Suffering and the Sovereignty of God | John Piper & Justin Taylor, eds.

John Piper & Justin Taylor, eds. Suffering and the Sovereignty of God. Crossway, 2006. 256 pp.

Why God Appoints Suffering for His Servants

Why did God appoint for Paul to suffer so much as the prototype of the frontier missionary? He is sovereign. As every child knows he could toss Satan into the pit today if he wanted to and all his terrorizing of the church would be over. But God wills that the mission of the church advance through storm and suffering. What are the reasons? I will mention six.

1. Suffering Deepens Faith and Holiness

Hebrews 12 tells us that God disciplines his children through suffering. His aim is deeper faith and deeper holiness. “He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (Heb. 12:10). Jesus experienced the same thing. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). . . . The process through which he demonstrated deeper and deeper obedience was the process of suffering. For us there is not only the need to have our obedience tested and proven deep, but also purified of all remnants of self-reliance and entanglement with the world.

Paul described this experience in his own life like this:

For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that 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 Cor. 1:8-9)

Paul does not concede his suffering to the hand of Satan but says that God ordained it for the increase of his faith. God knocked the props of life out from under Paul’s heart so that he would have no choice but to fall on God and get his hope from the promise of the resurrection. This is the first purpose of missionary suffering: to wean us from the world and set our hope fully in God alone (cf. Rom 5:3-4). Since the freedom to love flows from this kind of radical hope (Col. 1:4-5), suffering is a primary means of building compassion into the lives of God’s servants. . . .

2. Suffering Makes Your Cup Increase

By enduring suffering with patience, the reward of our experience of God’s glory in heaven increases. This is part of Paul’s meaning in 2 Corinthians 4:17-18.

For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

Paul’s affliction is “preparing” or “effecting” or “bringing about” a weight of glory beyond all comparison. We must take seriously Paul’s words here. He is not merely saying that he has a great hope in heaven that enables him to endure suffering. That is true. But here he says that the suffering has an effect on the weight of glory. There seems to be a connection between the suffering endured and the degree of glory enjoyed. Of course the glory outstrips the suffering infinitely, as Paul says in Romans 8:18, “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Nevertheless the weight of that glory, or the experience of that glory, seems to be more or less, depending in part on the affliction we have endured with patient faith. . . .

Thus one of the aims of God in the suffering of the saints is to enlarge their capacity to enjoy his glory both here and in the age to come. When their cup is picked up as it were from the “scum of the world” (1 Cor. 4:13), and tossed into the ocean of heaven’s happiness, it will hold more happiness for having been long weaned off the world and made to live on God alone.

3. Suffering Is the Price of Making Others Bold

God uses the suffering of his missionaries to awaken others out of their slumbers of indifference and make them bold. When Paul was imprisoned in Rome he wrote of this to the church at Philippi. “Most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear” (Phil. 1:14). If he must, God will use the suffering of his devoted emissaries to make a sleeping church wake up and take risks for God. . . .

It is not the kind of missionary mobilization that any of us would choose. But it is God’s way. “Unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit” (John 12:24).

4. Suffering Fills Up What Is Lacking in Christ’s Afflictions

The suffering of Christ’s messengers ministers to those they are trying to reach and may open them to the gospel. This was one of the ways Paul brought the gospel to bear on the people in Thessalonica. “You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess. 1:5-6). They had imitated Paul by enduring much affliction with joy, the sort of endurance that Paul had evidenced among them. So it was his suffering that moved them and drew them to his authentic love and truth.

This is the kind of ministry Paul had in mind when he said, “As we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too. If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation” (2 Cor. 1:5-6). His sufferings were the means God used to bring salvation to the Corinthian church. The Corinthians could see the suffering love of Christ in Paul. He was actually sharing in Christ’s sufferings and making them real for the church.

This is part of what Paul meant in that amazing statement in Colossians 1:24, “I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” Christ’s afflictions are not lacking in their atoning sufficiency. They are lacking in that they are not known and felt by people who were not at the cross. Paul dedicated himself not only to carry the message of those sufferings to the nations, but also to suffer with Christ and for Christ in such a way that what the people saw were “Christ’s sufferings.” In this way he followed the pattern of Christ by laying down his life for the life of the church. “I endure everything for the sake of the elect, that they also may obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory” (2 Tim. 2:10). . . .

5. Suffering Enforces the Missionary Command to Go

The suffering of the church is used by God to reposition the missionary troops in places they might not have otherwise gone. This is clearly the effect that Luke wants us to see in the story of the martyrdom of Stephen and the persecution that came after it. God spurs the church into missionary service by the suffering she endures. Therefore we must not judge too quickly the apparent setbacks and tactical defeats of the church. If you see things with the eyes of God, the Master Strategist, what you see in every setback is the positioning of troops for a greater advance and a greater display of his wisdom and power and love.

Acts 8:1 charts the divine strategy for the persecution: “There arose on that day [the day of Stephen’s murder] a great persecution against the church in Jerusalem, and they were all scattered throughout the regions of Judea and Samaria, except the apostles.” Up until now no one had moved out to Judea and Samaria in spite of what Jesus had said in Acts 1:8: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria. . . .” It is no accident that these are the very two regions to which the persecution sends the church. What obedience will not achieve, persecution will.

To confirm this divine missionary purpose of the persecution, Luke refers to it in Acts 11:19: “Now those who were scattered because of the persecution that arose over Stephen traveled as far as Phoenicia and Cyprus and Antioch, speaking the word to no one except Jews.” But in Antioch some spoke to Greeks also. In other words, the persecution not only sent the church to Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:1) but also beyond to the nations (Acts 11:19). . . .

In many places in the world, the words of Jesus are as radically relevant as if they had been spoken yesterday. “They will deliver you to prison. . . . This will be a time for you to bear testimony” (Luke 21:12-13, AT). The pain of our shattered plans is for the purpose of scattered grace.

6. The Supremacy of Christ Is Manifest in Suffering

The suffering of missionaries is meant by God to magnify the power and sufficiency of Christ. Suffering is finally to show the supremacy of God. When God declined to remove the suffering of Paul’s “thorn in the flesh,” he said to Paul, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” To this Paul responded, “I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Cor. 12:9-10).

Paul was strong in persecutions because “the power of Christ” rested upon him and was made perfect in him. In other words, Christ’s power was Paul’s only power when his sufferings brought him to the end of his resources and cast him wholly on Jesus. This was God’s purpose in Paul’s thorn, and it is his purpose in all our suffering. God means for us to rely wholly on him. “That was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Cor. 1:9). The reason God wants this is because this kind of trust shows his supreme power and love to sustain us when we can’t do anything to sustain ourselves. . . .

We need to make explicit that the supremacy of God is the reason for suffering running through and above all the other reasons. God ordains suffering because through all the other reasons it displays to the world the supremacy of his worth above all treasures.

Jesus makes crystal clear how we can rejoice in persecution. “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11-12). The reason we can rejoice in persecution is that the worth of our reward in heaven is so much greater than the worth of all that we lose through suffering on earth. Therefore, suffering with joy proves to the world that our treasure is in heaven and not on the earth, and that this treasure is greater than anything the world has to offer. The supremacy of God’s worth shines through the pain that his people will gladly bear for his name.

From Suffering and the Sovereignty of God ed. John Piper and Justin Taylor copyright © 2006, pp. 91-109. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a division of Good News Publishers, Wheaton, IL 60187, www.crossway.com.

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