That’s a promise. It’s going to happen. All Christians, one way or another, will suffer. I think most of us have understood that suffering is an aspect of life, but suffering with Christ is different from the rigors of human life. It’s something over and above that. We’re going to look at that today. 

But one of the big questions in studying this is, “Why? Why suffer with Christ?” Maybe we could make this into two questions: What is suffering with Christ? And, why is it assigned to all Christians?

Let’s look at “What is suffering with Christ?” first of all. Having one’s appendix burst is not suffering with or for Christ, though any of life’s experiences can teach us good things about God. When we think of suffering with Christ, we usually think of things like persecution. Let’s read what Paul says in Hebrews 11, which is the Faith Chapter. Verse 35b:

Hebrews 11:35-38 – Some were tortured, refusing to accept release, so that they might rise again to a better life. Others suffered mocking and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were stoned, they were sawn in two – there’s a record of Isaiah, the prophet, extra-biblically, sawn in two – they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated – of whom the world was not worthy – wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. 

The one who wrote this – the apostle Paul – was stoned and beaten more than once. His efforts to do God’s work included three shipwrecks, one of which left him adrift in the sea for twenty-four hours. He recorded that he’d been beaten savagely with rods and stone by an enraged crowd. And notice that phrase, refusing to accept release. I once read a letter written by a Roman official in Asia Minor toward the end of the first century after Christ. And, if I remember correctly, he was reporting to his superior after torturing to death a number of Christians. He asserted in his letter that there were two types of Christians. He said those that confessed their sin of worshipping the Christian God, went through the motion of worshipping false gods to prove the sincerity of their repentance, and then once freed, of course, went back to being Christian again. He said they usually threatened these and then let them go. The other kind would not confess their “sin” and endured torture to death. These are the people Paul is talking about. They, like Christ, suffered torture and death. They were willing to accept that in order to gain eternal life. This is the meaning of suffering with Christ. Those who were tortured to death – who were willing to give up their lives that way, if necessary, to be in the resurrection. That might sound gruesome and distant to us. We haven’t seen that happen, at least in this country, yet it is happening to people, perhaps even as we speak, in Africa and the Middle East. There are people – Christian people – being tortured my Muslims. That is one way a Christian can suffer with Christ and for His name’s sake. That term, His name’s sake, means to submit to His authority over our lives. 

Then there are other ways to suffer with Christ too. We can call them the inconveniences of obeying God’s law. Years ago, a nurse told me of an encounter she had at work over the Sabbath. She worked for some time without incident, having the Sabbath written into her contract. She didn’t try to hide it from people when she signed on. She let it be known that that’s what she needed off and they agreed to it. So, one day, she got a new charge nurse on her floor. Suddenly, she was being scheduled on the Sabbath, and the nurse wondered if maybe this new person didn’t know about her contract stipulation, so she asked her about it. Her boss said she was aware of the stipulation, but was going to schedule her anyway, because it wasn’t fair to the others. So, this nurse explained to her…she said, “My contract clearly shows I’m not required to work on Saturday. I have worked every Christmas, every Easter, Thanksgiving, the 4^th of July, etc. – days no one else wants to work in an unrequired effort to lighten the load on my fellow nurses.” And her boss just kind of waved it off and said, “Yes, but why are you so rigid and demanding about this one day of the week? It’s a very inconsiderate stance when everyone else is so flexible.” In essence, her boss was offended. She’d never met anybody so committed to her beliefs and didn’t know what to make of it. It looked like rigidity to her. So, this would be an example of a minor price to pay for following God. 

Others, sometime, might include not eating the pork roast at the family dinner, or Christmas, or whatever. Or, not attending some family events when they conflict with the Sabbath. Or, not giving or receiving Christmas presents or cards. Or, leaving ten days to go on a religious festival. These things can make us look strange to others. But be happy about it. Jesus looked weird too. He ate with sinners and tax collectors. That was a big gripe the scribes and Pharisees had with Him.

Jesus Himself talked about this kind of suffering. In Matthew 19:28, we can read:

Matthew 19:28-29 – Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, in the new world, when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne, you who have followed me will also sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or lands, for my name’s sake, will receive a hundredfold and will inherit eternal life. This statement actually is an answer to a question Peter asked Him. He, in essence, said to Jesus, “We have dropped everything to follow You What do we get for it?” Well, that was the answer. Everything we have given up, or suffered the loss of, because we follow Christ, will be replaced with more than we can ever dream of. 

You probably know this as one of the beatitudes – a willingness to give up their stuff to follow Christ for the sake of His name. So, if we’re persecuted for righteousness, we’re doing something right. And we’re told to be settled and confident and happy about it – to rejoice – because we’re on the right track. Because persecution, or rejection, or ridicule for the sake of following Christ means something to God. It means we’re committed. If we act like we’re committed to God’s Kingdom now, it will be ours later. That’s what He’s after. He’s looking for commitment from us, as well as a relationship – a committed relationship. 

