Audio Transcript
Many people come to faith because they think Christianity will fix their pain, and fix it fast. But what if God’s goal for his children is not that we enjoy an easier life, but that we share a deeper joy in him? Today, Pastor John walks through the book of 2 Corinthians to show how suffering isn’t wasted — it’s transformed in Christ. Today on Ask Pastor John: suffering for joy.
Pastor John, as May begins, so begins another read through 2 Corinthians in our Bible reading in the first half of this month. How would you challenge someone who believes Christianity is mostly about emotional healing and feeling good again? They don’t want to suffer. They want relief. They want to rid life of all discomforts. For that fix, many would believe in Christ. How does this book we are diving into now, 2 Corinthians, point us to a God who doesn’t just fix pain, but who intends to use our most challenging experiences in life in order to deepen our joy?
Second Corinthians really is a sobering and thrilling gateway into the Christian life. I think it’s fair to say that no other book in the New Testament is more stark or painfully realistic about the sufferings that Christians experience in this life. At the same time, this book, more often than any other New Testament book, insists on overflowing joy in the Christian life in spite of — even because of — that suffering. That’s what makes it so peculiar and sobering and thrilling as a gateway into the Christian life.
One way to come at this book is to ask, if there is so much suffering that Christians are to expect, what’s good about the good news? If you can be killed in persecution or die of cancer at age 42, say, and leave four kids behind, what’s good about the good news? And the answer that comes back from this book is that, first, the afflictions and suffering are actually working for our good — yes, even the ones that end in death. And second, there is a pain that the gospel really does relieve, both in this world and the next.
So, let me touch on three things: the suffering, the way suffering is working for our good, and the pain that the gospel really does relieve right now.
1. Suffering
Here’s an example of Paul’s afflictions as a Christian, and I think they’re not unique to him. This is 2 Corinthians 6:4–5, 8–10:
As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger. . . . We are treated as impostors, and yet are true . . . as dying, and behold, we live . . . as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich.
Now, how much of that any particular Christian is called upon to endure is up to God, but none of it should surprise us. This is what Jesus promised in John 16:33: “In the world you will have tribulation.” It’s just a promise from the Lord: in the world, tribulation. “But take heart; I have overcome the world.” So, that’s the first thing: the suffering.
2. For Our Good
Here’s the second thing: God makes these tribulations work for our good. Here are two examples:
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. . . . We felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. (2 Corinthians 1:8–9)
God’s purpose (not Satan’s purpose) in Paul’s suffering was the deepening of his faith. “That was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (2 Corinthians 1:9). In other words, this affliction might kill us, but God will raise us to everlasting joy. So, let the affliction drive you to God — that’s the point.
Here’s the second example that I’ll give. This is from 2 Corinthians 4:16–17:
We do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
And by that, he means eighty years — like a lifetime — is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. Even if this suffering takes us right to the grave, it is not without purpose because it is preparing.
“If sufferings drive us to God instead of driving us away from God, they produce a weight of glory beyond all comparison.”
Now, mark that word. So many people slide over that word. It is preparing an eternal weight of glory. It’s not just followed by an eternal weight of glory. Everybody who’s a Christian believes that. What a lot of people don’t realize is that it’s preparing, it’s producing, it’s bringing about. This wasting away of John Piper’s old, eighty-year-old body, this wasting away, is producing a greater weight of glory after death. This is an absolutely wonderful truth when we must suffer to the very end, or watch people suffer to the very end. If the sufferings drive us to God instead of driving us away from God, they produce a weight of glory beyond all comparison.
3. Gospel Relief from Pain
Now, here’s the third thing (which maybe we don’t stress enough, so let me really stress it). The third thing is this: There is a pain that the gospel, the good news of Christ crucified and raised for sinners, really does relieve — a pain it relieves now; not just in eternity, but now.
MEANINGLESSNESS
The gospel relieves the pain of meaninglessness now. Nothing in the Christian life is without meaning. There is divine purpose in everything. No Christian suffering is random or pointless or absurd, no matter what it looks like. It often looks that way. Of course it does; we’re finite. It is all working for our glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). When you trust Christ, you never have to feel the pain again that your life is meaningless, ever. It’s not — not one part of it.
GUILT
The gospel relieves the pain of guilt now — right now. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21). We do not wait for eternity for this freedom. It is now, and it is glorious — no condemnation, no guilt, now. Christ took it. God declares it. This is why Paul can say in 2 Corinthians 7:4, “In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy” — because he had no guilt. What an amazing freedom from pain! And it’s also why the Macedonians could say, “In a severe test of affliction, our joy overflows” (see 2 Corinthians 8:2). Judgment is passed. Guilt is gone. They were leaping for joy in the midst of their affliction because the pain of guilt was gone.
BEING UNLOVED
The gospel relieves the pain of being unloved now — right now. Second Corinthians 5:14–15 says,
The love of Christ controls us, because we have concluded this: that one has died for all, therefore all have died; and he died for all, that those who live might no longer live for themselves but for him who for their sake died and was raised.
Oh, how Paul loved being loved by Christ. He couldn’t get over it. He said, “The life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me” — me, he used me — “and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
FEAR OF DEATH
The gospel relieves the pain now of fearing death. The Bible says people are held in bondage by the fear of death their whole life long. It’s a painful thing. We have to suppress it all the time. “We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8). For Paul, death was not fearful. It was the final corner where we turn onto the street and see our old homestead. Home is home. What a gift in this life to be freed from the pain of the fear of death, because it means we are home with the Lord.
SUFFERING AFTER DEATH
And let me mention one more thing. The gospel relieves all suffering beyond death — all of it. There will only be an eternal weight of glory (2 Corinthians 4:17). There will be no more suffering — none, absolutely none. So, yes, it’s true, the gospel does not relieve eighty years of all suffering in this life — just eighty billion billion billion ages of all suffering instead. That’s all.
For our dear listeners, may God do a great liberating work in our lives as we walk together through 2 Corinthians, this amazing gateway into the Christian life.
