Christ Above Suffering: Colossians 1:24-2:5

Introduction

There once was a man who loved his religion. He was a member of the most liked group of cultural leaders, and he was a well-respected teacher. In his country religion was closely tied to culture and politics so he enjoyed political power as well. He strove for purity in the practice of religion both publicly and privately. He loved his people and he loved his religion and he was willing to fight for them.

And fight, he did.

There was a new dangerous sect that claimed the true way to follow their religion was to follow this new teacher who had already been killed! But it was far worse than simply wanting to follow a rival teacher, this cult claimed that their teacher came back to life and was the divine Son of God himself!

What blasphemy! So many people had seen their so called “God” die and what he taught went against everything that the people had been taught about God.

So this man did what anyone who truly valued what was right would do. He sought to destroy this cult by any means necessary.

He started by approving and overseeing the execution of one of the cultists which then spread to persecution throughout the city, dragging the followers out of their homes and placing them in prison.

Most of the cultists scattered to surrounding cities, but he secured the legal right and responsibility of overseeing the operation to seek out and end this destructive cult even in the other cities. He would make sure that everyone understood what the true religion was.

He would do everything in his power to make sure that this fledgling religion would never get off the ground.

Now, if you haven’t figured it out already, this man was Saul of Tarsus, also known as the Apostle Paul, the man who wrote this letter of Colossians. Now we have already seen Paul’s love for the church and his willingness to suffer for its sake.

How in the world did Saul go from trying to destroy the Christian church to intentionally being one of the greatest catalysts for its growth? How did he go from causing suffering for the church to suffering immensely on its behalf?

Well, Saul who is also known as Paul, had an experience on the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, in order to arrest the Christians there, that forever changed his life. And I know that many of us were taught that in a form similar to Abraham, God changed his name to show his changed life, but to be honest there’s nothing in the Bible that says that. Instead, when we read the book of Acts and Paul’s letters we see that his two names were used interchangeably throughout his life.

It seems instead that Paul was simply the first in a long line of missionaries who changed their name to better fit the culture they were ministering to. My own father in law was named “Lowell,” but because he ministered in Mexico he changed his name to “Joel” or “ho-el” in Spanish. “Saul” is a Hebrew name and since Saul was going out into the Roman Empire, he decided to instead be known by the Latin “Paul.”

In Acts 9 we read of Paul’s journey...

Bright light, fall to the ground

“Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting me? I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting” (4-5)

The other men could hear the voice, but they didn’t see the light. Only Saul did and he was stricken with blindness for three days and for all three days he fasted from food and drink (7-9)

and he had to finish his journey into Damascus by being led by the hand (8).

One of the Christians in Damascus named Ananias was then told by the Lord to go and find Saul of Tarsus who knows that a man named Ananias was coming to pray for him so he may regain his sight.

He reacted how any of us would react, “you sure about that? This guy was coming here to arrest us. I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.” (13-14)

And God responded, “Go, because I’ve chosen him to carry my name to the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel too. And I am going to show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” (15-16)

What a statement! And suffer he would!

Paul outlines the things he has faced as a disciple of Jesus in 2 Corinthians 11:23-30.

He says he had received the 39 lashes five different times,

he was beaten with rods 3 times,

stoned once,

shipwrecked 3 times, adrift at sea a complete night and day,

in danger from rivers and robbers, Jews and Gentiles,

in cities, the wilderness, and the sea,

and even from people who only pretended to be his brother.

This guy, who once was the scourge of the body of Christ, faced such suffering that we cannot even imagine facing ourselves.

As we heard from verse 24 of this morning’s passage, Paul is even yet suffering for the sake of the Colossian church. This letter itself was written while Paul was imprisoned for preaching Christ crucified and risen again. And this letter was written about 5 years after his listing of sufferings in 2 Corinthians. He was imprisoned multiple times throughout his life. This man knew suffering.

But what is Paul’s response to suffering? What do we read in verse 24? He says he rejoices in his sufferings!

Now, wait a second. If I was faced with this kind of suffering, I’m not sure my first response would be rejoicing! And I know I’m not alone.

How does the saying go? Misery loves company and we certainly like to let people know when we’re unhappy or unwell.

As soon as someone acts wrongly against me I want to go complain to my wife or friends, and I haven’t ever once felt the fear in my heart that people would arrest me or beat me for being a Christian.

My first response to suffering and struggle is not to rejoice and to be honest

I would be shocked to find out I stand alone in this wrong attitude.

But three times in Colossians 1:24-2:5 Paul speaks to his suffering and his struggle and never once does he turn to complaint.

We instead see three commitments that Paul holds about suffering

because of the simple truth that we focused on last week,

and it is the main point of the book of Colossians,

that Christ is Above all things and that he deserves to remembered and focused on above all things:

even our suffering.

The first commitment that Paul holds is remembering that suffering is in the plan of God.

1. Suffering is in the Plan of God

Now this is something that many of us struggle to believe, but it is true. It has always been a part of the plan of God.

As we already covered from Acts 9, God’s plan for Paul always included suffering and God’s plan for all of his children involves suffering.

In John 16:33 Jesus says to his disciples: “In the world you will have tribulation [or suffering].” Not that you might, or could. You will have suffering.

There is a very popular teaching in the churches of America that we have exported to the world that says that God only wants his people to be happy and healthy and that anything else is outside of the will of God.

And I think most of us realize that this is a false teaching from the pits of hell, but how often do we find ourselves acting like we believe it to be true?

How often is the first question “why me?” when we’re faced with suffering? I think we are often quick to critique the prosperity gospel, but we actually believe that we’re not supposed to face suffering in our lives.

Now something we need to recognize is that the primary question of the Bible in regards to suffering is “why do righteous people suffer from the actions of unrighteous people?” And over and over again the answer is because to the righteous person suffering is a purifying agent that draws us and others closer to God.

Though it is an effect of the fall, an effect of sin, suffering is not something that shocks God.

And brothers and sisters, even when we cannot understand how or why our suffering is in God’s plan for us.

Whether it’s caring for family members you never expected to care for because you’re seeking to honor God,

whether it is facing physical pain and suffering like Paul did getting beaten or lashed,

or perhaps it’s facing people or a government who stand opposed to Christ who seek to imprison us,

or even living in a warzone like our missionaries are,

when we are suffering for the sake of righteousness, Jesus promises in Matthew 5:10-12 that we are blessed and we will join in Jesus’ inheritance of the Kingdom of God.

What a blessed promise!

But we must ask ourselves, what is our reaction to our suffering for righteousness sake?

Too often our reaction is a knee jerk frustration and an attitude of complaint, but what is Paul’s response to his own suffering here in Colossians 1?

Redemptive History

Paul says in verse 24 that he rejoices in his sufferings and in his flesh he is “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of Christ’s body, that is, the church.”

Now, this phrase “fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” gives people fits. On a surface reading it sounds like he is saying that Jesus’ work on the cross was not enough.

However, that's a bad reading of this passage because when we look at all of the Scriptures we see that this does not fit in the overall message of the Bible, and there are other writings of Paul and other apostles who show this is not the case.

What Paul is saying is that he is adding to the amount of suffering that God already knows must happen before he makes everything right again.

This is seen most clearly in John’s Revelation where he is given a vision of the people who have been slain for the word of God and for being faithful witnesses.

In Chapter 6 verse 10 we read:

Revelation 6:10–11 ESV

10 They cried out with a loud voice, “O Sovereign Lord, holy and true, how long before you will judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth?” 11 Then they were each given a white robe and told to rest a little longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brothers should be complete, who were to be killed as they themselves had been.

There is a specific number of people known by God who will be killed because they love Christ and are faithful to his Gospel before the final judgement will come. The plan is for God’s people to face suffering because in their suffering for righteousness they join together with Jesus.

How better to follow after Christ than to suffer alongside him for righteousness sake?

And this leads us to the second commitment that Paul holds toward suffering:

2. Suffering is in the following of Jesus

How could Paul hold any other commitment knowing what we know God said to Ananias “I will show him how much he must suffer for my sake”?

From the beginning of his Christian journey, Paul was promised suffering. But Christian brothers and sisters, if we read the Bible we should easily recognize that all followers of Jesus are going to face suffering.

In John’s Gospel Jesus says

John 15:18 ESV

18 “If the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.

