Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Colossians 1:24 – Thankfulness and Suffering

Sermon Notes for March 20, 2011 by Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri

Colossians 1:24. Please stand for the reading of God’s word. Colossians 1:24: “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up in my flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ for the sake of his body which is the church.”

Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for calling us here today and we pray that you would give us a heavenly perspective on our lives today. Help us to understand particularly, Father, sufferings and affliction. Help us to see the relationship of these things to our Savior and to our life in Him. Bless us Lord God in this season as we attempt to think of our sufferings correctly and to give you thanks and rejoice in the context of them. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Amen.

Please be seated.

Suffering is ubiquitous. That means it’s around all the time. It’s almost ever-present, omni-present, we could say. Sufferings are much of the context of our lives. I hear somebody blowing their nose. I had a discussion with one of my children last night about how does your music glorify Christ, how does your blowing your nose glorify Christ? She asked. And I said, “Well, at least you admit your music is like blowing my nose.” No, the point is actually that both things—the music we listen to and the blowing of our noses—should glorify Christ in some way. They’re all to be done to the glory of God.

Blowing our noses, for me at least this week, happens in the context of suffering, physical suffering. The Lord began to prepare me for this sermon several weeks ago in the study of this particular text. But last Sunday particularly—Sunday evening we had some folks over. We were playing—well, I won’t say we played, but I think I cracked my rib and you know I’ve heard people lately cracking their ribs riding ATVs and working on cars and stuff. And that’s all I think I cracked my rib. I’ll be going to the doctor tomorrow to see if it’s actually cracked. But if I did, I did it playing Scrabble. So you know, you know you’re old if you now crack your rib playing Scrabble.

A tile went on the floor. Sitting in a chair with arms, I leaned over too far to try to get the tile and ow. So all week long I’ve had trouble breathing deeply, pain, etc. My eye continues to water from the surgical procedure of the scraping of my cornea, and it’s my left eye, and it’s my left rib, and I can’t really cough very well, and the congestion—it’s just a mess. It’s suffering. It’s suffering.

People ask me this morning, “How are you, Pastor Tuuri?” “I am suffering,” I said. “Well, now that’s probably true more often than not, right?” Whether it’s physical suffering or relationship suffering or patience sort of suffering—waiting for what God hasn’t given to you yet. Whether it’s the suffering of knowing that you don’t really know Christ the way you should and you want to and you sort of feel bad about that and you suffer for that reason.

Sufferings are all around us—the small things. And then there’s huge sufferings worldwide as we’ve witnessed in Tokyo over the last couple of weeks and in Japan. Tremendous suffering going on. Now that suffering, you know, is the direct result of a natural disaster—so-called an act of God. What do we do with sufferings? How do we explain them? What do we do? How do we process them? That’s my talk today.

As we sang “Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted,” it would be an interesting study to look at what Isaiah, for instance, tells us about the sufferings of our Savior. You see the things I’ve just sort of talked about. You do see the result of people’s sin, of course, and their sin against Him particularly, and so He suffers affliction. But you also see relational sufferings with everybody abandoning Him. We have sufferings that are psychological as we try to process our world. Sufferings are all around us.

It would be an interesting study to look at the sufferings of the Savior and see how that kind of categorizes suffering for us. This is what we’re going to talk about today—somehow correctly processing suffering, knowing what to think about it. I believe that we’re here for that reason. I think you young people particularly have difficulty with suffering—kind of a deep psychological difficulty processing the world around. I’ve passed on a recommendation to parents of teens. There’s a guy named Mark Gregson and he has these daily minutes on the radio. This one I thought was pretty good. Mark says this:

“It was once held that duty, responsibility, and service are more important than personal needs and wants. Not anymore. