Not So Strange
“Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: but rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part He is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified.” — i Peter iv. 12-14.
ONCE it seemed strange to the Apostle Peter that his Master should think of suffering. Now he thinks it strange that He could have imagined anything else; and he writes to the scattered Christians, bidding them not to count it strange if their path lies through fiery trial and bitter pain. “Think it not strange!” But it does seem strange — strange that the waters of a full cup should be wrung out to the saints, whilst sinners walk on the sunny side of the hedge! Strange that the wicked should be permitted to plot so much and so successfully against the righteous! Strange that the profane sit on the judgment seats at which the godly and devoted are arraigned for no other fault than their endeavours for the good of men! Strange to find some of the sweetest and noblest of God’s children racked with agony, dying of cancer, beset with poverty, misunderstanding, and hatred.
To the eye of natural reason it was strange that thousands of martyrs should die in the amphitheatres of Rome, and illumine the public gardens, whilst Nero revelled in his splendid palace-halls! Strange that the saints of the Lord should suffer in dungeon and at stake, whilst a Bonner, a Jeffries, a Claverhouse, gained place and pelf by their destruction! Strange that the progress of the Church has always been marked by the thin trail of blood! It is hard not to think it strange. And yet it would be stranger still if it were not so. Let us now look into The Considerations which ROB Suffering of its Strangeness: —
(i) This world is in revolt. — Marvellous to relate, it has, like ancient Israel,’ rejected God from its throne, and has chosen another god, who is repeatedly referred to by our Lord as “the prince of this world.” Saul rules the visible world; while David, the rightful king, is keeping himself hid amid the growing numbers of those who love him. Is it to be wondered at that the servants of the Divinely designated Prince should experience rough treatment at the hands of the rebel forces who disown his sway? It could not be otherwise.
(2) Along this way the Master went. — From the moment of his birth, when Herod sought to slay Him, to the last moment of his life, He was a lily among thorns, a silent lamb among strangers. His brethren hated Him, and could not speak peaceably to Him. Those whom He came to gather, as a hen gathers her chickens under her wing, refused Him with contumely and reproach, and finally wounded Him to the death. There never was such a union in hatred as that which encircled Jesus as with a ring of forked flame, when He went to the cross. Ah, blessed One, Prince in the realm of misery, as in all other spheres, Thou hast endured the contradiction of sinners against Thyself, till reproach broke Thy heart; and it is not for us to choose a happier pathway, or an easier lot, lest we should seem not to belong to Thee or to bear Thy name.
(3) This is the way home. — When Samuel bade adieu to the young king-elect, on whose life the eyes of all Israel were about to turn, he told him of certain signs which should befal him on his way (i Sam. x.). And the prophet probably did this to give hiiVi materials for forming a true estimate of the Divine authority of the communication which he had just received. He must have felt more and more convinced at every step that Samuel was a true prophet, and that he was on his predestined way. So when we see or experience the hate entertained towards Christianity and Christians by those whom they mean to benefit, and reahze that it exactly fulfils the repeated predictions of our blessed Lord, we, too, are persuaded that we
are on
“the way the prophets went,
The road that leads from banishment.”
If we were universally beloved, and no voice were ever raised in hatred or calumny, we might truly question whether we were at all on the heavenward track. It is stated so emphatically that if we are without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then we are bastards and not sons. And, again, it is said, through much tribulation we must enter into the kingdom of God. As mountain-climbers after a snowstorm can tell the path by the line of posts placed at intervals along the mountain side, so may Christians tell that they are on the track of the Church by the antagonism manifested against their religion in Jesus Christ.
It must be so just in proportion to the sincerity and consistency of our religious life. If we are living as we should, we condemn the world around us. “There is in the life of the Christian a convincing light which shows the deformity of the works of darkness, and a piercing heat which scorches the ungodly and troubles their consciences. This they cannot endure, and hence rises in them a contrary fire of wicked hatred, and out of this the fiery trials of the godly.”
(4) There is an object in such suffering. — Though it may seem to spring causeless from the ground, yet in point of fact it is carefully designed by the skill of the great Artificer. There may have been many a previous secret prayer for growth in grace and usefulness; and the answer has come in the use of fire, file, and hammer, wielded by God, though furnished by the hatred of the sons of men. The malignant deed of cruelty may proceed from the treachery of a Judas; but the cup must be taken as from the Father’s hand. Though the missile may be hurled by malice and illwill, yet if it is permitted to pass through the environing presence of God, it has become his appointment for the refining and maturing of the sufferer’s character. In this sense his permissions become his appointments. We cannot become new sharp threshing instruments, without fire; and therefore it is not strange when we are plied by it to the uttermost. But One sits beside who holds our pulse between his fingers, and will not let the heat be too searching, or the discipline too severe. There is no other way of eliminating much of the selfish dross of our natures.
