The Fittingness of Christ’s Suffering

Text: Hebrews 2:10

We all come to Scripture with pre-formed thoughts of what things should be and how God should act. Thoughts of, “God always does this” or, “he would never act like that.” Yet, time and time again, we see redemptive history unfolding in unusual ways that seem contrary to human nature and how we would like them to play out.

We see that struggle in the disciples themselves. Having spent three years with Christ already and seeing Him interpret the Old testament properly. Having witnessed many miracles to back this up. And seen and heard how the true Kingdom of God is not of this world according to our principles, they still ask Him after He HAD BEEN RAISED FROM THE DEAD DEFEATING SIN AND DEATH, “Lord, will you at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?”

We may look at that now and scoff, thinking that we know better. Yet history has proven time and time again that this way of thinking still seems to seep into the Church. That the Kingdom of God is of this world.

This is the point of what the author to the Hebrews is getting at in the whole book. That the Kingdom of God is not of this world. But despite the seemingly invisible and weak nature of things now, the Kingdom of God is full of assurance due to the security of our salvation being bound up in the eternal God. Immortal, invisible, gracious, and wise, God over all.

So far, the author has taken us through the superiority of Christ over all things. He is the final Word of God; He is the One through whom the world was created. He is the only Begotten Son of God, the ruler over all things. Therefore, He is the One worthy of our worship.

And now we take a bit of a right turn. Because of all of these things being true about Christ, He is also the One who is worthy to be the founder and perfector of our faith. And this is where we find our text this morning.

For all of these things being true about Christ, it is fitting that He be the forerunner, who is perfected through suffering, that God uses to bring us, the many sons, to glory. That is what we are going to focus on this morning. Despite our many preconceived ideas. Despite the ways in which we think about who God should be and how we think He should act. God does not act according to our notions.

What I want us to get out of this text this morning is that we see the fittingness of Christ’s sufferings and death for us as our forerunner and High Priest and glorify God for His wisdom and grace. For god does not work according to our wisdom, but His own. We will look at this under three headings:

1. Fittingness According to God

2. The fittingness of Christ’s Perfection For Our Glorification

3. The fittingness of suffering as the path to Glory

Repeat

Fittingness According to God

When discussing this passage, a friend said, “what does it mean for something to be fitting?” Think about a nice pair of shoes. What does it mean for them to be fitting? Or a suit or dress? I had the privilege of getting my suit tailored for my wedding, and it was the best feeling. Everything fit just right. Nothing was out of place and was perfectly where it should be. It just fit. I’m sure you’ve had the same experience. To slip on that pair of shoes or the jacket and it just fit. Not too tight, not too loose. No weird pressure points.

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Now it is the same here with what the author tells us of the fittingness of how God works His salvation. Rather than standing above the text and over God, assuming things about how He works, this phrase, “for it was fitting..” tells us that how we thought things should go, that there should be a physical Kingdom, that we should have physical victory, that Christ should bring a conquering Kingdom, all these are unfitting according to the wisdom of the Father.

They are ill-fitting. Like a shoe half a size too small, or shirt that pulls under the armpits, so are our natural ideas of how God’s redemption should play out. Christ, the Son of God, tasted death for everyone by the grace of God. This was fitting to God.

Heart

Why was it fitting you may ask? Because the one through whom all things were created should and would have the wisdom and authority to cause all things to ultimately glorify Himself. The way that God gets glory is not how we would like to get glory.

When we picture glory, we picture vanquishing enemies like Alexander the Great at the front of His armies leading them to victory.

Glory for God is not like human glory. Rather than using the strong to conquer the weak, God, “chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong… so that, as it is written, “Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord,” (1 Cor 1:27, 31).

He does not at this time vanquish all His enemies, for we know that by nature we are enemies of God. Instead, the way that God gets glory is by redeeming those enemies to Himself to make a people for Himself who in our whole beings glorify God.