Now, I haven’t mentioned every possible type of suffering, but I’m sure you can do that for yourselves as needed. So, now we come to the learning part of the sermon. Why is suffering with Christ assigned to Christians? 

In our church, we used to talk a lot about overcoming. And that’s good. We were talking about overcoming sin. And during Unleavened Bread, we would say the focus was to get rid of sin in our lives – which, actually, is something we can’t do on our own. But there’s more. Besides thinking about not sinning, we might better think about how to be like God. That’s where we all need to go, isn’t it? To be God-like? To have a relationship with God? Look about what Paul said about this. Listen to the tone of it in Philippians 3:7:

Philippians 3:7-11 – But whatever gain I had, I counted as loss for the sake of Christ. Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth – the value – of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as rubbish, in order that I may gain Christ…. Now, let’s stop and think about this. Paul was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was a very highly educated Jew. He was high up in society in that world. He gave all that up. He was sort of a – if I could use the term – a rockstar in his age – a famous man, because there weren’t that many members of the Sanhedrin. And he said: in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law – which he did – but that which comes through faith in Christ, the righteousness from God that depends on faith – that I may know him – that I may know Him – and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. 

So, can you hear the commitment and the love? He said knowing Christ, his Lord, was more valuable than any of the things he accomplished in his life and that he threw all those things off and stopped valuing them, so that he could gain Christ. He said that he was willing to suffer that loss so that he could know Christ, and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, that by any means possible he could attain the resurrection. So, Paul, who’d suffered the inconvenience of losing all things, counted his losses unimportant – valueless – because he had been found by Jesus Christ and granted forgiveness for all his sins – not by any effort of his, but by God’s generous love for him and Christ’s grace. So, because of this gracious, unearned, undeserved forgiveness, he hoped to get to know Christ even more by suffering as He suffered, and by being with Him in suffering, and by suffering hope to experience the same kind of resurrection from the dead that Christ experienced – even in that way to know Christ better. 

So, God had required him, like Jesus, to suffer much in order to do God’s work. So, he was like Him in that, wasn’t he? We know that he was beheaded by Nero. He been beaten. He been stoned. He just had a really hard time. He said he faced wild beasts at Ephesus. Can you imagine that? In that way, he and Jesus had something in common – something that drew them closer to each other. So, to put it simply, if we suffer with Christ, it will draw us to Him in a resurrection. 

Here’s the first point then: Suffering with Christ helps us to draw closer to Him and the Father. Let’s look at another one: When a person is willing to suffer for Christ’s sake and put aside their own stuff for Christ’s calling, there is something about a committed Christian in standing ground. It does something to evil people – the blind, who are persecuting them. It’s interesting how, when you’re mind is on something, you pick up things that you might not have noticed.

I was looking at a clip on the Web recently. And I don’t know the name of the host or the guest. This wasn’t the title of the podcast I was listening to, but I don’t even remember what that was, but they were talking about the super-rich, selling us all out for…oh, I remember now. It was about health. It was about how the national health of our country is going down, down, down, and how more research, having been done in that area, is showing it mostly has to do with what we’re eating. So, it wasn’t a religious discussion at all – at least, not at first. The example that was given was that of the food industry. The guest quoted statistic after statistic, and example after example, even naming name after name was referenced to prove that the additives and the products of our food are making our whole nation sick. And the people that are selling this kind of food are making it intentionally for the sake of money. They know they’re doing it. And, after all this evidence giving, the host said, “Well, I can see wanting to make money, but to do that after knowing that they’re making people sick, including children, well, that’s just evil!” he said. And then he asked the guest, “What can we do about it?” The guest replied, “We can stand up for the truth.” And then he said, “Somehow that doesn’t seem to be enough when they know that they’re doing evil.” And then she said something that caused the camera men and the others to audibly gasp – you can hear it – and she said, “Oh, I think they will. In fact, I think they already know. And I think it enrages them, because it terrifies them.” 

What she was saying is, that even though they profess to be atheists, they know that there’s some kind of reckoning to come. And they know this at some deep level – perhaps not even admitted to self. So, that is God working, as well as drawing new people to Christ, isn’t it? Because when the evil are convicted of what they’re doing, that’s necessary. They have to know what they’ve done wrong. It also draws wrath on us, which is suffering for Christ’s name. And when we stand up, it convicts non-believers, even the evil ones. 

Now, we’re not finished with the nurse’s story yet. Here’s what happened next: Her boss said to her that she seemed self-centered and rigid, but the nurse did not take that lying down. Instead of lying down, she stood up, and she said, “Well, I know how I appear to you, but to me, that one day off is a special day. It’s a blessing. It’s when I go to church and spend time with my church family, and it’s a day when I get to heal from the incredible stresses of working here in the intensive care unit for children. It helps me come back to work the next week, ready to save kids’ lives. It’s a weekly reset physically, emotionally, socially and spiritually.” And then she said, “But I imagine that just sounds silly to you.” And her boss looked at her, and said, “No, actually, that sounds really good. I wish I could do that.” And she then turned and walked away, and never scheduled the nurse for the Sabbath again. Her boss got touched by the kingdom of heaven. And who knows what God will do with that later – perhaps in the resurrection even. 