Paul says in 2 Tim 3:12

2 Timothy 3:12 ESV

12 Indeed, all who desire to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted,

Around the world our Christian brothers and sisters are facing this reality of persecution daily, simply because they follow Jesus. Though we do face some trials in our nation today, it is nothing compared to what our brothers and sisters faced in most of the world for most of our history. We simply do not face the kind of suffering for Christ that Paul speaks about.

To pretend that we do is disrespectful to our brothers and sisters around the world who are facing imprisonment and death and it does a disservice to our own souls, making us far less willing to face real persecution in a faithful manner.

But suffering for the Christian does not only come through persecution. Jesus makes it abundantly clear that our suffering is going to come through a daily denial of ourselves.

Luke 9:23–25 ESV

23 And he said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it. 25 For what does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses or forfeits himself?

We must die daily so that we may gain true life. And dying to ourselves, dying to our sin, is painful. It’s excruciating.

Our sin is sneaky, it is deceptive. Throughout our lives our sin has been taking the strands of our hearts and tying them to things that are not God.

Every time we sinfully indulge ourselves in arrogance through gossip or anger or slander,

every time we sinfully indulge ourselves in earthly pleasures,

every time we sinfully indulge ourselves in comfort seeking instead of following Jesus in radical discipleship

we are taking the strands of our hearts and tying them to things that are not of Christ.

And what does Christ call us to do? To cut them. And the more strands you have tied to something, the more it hurts to cut them away.

This is why for some people it is easy to drop certain sins quickly while you keep struggling.

You have more strands tied to it and, if you’re faithful, you’re still working on cutting those millions of strands that you have allowed to be tied.

And this why confession must be a daily occurrence in the life of the believer!

In confession we acknowledge that our hearts have been tied to lesser things and we name those lesser things as sin!

And every time we recognize those things as sin and we seek their death we loosen their bond to us so that we may one day be completely free in Christ! We cut those strands when we truly confess and truly repent of our sin that we cling to.

But it hurts to let go of these things. And if we are children of God, but we’re still unwilling to let them go, he will take them from us and it will be all the more painful because all of the strands will be cut at once.

We must die to ourselves daily so that Christ may bring us to life in him. We must decrease and he must increase. Cling to Christ, not your sin.

Whether it is an external or an internal suffering, you will suffer for following Christ, but it is worth it. And this is the final commitment of Paul in suffering: suffering is worth it.

3. Suffering is worth it

Here in Colossians we see that Paul considers his suffering to be worth rejoicing. Why? Because through his suffering he is seeing Christ win his people out of darkness and draw them into his light. His saints are being won from all nations, not just the Israelites (27).

This great mystery of Christ and him in us that we studied last week and sang about today is drawing in the people who were once ostracized and Paul is rejoicing that through his suffering the church is being built.

There is a quote from Tertullian, one of our brothers from nearly two thousand years ago “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church.”

If the church is being built then all suffering is worth it. All sacrifice, all struggle, is a prize if it means that Christ is being glorified through saving people from their sin and bringing them into his new creation people.

And Paul is willing to face it all, and more even in order to see the church healthy. That is the big point of this passage. All suffering is worth it if Christ’s people are better because of it.

He closes this section in 2:4-5 by saying that he writes all these things to make sure that the young Christians are not deceived by arguments that sound good, but ultimately will pull you from Christ. He wants them to be mature Christians who will not be led astray by words that speak to their intellectual and cultural biases. We’ll get more into those in the coming weeks.

But for those who are not suffering for the sake of building up the external church, for those who are being faithful in suffering in their personal lives, we too can see that suffering is worth it.

In Romans, another of Paul’s letters, he writes:

Romans 5:3–5 ESV

3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, 5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.

Suffering produces endurance, which produces character, which produces hope in the promises of Christ. And that hope, that Christ will be faithful in his promises to us, will not put us to shame.

Brothers and sisters, we can join with Paul in rejoicing in suffering because we know that suffering produces the hope of heaven in us.

Christology

We can rejoice in suffering for the sake of Christ, knowing that Christ suffered for us on the cross. We tend to focus on his physical suffering, but the far greater suffering he faced was the wrath of God for the sins of his people.

We suffer willingly and joyfully because we look to Christ and what he has done.

Where we do not suffer joyfully it is because we have placed our suffering above Christ in our minds and that is a woeful misordering.

The whole point of Colossians is to ensure that we understand and recognize that Christ is above all, even our suffering.

