Victorious Sufferer
God is as close as your next breath.
Sometimes God can seem really distant and separate from the world. God becomes to us an old man in the sky behind a curtain, pulling levers, sending down trials and suffering as He sees necessary to fulfill His master plan. It’s easy to make God into a big floating idea and separate Him from the world. When we do this we take away His humanity.
In Jesus Christ, God took up our life into his own. He became a man living and dying beside us. The story of Jesus is not some isolated event in History where God “came down” and then went up again. Jesus reveals to us who God is. In Jesus’ compassion we see that God is compassionate, in Jesus’ love we see that God loves, in Jesus' justice we see that God is just and what that justice looks like, in Jesus suffering we see that God suffers. God didn’t just take on our pain along time ago, He actually takes on our pain as we are in it.
I think it’s hard for people to see God as a sufferer because it presents a paradox. The God who is sovereign over all, who knows all, and who sees all can suffer? What is powerful enough for God to suffer under? Jesus said “no one can take my life from me. I lay down my life voluntarily. For I have the right to lay it down when I want to and also the power to take it again. For my Father has given me this command.” God joins with us in our suffering, and he actually feels our pain.
God’s true sovereignty is in the simple fact that God will win out in the end, He always wins, and He always will win. We can rest in the beauty of the paradox—God is in our pain and has victory over it.
God is the Victorious Sufferer.
Sometimes God can seem really distant and separate from the world. God becomes to us an old man in the sky behind a curtain, pulling levers, sending down trials and suffering as He sees necessary to fulfill His master plan. It’s easy to make God into a big floating idea and separate Him from the world. When we do this we take away His humanity.
In Jesus Christ, God took up our life into his own. He became a man living and dying beside us. The story of Jesus is not some isolated event in History where God “came down” and then went up again. Jesus reveals to us who God is. In Jesus’ compassion we see that God is compassionate, in Jesus’ love we see that God loves, in Jesus' justice we see that God is just and what that justice looks like, in Jesus suffering we see that God suffers. God didn’t just take on our pain along time ago, He actually takes on our pain as we are in it.
I think it’s hard for people to see God as a sufferer because it presents a paradox. The God who is sovereign over all, who knows all, and who sees all can suffer? What is powerful enough for God to suffer under? Jesus said “no one can take my life from me. I lay down my life voluntarily. For I have the right to lay it down when I want to and also the power to take it again. For my Father has given me this command.” God joins with us in our suffering, and he actually feels our pain.
God’s true sovereignty is in the simple fact that God will win out in the end, He always wins, and He always will win. We can rest in the beauty of the paradox—God is in our pain and has victory over it.
God is the Victorious Sufferer.
Comments