Okay, so let’s move to the third reason God assigns us to suffer. In Hebrews 11:24, Paul says:

Hebrews 11:24 – By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter – he was in line for the throne of Egypt, but he refused it – verse 25: choosing rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. 

While he was technically in line for the throne, he rejected that adoption for another. And, as Paul said, he suffered loss of all things for Christ’s name. Moses believed one way to be close to God was to be with God’s people. So, God’s people were suffering, so the thing for him to do was to suffer with the rest God’s family. It’s kind of a family thing. It’s what we do, if we’re in God’s family. 

I recite this quite a bit in sermons and presentations. But I like to go back to the three Jewish boys, Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael, who were in Nebuchadnezzar’s court and were sentenced to be thrown into a furnace and burned alive because they would not worship the golden image that the king had set up. Do you remember what they said? They said, “We know you can throw in that furnace, and we know our God can save us, but we don’t know, for sure, if He will. Nevertheless, there is one thing we do know. We are not going to worship that image!” So, in that stand, the king, who did not believe in God, even though he could kill them, he would never have their hearts. Their hearts belonged to God. They were beyond his reach. And the three of them there, taking the same rock-solid stand together impressed him – not so much that he didn’t throw them in the furnace. You remember the story. It’s a family thing with God’s people. 

I recently read a book and I’ve quoted it a number of times over the last couple of years – Live Not By Lies. It’s a book about how Christians can defeat totalitarians, like Communists, or Fascists, or the beast, should it fall our lot to do so. And the author, Ron Dreher, recounted how he recently went to the Soviet Union – a Communists system that killed 40 million people of their own nationality and imprisoned an immeasurably large group in what was called the Gulag Archipelago – a system of prisons throughout Siberia. While he was there, he met the children of Christian people who had been sent to prison because they would not cave to the ideology, but remained faithful to Christ. Therefore, they went to prison. They lost their jobs already. They’re children were denied education, along with the daily persecution that came from not wearing their Communist school uniform. And we might say, “How terrible! How could they do that to their children?” – some of us, as soft as we are, might say. But when he talked to these children – now grown up – all they had to show for their parents’ stand was pride and respect for the stand they took. Many said their parents’ resolve in the face of mind control was a model for them to never again give in. Some of them even reported their parents told them from prison there was a certain satisfaction that comes with knowing, even while in prison, that they couldn’t take their hearts. 

So, the lesson we can learn from this modern example today is that suffering with Christ strengthens the family. It pulls everyone together in suffering for Christ. And that leads to resurrection from the dead. 

Let’s look at another example. It’s in Luke 1:26.

Luke 1:26-38 – In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” We’re going to find out what that meant in her life in a few minutes. But she was greatly troubled at the saying – now this woman was probably in her older teenage. She was not yet completely an adult, although she certainly acted like one. …was troubled at this saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” Mary got stuck back at “you’ll conceive.” She said: “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” She was still back there on that really important question. Honest, right? Wanting to know. And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth – he realizes she needs proof, so He’s going to give it to her. Behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” She can go visit Elizabeth, find her pregnant, and realize that she could be pregnant too. And she was. She realized it at that point, because I think Elizabeth was six months in when Mary went to visit her. And Mary said – through all of this – “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” 

Now, little did she know, at that point, what happened to her Son, but when it came time for Him to suffer – after eleven of the twelve disciples had fled for their lives – there she was standing on Golgotha Hill, watched for six hours while her Son suffered and died. That shows us a couple things: One is, mothers love their children and she wasn’t going to leave Him, no matter what happened. It shows us what it means to be a family. When she said, “Let it be according to your will,” she was all in. And we, if we’re Christian, need to be all in with each other. One suffers, we all suffer. And that’s just a part of a family – God’s family – when we suffer with Christ. 

How do we gain this type of outlook? Well, let’s look at what an expert said in 1 Peter 4:1 through 2. This is what he had to say…this is what Peter tells us – a man who was crucified for Christ’s sake:

1 Peter 4:1-2 – Since therefore Christ suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves with the same way of thinking – get committed, in other words. Think the same way about it that Mary thought about it, that the twelve apostles thought about it, that Jesus thought about it, that Hananiah, Azariah and Mishael thought about it, the way Moses thought about it. Arm yourself with that way of thinking. …for whoever has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin – how can that be? Well, it’s because of the grace that’s unfolded for us – so as to live for the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for human passions but for the will of God. All in on that! Whatever God calls us to do, we’re there for it – drawing closer to our family – our church family – and our God. That all comes a package with suffering for Christ. 

That’ leads to closeness with God and to eternal life in God’s family.