Therefore, it is fitting that the one who brought creation into existence and upholds all things, is also the one, ultimately, for whom all things exist. And if they exist for God and we exist for God alone, then it is fitting for God to bring many sons to glory.

Hands

This is who we are, this is where we are going. We are marked and sealed for this end. In our glorification, that is, our being completely made new in the New Heavens and Earth, God is glorified. And in this gracious work of God, that Christ should taste death for us, we see the heart of God on full display. As one commentator so beautifully put it,

“It is in the passion of our Lord that we see the very heart of God laid bare; nowhere is God more fully or more worthily revealed as God than when we see him “in Christ reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19) (Bruce).

It is fitting that things would happen this way purely because through it we get a glimpse into the glories of God’s heart. God does not act according to our sensibilities. Where we desire conquering, God sacrifices. Where we want power, God is humble. The heart of God is that He is full of grace and love. It is from this that He acts for us.

Because all things come from God and flow back to God, we can have ultimate trust in His work for us. As He upholds the universe and sustains it, so too He holds your life in His hands,

“He will not let your foot be moved; he who keeps you will not slumber. Behold, he who keeps Israel will neither sleep nor slumber.” (Ps 121:3-4)

When we align our minds, desires and assumptions about God with how He has revealed Himself, we see that in fact, it is fitting that God, for whom and by whom all things exist, brings many sons to glory.

How does He do this?

This leads me to my second point.

The Fittingness of Christ’s Perfection for Our Glorification

Have you ever wondered how Alexander the Great managed, for such a long time, to lead His soldiers on victory after victory? Pushing all the way out to India. Thousands of miles away from their homes and their families? It was said that He was able to do so because at every stage, who was at the head of the army? It was Alexander. He was the pioneer, leading his people behind him.

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This is how the author to the Hebrews talks of Christ. It was fitting that God should make Christ the pioneer of our faith. He does not do it by riding into battle with an army, rather Christ does it by humbling Himself and taking on the flesh of man.

We who were made in the image of God, called to obey Him, and love Him, have sinned and we, by nature, are now incapable of glorifying God in the way He requires. Now, because the Son of Man has come. Because He has taken upon Himself a body of sin. He has now gone before us, blazing a path through sin and death, so that we might have salvation be called Sons of the Living God!

In choosing to call Him the “founder of our salvation” we see another aspect of Christ’s work for us. It is fitting that the Son of God be the One upon whom our salvation is built because it is for whom everything exists, even our very lives and faith.

Heart

Making Christ the founder achieves two things. Firstly, it results in praise and glory to God alone. We have been created for His glory and now through the work of the Son, we not only live for His glory but even our ability to do so is found in Him alone. We do not boast in ourselves but boast in the Lord who is gracious and merciful toward us.

Secondly, it means that our entering into glory will not fail. The One who has gone before us is the Son of God, the one by whom God created all things. As He brought all created things into existence by the Word of His mouth, he now brings the New Creation into existence by the eternal Word, the Son.

Because He is God, we can have a surety that all things will work out according to His good purposes. He cares for you and watches over you. He is our good shepherd. As David says in Psalm 23,

“He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his names sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

You can trust that He will do this because they sovereign Lord over all the earth has gone before you. And now by Him you have confidence to enter the throne room of your heavenly Father.

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The author here says that Christ is “made perfect.” It seems odd to say that Christ had to be made perfect. Does this imply that there is something lacking in Christ as the Son of God? Not in any way!

As we covered earlier in chapter 1, Christ is the only begotten Son of God. That is, he is of the same substance as the Father is. Such as the Father is, such is the Son, and such is the Holy Spirit. The perfection we are talking about here is not of a moral quality, it is not adding to or taking away from what is in Christ.

What then is it referring to? It has to do with the fact that He is the One who is the author of our salvation. I found how one author summed it up helpful,

“the perfect Son of God has become his people’s perfect Savior, opening up their way to God; and in order to become that, he must endure suffering and death. The pathway of perfection which his people must tread must first be trodden by the Pathfinder; only so could he be their adequate representative and high priest in the presence of God.” (Bruce)

Hands

This has two benefits for us.

