Fill up the afflictions of Christ
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Nobody likes to suffer. Yet, people choose to suffer. It is not for pleasure, but because of necessity.
Necessity makes us suffer. I should say: “Necessity makes us choose to suffer.”
We choose to suffer when the suffering is smaller than the good that we seek to accomplish.
Grateful to soldiers who have fought for our freedom - the chose to suffer because freedom was more important than their very lives.
Some athletes suffer: the submit themselves to gruelling training and sacrifices because, to them, the trophy, the cup, or the medal is deemed more worthwhile than comfort.
Some folks will go without sleep, without vacation, without free time, because to them success in business or in their career is deemed most important, so they choose to suffer.
1001 Illustrations that Connect Illustration 792: Maturing in Hardship
Gladys Aylward, a missionary to China during and after World War II, brought a hundred orphans, ages four to fifteen, safely over the mountains of China to Sian in Shensi.
But it was not without cost.
When Aylward arrived in Sian with the children, she was gravely ill. She had suffered internal injuries from a beating by the Japanese invaders in the mission compound at Tsechow. In addition, she was wracked with fever, typhus, pneumonia, malnutrition, shock, and fatigue.
Through her ordeal Aylward learned to choose Christ over anything else life had to offer. When the man she loved, Colonel Linnan, came to visit her in Sian and asked her to marry him, she declined because she knew marriage would interfere with the work God had given her among the children of China. She said good-bye to Linnan at the train station, and they never met again. Gladys continued serving God in China and England until her death in 1970.
Through our suffering in ministry, God wants us to learn obedience to increase our maturity in Christ.
—Gary D. Preston, Character Forged from Conflict (Bethany, 1999)
Before we get any further, let’s understand a key thing: Christ chose to suffer because He deemed YOU more valuable than His comfort. He picked you and me over Heaven. He chose you and me over bliss alone.
Every slash of the whip, every stroke on his face, every pound of the weight of His cross, every strike on the spikes in His hand, every tear from the thorns on His crown, every mocking word He heard, every hair torn from His beard. The thirst, the humiliation, the physical weakness. His cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” reveals unspeakable suffering, as God put on Him my sin and your sin, all of it.
The demands of God’s righteousness were met; every sin that you or I ever committed was paid in full. He cried out, “It is finished!”
How then can Paul write in verse 24, “fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ”? In modern English, we might say it this way: “that which is lacking in the afflictions of Christ” or “that which is lacking after the afflictions of Christ”.
Were Christ’s afflictions not enough? Did He leave anything undone? Did He need to do more? More for us?
No.
Christ’s sacrifice was more than enough to pay for all sins. His sufferings and His death were sufficient for you to be forgiven of anything that you have thought, said, or done that is wrong. There is nothing lacking in the sufferings of Christ for our salvation.
Rather, the verse is teaching us that just as Christ suffered for our salvation, we are now called to also suffer for the proclamation of that salvation.
The Gospel will not go forward in this world without people, Christians, who are willing to suffer.
An old song says, “Untold millions are still untold...” and it is going to remain that way unless we, as disciples of Christ, as a community of faith, are going to be willing to suffer. Our ease costs souls. Our comfort robs Heaven.
I see in our text a few motivations to make the choice: suffering over comfort for a greater cause.
I. Suffer for the body of Christ v. 24-25 (the church)
I. Suffer for the body of Christ v. 24-25 (the church)
Paul understood well that those who promise a life of comfort and ease are very wrong. Christianity is not about comfort, health, or wealth. Christ turned His own back on all of that.
The apostle Paul’s proclamation was not ease. His thought was suffering. Yes, the normal Christian life is one of joy, grace, rejoicing, power, and reward. But it also a life of suffering.
He is despised and rejected of men; A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: And we hid as it were our faces from him; He was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Christ suffered because His love was infinitely greater than His suffering. He could have chosen NOT to suffer, but He could not have loved us without suffering.
Looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The joy of providing you with forgiveness of sins, with a new life, with access to Heaven - that joy was greater for Jesus than the pain of the cross.
There is nothing that you could add to that to make up for your mistakes. To make up for your sin, I should say. He did it all. And He did it all because you are greater in Jesus’ eyes than His comfort, His ease, and any privilege that came with His being God.
As Christians, however, we are called to suffer as Christ suffered. Not in the same degree necessarily, but with the same motive. With the same calculation: that there is a cause greater than our ease; that there is a cause greater, much greater, than our comfort in this world.
