Part 11 - The Suffering Servant

With an eye to upcoming Easter Friday when we celebrate His crucifixion, I thought it appropriate to talk about the meaning of suffering. Down through history the sufferer has been an astonishment and the stumbling block of humanity. To this day, sufferers remain a problem for philosophers and a severe test of the faith of Christians. It is not natural for people to see any profit in suffering; rather, mankind staggers over it, considering it a tragedy, a hindrance to progress, a fate to be avoided.

But for the Christian, Scripture presents a far different view of the sufferer, and of suffering. In summary, I may report from the bible that it is the will of God that believers suffer. That is not a popular teaching; it is not a truth we remember or hold dear to our hearts. We hate suffering and try to avoid it. Nevertheless, it is something that all humanity has in common, and in most cases, the only way that we learn the fruit of the Spirit. The apostle Peter explains that Christ's death is a sample for us, that Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example that we follow in His footsteps. In fact, our Lord learned obedience through the things that He suffered; if that is true of Jesus, how much more true is it of us ?

Suffering may come to the people of God in many forms - actual persecution from the world, malicious slander and mental cruelty because of our chosen faith, trials and testings from the Lord, suffering with and for others, or the natural cost of serving the Lord in this sinful world. In such cases, suffering is a self-sacrificing and most high and holy service to God. It is when we do this that we take up our cross and have fellowship with Him in His sufferings.

Isaiah 52: 13-15 and 53: 1-12 presents us with the most perfect picture of the ideal suffering Servant anywhere in the Word of God. This is where we see the true nature of our Lord. The crucifixion of Jesus in the new testament is an exact fulfillment of Isaiah's prophecy, written 750 years before it happened ! Truly, there is no other book ever written like the Bible ! The suffering of our Lord corresponds to the letter with the picture Isaiah draws. Nothing else can. The suffering of Jesus was vicarious (one person in the place of another) in a way that no other has or ever could be - He took our sins upon Himself and made full atonement for them. While we were yet sinners, He died for us. He Himself knew no sin, but suffered, the just for the unjust, that we sinners might become righteous before God.

Jesus knew full well the purpose of His suffering, and willingly submitted to it as His service to His Father. We have no healing or peace for our souls, no forgiveness for our sins, no justification before God, apart from the punishment that Christ took for us. That is why the church worships and serves Him. Once we trust Christ as our Saviour, we are called to follow Him ! It is the will of God that we demonstrate the same type of sacrificial love that He had, and we must realize that it will cost something. He may call upon us to suffer and perhaps even die. If that should be His will, then we must seek to suffer or die well. It is far more important for us to do His will, to please Him, than to have a comfortable, carefree life !

If we have learned to see in sufferings the purpose of God, and in vicarious suffering God's most holy service; if patience and self-sacrifice have come to be part of our spiritual life - the power to make this change in our faith has been Christ's example. To submit to God's will and to sacrifice self are the hardest things for us to do, but they are possible when we allow Him to live His life in us and through us, which is what leads to glory in the pleasing of our heavenly Father. This, indeed, is Wisdom !

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and give His life as a ransom for many - Mark10:45.