1. Christ can sympathize with our weakness. He took on our flesh and as He grew up, “he grew in wisdom and stature.” And “although He was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him.”

The fact that He grew as we grow. That He was tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin. Means that we can go to Him and know that He knows our sin and weakness. He knows your struggles to live a life glorifying to God.

So then, “let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

2. Your perfection and righteousness are bound up in what Christ earned for you. In His life that He lived, the obedience that He learned.

He did it so that by His death and His life we have been washed clean and made new and credited with an obedience and righteousness that is not ours.

Just as Christ can sympathise with your weakness, He also intercedes and says of you, “behold, I have taken your iniquity away from you, and I will clothe you with pure vestments.”

It is fitting for God to make Him perfect for us so that we have the assurance of a High Priest who has offered Himself as the pure sacrifice.

Our motivation then in the Christian life is not to earn any standing with God, but to offer up our lives to Him as a Spiritual Sacrifice, glorifying Him alone out of love for Him, for His boundless wisdom and grace.

“Oh, the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgements and how inscrutable his ways!”

In all of His wisdom, God ordained that these things would come about “through suffering.”

The Fittingness of Suffering as the Path to Glory

These believers hearing this for the first time could feel the rising pressure from outside. It was as though a noose was tightening around them. They were small. They were weak according to the world. This Kingdom of God they were a part of didn’t seem as though it was succeeding in the way that they thought it would.

Perhaps it may just be easier to go back to what they were doing beforehand. There was much less adversity before they became Christians, maybe this is not all worth it. These Christians were experiencing many hardships and trials and about to face more. They knew what was coming and were fearful for the future.

Do you also feel like this? That maybe things as a Christian are just too hard. Maybe you suffer ridicule for being a Christian. Maybe your battles with sin don’t seem to be going anywhere and you’re tempted to throw in the towel.

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The author here gives us every reason to not throw in the towel. He says that our saviour and the founder of our faith was perfected through suffering. As Christ suffered and then entered into glory, we follow after Him on the path of suffering leading to glory.

Rather than it being how we are justified, our suffering is how we are crafted and made into the likeness of Christ.

It is the will of God that we would be sanctified because the process of sanctification is gradual refining of us and making us holy. But notice, in the golden chain of redemption that Paul lays out in Romans 8:30,

“And those whom he predestined, He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom he justified he also glorified.”

The part that is missing is sanctification. It is not that Paul ignores this, but he is emphasising that our standing, our grounds for assurance and the hope of glory we have is not based on how holy we get in this life. It is based how holy our saviour and High Priest is. By His sufferings alone are we justified.

Heart

Our path to glory then is not one we should dread, it is not something to fear for we know that our saviour faithfully leads and shepherds us. Amidst the trials of this life, the battles with sin, the seeming never-ending work of sanctification, all these things are not indications that God has departed from you. He who keeps you will not slumber.

Rather, He is bringing you on into glory. This road of suffering that we experience in this life, whether great or small, are the means by which you should be sanctified after the image of your Saviour, Christ.

We should delight then when trials and suffering come our way for they push us back to Christ, that we might spend each day at the foot of cross, marvelling at the grace, mercy and wisdom of God.

Hands

We should then not fear trials and the various crosses we too must bear. It is fitting that suffering leads to glory because in the wisdom of God, he does not delight in strength according to us, but in weakness and humility.

Suffering was the path that Christ walked so that He could be our faith High Priest, he has not left you, nor forsaken you. This path you walk is well worn by the saviour who carved it out on His way to the cross.

One day, we will be united with Him in glory. We will be made new, there will be no more sin in our bodies, there will be no more imperfections. But the full reality of the righteousness that Christ has clothed us in will be revealed.

And we will rejoice and glorify the One through whom we have redemption and forgiveness of sins. Come now to Him, all you who are labour and weary, he will give you rest. In Him is an abundance of grace.