.  We awake to life in war.  Worse yet, this war is even inside us--at the gates of our hearts.  

  

Acknowledging the inner nature of the conflict, Paul writes,

        I delight in the law of God in my inmost being, but I see in my members another     law waging war against the law of my mind…” (Rom 7:22-23)

The consequences are even more enormous than we think:  what seemed like a threat to his physical life was for Joseph a fight over the destiny of his soul and the souls of those around him.  Who does he belong to?  Whom will he follow? Though it would, on some level, have been easier to give in to the devil who “prowls around like a roaring lion seeking some one to devour,” the Holy Spirit speaking through St. Peter charged Joseph and all Christians to “resist him firm in your faith knowing that the same experience of suffering is required of your brotherhood throughout the world” (1 Peter 5:8-9).  Why is suffering required?  The logic of our suffering with Christ begins at the cross.  There Jesus suffered and died with and for us emptying himself[i] and becoming a sin offering[ii].  He identifies himself with us dying the death we deserve so that we could be identified with him in the life he lived:  a life of overcoming sin, flesh and the devil.  How do we overcome?  We do it in the power of Jesus. Maybe it would be better to say that he does it in us. Paul, summing up both our death to sin and our new life of victory writes the Galatians, “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me.[iii]” How far on this road of suffering are we called to walk?  To the end.  The book of Revelation gives us a view of the saints who have made it to the end:

       And they have conquered [the devil] by the blood of the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, for they loved not their lives even unto death (Rev 12:11).

What happens when fear the fear of death is taken away from a believer?  He perseveres until the end.  And in life or death, in victory or defeat, the life of Jesus is manifest in him. 

Almighty God and Father, whose love is so great that you sent your son Jesus to die for us; enlighten the eyes of my heart that I may see Jesus victorious over sin and death, grant me grace to understand that I have been buried with Christ in baptism and raised with him in his resurrection, and give me such freedom from the fear of death that I might confess his name before all rulers of the earth and join him in triumph before you.

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[i] Phil 2:7

[ii] Rom 3:25

[iii] Galatians 2:20