Afflicted
While on vacay, I read John Piper's new book, Filling Up the Afflictions of Christ, which by the way is available for free download at the Desiring God website. It covers ground I've covered before, but far more eloquently and powerfully, between Piper's steady exegesis and remarkable biographical blurbs of three saints who suffered greatly for the sake of propagating the message of Jesus as Lord and Savior.
I particularly like Pastor Piper's explanation of what it means to "fill up afflictions": not that Jesus' afflictions were inadequate, but they have been as of yet inadequately made known to the ends of the earth. And, as I have come to believe as well, suffering is not just a consequence of spreading the word but is itself an important and in fact necessary conduit.
Of course, I am tempted to leave it like that: read the book, blog about it, recommend it to others, and be fuller for it . . . but not really have it grip me as the truth should. Having recently read Mark's account of Jesus' earliest days, when by sheer force of authority he called people to leave their vocations and their loved ones and follow Him, I am challenged to consider whether I too would leave job and family to be spent, time and talents and belongings and even my very life, to make Him known to those who do not yet know of it.
At the very least, I am reminded of the need to daily die to self, and to its ambitions and comfort- and glory-seeking ways, to willfully and gladly subordinate what I think to be best for what truly is best, which is to follow Jesus and trust that even and especially suffering that I bear along the way will be part of a great story of redemption and salvation. Easier said than done. But, thankfully, truth-tellers like Pastor Piper, and martyrs like those profiled in his most recent book, have gone ahead of me, and found the road, however hard and costly, to lead to life.
"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." - Colossians 1:24
Comments
In a country and an economic class where suffering is rarely encountered, how do we follow this call to be like the fruitful grain of wheat? I don't think we are to be ascetics and directly seek suffering for its own sake.
Are we to flee the classes and accompanied privileges which we occupy? Are we to pick up our roots and become frontier missionaries?
That calling and others like it may be the case for many of us. We should make sure we aren't discounting that God might call us to that kind of life.
One thing the rest of us can do is make sure that in our lives we encounter those who are not in such fortunate positions. Done properly, this involves following the example of Jesus in becoming incarnate and dying on the cross. We should truly identify with and become one with those we meet, thus joining them in their sufferings in a way which hopefully alleviates them.
To me that sounds pretty, but very difficult. I know I don't see it in my life.
You make some good points. I may add more later, for now I will simply say that, at least, following Jesus involves not making presumptions about a certain life path after which we then figure out how to do God's work. In other words, how many times have we heard (or said ourselves), "I'll take care of my stuff first, and then I'm available for radical obedience."
"My stuff" means different things for different people - earn a certain income level, have a certain type of job, live in a certain type of house, get married and have kids - and to put any of them first, as non-negotiables after which we can then get to the business of Christian discipleship, is to make those things into idols. I think that gets at some of what it means to "die to self."