Two Attitudes on Suffering
There may be many attitudes toward suffering. But there seem to be two attitudes from major spiritual players about the suffering of others. On the one hand, you have the devil’s attitude. On the other, you have Christ’s. We may find ourselves imitating the one or the other.
First, let’s identify the players. The devil was created as an angel to serve God. But he rebelled against God and led a third of the angels (Revelation 12:4) into rebellion with him. Because of his rebellion, God condemned the devil to hell for eternity (Matthew 25:41). The devil never escapes this torment.
Christ is the uncreated Son of God. From eternity, his will has been in perfect agreement with the Father’s. Even as a human being, his will perfectly aligned with God’s. As the Son of God, he had never experienced suffering.
The devil seeks to draw human beings into suffering alongside him. He wants us to suffer now on earth. Even more, he was us to join him in suffering forever in hell. “Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). As the saying goes: “Misery loves company.”
The Son of God, who had known no suffering, became a human being in order to suffer. “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life” (Luke 9:22). He did not spare himself from suffering but willingly suffered so that we might be relieved of our suffering.
Which attitude do you adopt? Imagine that you have struggled with a long-term ailment. Perhaps you don’t have to imagine. Finally, after years of suffering, researchers discover a cure. It will provide you some relief, but in many respects, it’s already too late for you. However, someone who’s suffered the same ailment only a short time receives the cure and still has the rest of their life ahead of them. Will you be happy for them? Will you also harbor some resentment that they won’t “pay their dues?” “It’s not fair.”
Or will you rejoice that maybe your suffering allowed for their release? That you, along with all those who suffered that ailment, spurred the researchers on to search for a cure. That, perhaps, the researchers examined you or others in the same condition and were able to find the cure. You might not have been spared. But many will be.
Let’s examine this from another point of view. When the devil rebelled against God, he lost everything. The angels “always see the face of God” (Matthew 18:10). The devil does so no longer. The devil does not experience the bliss of heaven but only the torment of hell. He also wants us to lose everything by rejecting God and being condemned to hell.
Christ, on the other hand, is the eternal Son of God. All things are his both in heaven and on earth. Yet, “you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich” (2 Corinthians 8:9). Though Christ had everything, he willingly gave it all up so that we might have the riches of his glorious inheritance (Ephesians 1:18).
What attitude do you adopt? Perhaps you have known material poverty. But now you live a more comfortable life. You don’t have everything, but you have more than enough. When you’re called on to be generous, what part of you grumbles and thinks, “I had to pay my dues. No one ever helped me. They’ll just have to figure it out on their own”?
Or will you rejoice that you giving up of a part of your riches—not even the whole part—might bring financial peace and security to someone else? Even if they haven’t “paid their dues” or “earned it” or “deserved it.”
These two attitudes toward others’ sufferings stand before us. One is devilish, nay, even demonic. The other is divine. The first is our inherent apathetic and selfish attitude. The second can only be given to us through the gospel.
Because Christ is not just our example. His attitude toward suffering has rescued us from our suffering. Because Christ suffered the torments of hell, we will never experience anything like it. Because Christ became poor for our sake, we have become rich.
Let us remember what Paul wrote to the Philippians,
Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus:
Who, being in very nature God,
did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;
rather, he made himself nothing
by taking the very nature of a servant,
being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
he humbled himself
by becoming obedient to death—
even death on a cross!Therefore God exalted him to the highest place
and gave him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,
in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.Therefore, my dear friends, as you have always obeyed—not only in my presence, but now much more in my absence—continue to work out your salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you to will and to act in order to fulfill his good purpose.
Philippians 2:3-13