Dave Goetz made a statement that I would like you to inhale, consider, and remember: “Community is not just a place for the suffering to find comfort, but for the comfortable to find suffering.”
This church is a place where those who suffer can come and find comfort. It also needs to be a place where those who are comfortable can come to suffer.
This is a place where we find something (rather...SOMEONE) worth suffering for. Everyone will suffer in this world; we may as well suffer for something that is of far greater value than anything else.
II. Suffer for the proclamation of Christ v. 26-28
II. Suffer for the proclamation of Christ v. 26-28
Jesus suffered for our salvation; we must suffer for the proclamation of that salvation.
These verses tell us that God desires for us to tell the nations about Jesus Christ.
To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory:
A mystery in the Bible is a truth that people do not yet understand, that has not yet been disclosed to them.
These verses teach us that God wants the nations (the Gentiles here) to know that Christ can come in their lives and put them on the path to glory. He can forgive their sins. He can give them new life. They don’t have to suffer religiously for forgiveness; Christ did all the suffering necessary for their salvation.
Our job is to tell them (v. 28) - to preach, to warn, to teach. Our target is “every man” (v. 28) that is every human being.
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
In 1752, Moravian missionary Johann Christian Erhardt organized a trading and missionary expedition to Labrador. The Moravian missionaries were representatives of the Protestant Moravian Church (see Moravian Canadians). When the group arrived, they anchored in a bay near today’s Makkovik, and prepared to establish the first Moravian station in Labrador. They named it Hoffnungsthal (“the valley of hope” or “Hopedale”). While four missionaries were attempting to erect a log house, digging and planting gardens, Erhardt, the ship’s captain and five crew members headed north to trade with Inuit. The group never returned, victims of the violent and troubled relationship that existed between Labrador Inuit and Europeans in those days. The remaining members of the crew and the missionaries abandoned the site and hastily sailed to Europe.
Over a 133-year period, they established a series of eight missions along the coast of Labrador.
The fact is: as Christians, we are called to suffer for the proclamation of the Gospel of Christ, and it will not get done without discomfort on our part.
III. Suffer with Christ v. 29
III. Suffer with Christ v. 29
When we make that choice, the choice to suffer because there is something far more valuable than our comfort and ease, we get amazing, supernatural support in that suffering. That support is called grace. God’s grace. God’s amazing grace.
In the book of Acts, chapter 9, we find an amazing truth: when Christians suffer, Christ suffers with them.
And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.
What a powerful thought: when I suffer (not because I made a dumb choice and am paying the consequences), but when I suffer because the mission of Christ is of greater worth and weight than my discomfort, Christ is suffering in me. He provides me with the power to suffer. He gives me the strength to suffer. He knows the limits of the suffering that I can bear, and He does not give me so much suffering to carry that I would be crushed. He is gracious, loving, and empowering
Christ once suffred FOR us (so that we could be forgiven and so that we could become the children of God), but today Christ suffers THROUGH us. Yet, his motivation remains the same:
For the Son of man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.
For even the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many.
Christ’s motivation has not changed: He wants to save those that are lost. In Vancouver. In Asia. In the islands. In the Middle East. In Africa. In Europe. All around the world, He is seeking and saving those that are lost, and He will sustain us as we choose to suffer for the message to go forward.
If you are anything like me, you suffer in a few ways:
Physically - sometimes I suffer because of an effort made for a cause. I sacrifice sleep; I sacrifice comfort. I get tired or I get aches. I can sacrifice physically, to get the job done here in Vancouver, to go on a missions trip, or to do something to get the Gospel out.
Financially - sometimes our family has to forego certain things in order to be able to invest better in the work of God. I can suffer financially for the cause of world missions.
Emotionally - sometimes I suffer because in my heart I keep meditating or thinking of a situation that bothers me. If I obey God, that fuels my prayer life. We can suffer in earnest prayer for the lost in our community and around the world.
Sometimes we summarize it this way. For missions, we can pray, give, and go. All three, done with passion, will imply some suffering.
Conclusion
Conclusion
We are called to “fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ” - to complete what is left to be suffered after the sufferings of Christ.
Not to be forgiven - Christ did ALL that.
Rather, we must suffer so that others can hear that Christ did ALL that. This suffering will no doubt be physical to a degree; it will be financial also; and it will be emotional.
However, it is worth it. Let’s be willing to suffer for a cause that is SO. MUCH. GREATER than our ease: telling people near and far about the work that Christ finished for them.