(5) Herein we partake of Chrisfs stifferings. — Of course there is a sense in which Christ’s sufferings are unapproachable. They stand as a solitary obelisk on the sands of time. He trod the winepress alone. There is no sorrow like unto his sorrow, in the day in which the Lord afflicted Him. And yet there is a sense in which we fill up that which is behind of the sufferings of Christ. His life in us meets the same treatment as it did in Him. Knowing that we cannot partake of his sacrificial and substitutionary sufferings, yet we may all know something of his other sufferings when He was tempted; when He foresaw the doom of men, and wept; when He endured the contradiction of sinners against Himself; when He surrendered Himself to do and suffer the holy will of God! Ah, it is good to share anything with Him. Sweet things are bitter when He is absent, and bitter things sweet if He is near. Would that we were closer drawn into his most intimate friendship, though the connecting links were clamps of iron, forged in the fiery furnace!
As St. Bernard said. He always fed when they wanted to make Him King, and presented Himself when they wanted to crucify Him. With this clearly in mind let us not hesitate to adopt the noble words of Ittai the Gittite: “As the Lord liveth, and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be” (2 Sam. xv. 21). And He will surely answer, as that same David did to another fugitive who came to identify himself with his cause: “Abide thou with me, fear not; for he that seeketh my life seeketh thy life, but with me thou shalt be in safeguard.” We partake of his sufferings, and He of ours. If anything is too small to tell Him about, it is too small to worry over; but if things worry and fret you, remember that m all your affliction He was afflicted, and that when the Sauls persecute the Church they in reality touch the apple of his eye.
Is it not fit that we should follow our Captain? Would it be right for Him to sink fainting beneath his cross, whilst we are carried to heaven on beds of down? Shall He go through seas of anguish, and we pass round them by a safer and easier path? Shall He be beset by enemies, whom we skilfully elude and avoid, leaving Him to his fate? It must not be. If in the days of his flesh each member of his natural body shared in the suffering of the whole, feet and hands and head contributing their quota, but none exempted, so each member of his mystical body may expect to share still in his sufferings, rejection, and crucifixion, throughout the course of the ages as they pass.
(6) Look on to the end. — His glory shall be revealed! His sufferings quicken our anticipations of that blessed day. Too much comfort might make us forget ourselves and think ourselves at home, so that we might not so ardently reach out our hands towards our coming glories. Hence it is good to have been afflicted, because we have been taught to consider more fixedly the certainty and glory of the revelation of our hidden Lord. That is the reality; all things else are the baubles and gewgaws of an hour. And when He appears, we shall appear with Him in glory. Those who have been nearest the cross shall be next the throne. The light of his glory shall also irradiate us. We shall be like Him, and with Him, and in Him, for ever. In proportion to our sufferings shall be the rewards and honours of his kingdom. Ah, what bounding and leaping joy will be ours then, in comparison with which the sufferings of the present will seem unfit to be remembered!
(7) We are compensated for such suffering by the presence of the Spirit of glory. — When such suffering lies heavily on the soul, God sees to it that it is no loser. What is lost from without is replenished from within. As water is thrown on the fire from the one side of the wall, a bright angel on the other pours in oil through a tiny aperture, till the flame breaks out as coals of juniper. Ah, what compensations are ours! The Jews who walk the streets of Tangier and other Moorish towns, the hated of all the people, are said to have exquisitely furnished rooms within their ordinary-looking dwellings, where they surround themselves with every luxury, and comfort themselves. So, as the spiritual man turns from the hatred of men to the special bestowments of God: he is compensated a hundred-told. When we have least of human love, we have most of God’s. When father and mother forsake, He gathers us. When the sun of earthly prosperity sets, we are sensible of the glowing fire in the heart of the pillar of cloud, which otherwise we had never beheld, and which bespeaks his presence and care. Men can never understand this. They only see the prickly shell, not the kernel. They only handle the rough exterior case; they know not the spices and balm hidden within. They can measure what we renounce, but they cannot gauge the wealth of the Divine compensations. You will never know so much of God’s converse as when men “send you to Coventry.” You will never have so much of the Spirit of glory and of God as when familiar faces are averted, and hands are raised in scorn. Methinks we are more than repaid for all our losses by this far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.
Let us brace ourselves then to suffer whatever may befal, only .inxious that our sufferings are due, not to our want of Christianity but to our possession of it; not because of temper, or evil-speaking, or misbehaviour, but because we are so like the Master, and so near Him. So like Him that we are mistaken for Him. So near Him that we are bespattered by mud flimg at Him.
Not as a murderer, or as a thief, or as an evil doer, but as a Christian, It would be well indeed if we never suffered save as Christians; and whenever such suffering comes to us, let us count it all joy, and take it as the theme for a psalm; as the signal for a fresh outburst of “Glory to God in the Highest 1”