So when we find ourselves suffering in a miserable, self-pitying way, it is because we have forgotten Christ. But when we remember Christ in all things we learn that we can joyful and content in any circumstance.

You know that famous verse “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me”? It’s usually ripped out of its context to give some false assurances of our capability to do anything, right?

I can do all things through Christ… Like dunk a basketball?

No!

Be an astronaut? No!

What happens when we read it in context starting a few verses back?

Philippians 4:11–13 ESV

11 Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content. 12 I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. 13 I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

All of a sudden this message has changed from a postmodern message of self-reliance to a message of the ability to be content, no matter what life brings!, because of Christ.

Non-Christians

If you are not a Christian, then this probably sounds wildly off putting to you, but may I suggest that all things that are worth it come through suffering and struggle?

If you seek to train your body, can you do so without pain?

If you seek to have children, is there not great physical and emotional suffering from the time of the pregnancy through the entire lives of the children? We parents suffer immensely out of our love for our children.

If you seek to earn a degree or to cultivate a home, there is suffering and struggle involved.

And yet, you still willingly, dare I say, joyfully go into the struggle.

Why would the most important thing, the thing most worth it, not entail suffering and struggle? And why should we not be the most joyful as we struggle through that thing.

I would argue that if you think we Christians are crazy for suffering for this, it is not the suffering that’s your problem with Christianity. You’re willing to suffer for the things you want too.

Your problem with Christianity actually is with Christ himself. You don’t think he’s worth it.

If all that I’m saying is not true, if Christ did not die on the cross and is not risen again, then the Apostle Paul says that we Christians are more pitiful than anyone on earth.

But if what I am saying is true, then nothing else matters.

He is Lord of all and he is going to one day judge you as lord, even if you refuse to recognize his authority over you. Refusing to recognize authority does not mean that authority does not exist.

I plead with you to hear this, to recognize that the Lord has been offering redemption to you, and to turn away from your sin and to turn to him.

Now, a natural question about suffering that was not answered in this text is “What about when our suffering is not because of our righteousness?”

Let’s be honest, this is the majority of our suffering.

Often we suffer because of our relationships with others:

People we love die, relationships fall apart, spouses are unfaithful, friends betray us, family members abandon us, co-workers gossip and slander behind our backs, we are hurt in work or while driving because of someone else’s negligence, we face the fallout of our son or father or whoever’s addiction.

And it’s not just because of other people that we suffer. We could lock ourselves away in a paradise on earth and we would still face suffering and struggle.

Our bodies and minds break down, our memories are filled with regrets, our own addictions pull us deeper into suffering, we have accidents and frustrations, we feed our pride and harm our relationships

whatever it is, you have some suffering that is just inherent within you.

How should we respond to these situations? The same way we should respond to anything as a Christian. By turning to Christ with repentance and faith.

Faith that Jesus really is the cosmic king that deserves our undying allegiance, even in immense suffering. I can face all things because my King has already rescued me from my death!

And repentance from the times that we have sinfully forgotten his kingship over every situation in our lives.

Many times pain is the very thing that God is using to save us because pleasure usually dulls our understanding of reality. But pain, pain forces us to see more clearly the reality of the sinful world we live in and it encourages us to actually get up and do something about it. Even if that something is just to remember that God is God and we are not.

C. S. Lewis states in his book “The Problem of Pain”

“We can ignore even pleasure. But pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Almost exactly 11 years ago today, God used his megaphone of pain to rouse me from my comfortable deafness....

He caused me to reorder my life priorities, to recognize that he is Lord over all things, and that I had placed far too many things above him in my life. And those were things that I had eagerly tied my heartstrings to and things that were driving me to immense anxiety.

And in one fell swoop Christ cut it all away. I didn’t even have my immediate family close by because they had just moved to Alaska earlier that year. It all was cut from me so that I

He brought great suffering to me, so that he could bring great healing.

He will do that for you too, if you are willing to topple your list of priorities and rightfully acknowledge that Christ is above all of our suffering.

Let’s pray.

Prayer of confession

We focus on our sufferings instead of on Christ

Assurance

Colossians 1:21–23 (ESV)

21 And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds, 22 he has now reconciled in his body of flesh by his death, in order to present you holy and blameless and above reproach before him, 23 if indeed you continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel that you heard, which has been proclaimed in all creation under heaven...

Praise the Lord!