A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original article appears below. Jack Archibald is the minister of St. Andrew’s, Parry Sound, Ontario and speaker at the November 7 Renewal Day in West Flamboro, Ontario. See page 4 for further details.
According to those who claim encounters with space aliens, earth is known across our galaxy as “the planet of sorrows.” We should not be surprised, since the Bible teaches that same sad truth. Job laments that “man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7), and Moses concurs, “the length of our days is seventy years — or eighty, if we have the strength, yet their span is but trouble and sorrow” (Psalm 90:10). Jesus warns his disciples to expect trouble (John 16:33), so we Christians fool ourselves if we think our faith will somehow insulate us from pain. And that is a sad truth confirmed all too often in our own experience.
The prevalence of pain prompts the Christian seeking renewal to ask whether personal renewal is even possible in such suffering. The answer is that for the Christian, renewal is the one great redemptive gift of suffering.
The fact is that in and through trial God gives the Christian the best opportunity for renewal that is deep and lasting. This is a lesson Paul wants to teach in his second letter to the Corinthians. This is Paul’s most personal letter, and he laces it with references to his own profound suffering. He faced distress “far beyond (his) ability to endure” so that he despaired even of life” (1:8), and even felt he could liken his suffering to bearing in his own body the death of Jesus (4:10). He tells us this not to complain, or to gain our sympathy, but to instruct and encourage us with the paradox that “though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day” (4:16). Suffering is taking its toll physically, but spiritually he is growing steadily stronger. That is to say, he is discovering that spiritual renewal is a direct result of his suffering!
How can pain produce renewal? St. Augustine was once asked to sum up the essential of the Christian life in the briefest possible form. He replied that the Christian life can be summarized as “man serving God in faith, hope and love.” Second Corinthians shows how suffering effects renewal in these three essential areas of Christian experience.
We are renewed in faith through suffering because it forces us to lean more on God, and in our dependence we discover the sufficiency of his grace. In fact, Paul found this to be one purpose for his suffering, as he tells us of his own affliction: “this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead” (1:9). And now, having found deliverance from “such a deadly peril” that seemed like “the sentence of death,” Paul is confident that the Lord will continue to deliver him, however severe the trail. He trusts God in a new and deeper way because his suffering forced him back on God as his only help, and he found him faithful.
We are renewed in hope, because suffering brings us face to face with our mortality, and while for some the encounter produces terror and despair, the Christian is awakened in a new way to a great Christian doctrine that for the most part has been believed but has not played a particularly significant role in life. That doctrine is our hope of heaven, which may seem distant and even irrelevant when life is going well, but when we suffer, and suffer deeply, that hope becomes urgent. And so we are helped in our pain because as intense as our suffering may be from the perspective of this world, Paul can declare that from the view of eternity, “our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all” (4:17). This glory is the “light at the end of the tunnel” that inspires the Christian to endure affliction with confidence and courage, “for what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” (4:18), and beyond the devastating yet brief anguish of this life is everlasting joy. Our hope becomes real and relevant through suffering.
We are renewed in our love for God through suffering because in finding our faith vindicated, and our hope inspired, we are all the more grateful for his grace. Thus Paul launches his letter with a magnificent doxology, praising the “Father of Compassion and God of all Comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles” (1:3-4). Paul’s praise is the expression of his love. Far from growing bitter through suffering, his love for the Lord has deepened as he discovered the truth of God’s promise, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (12:9). And how can we not love God, and praise him even in our suffering when we discover with Paul, “when I am weak, then I am strong” (12:10)?
But if that love is real we will also encounter renewal in our compassion for one another. John reminds us that if God has loved us so greatly in Christ we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:10), and Paul applies that principle to our suffering by praising the God “who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God” (1:4). What a miracle to be free from the preoccupation of our own pain to be able and willing to alleviate the suffering of others. Here is the clearest evidence of God’s work of renewal in us!
Be sure that there is no incompatibility between our suffering and personal renewal. Indeed, in his second letter to Corinth Paul shows us from his own experience how our deepest sorrow can be a catalyst for our greatest growth, because through the grace of Christ “we are being transformed into His likeness with ever-increasing glory” (3:18), renewed in faith, hope and love.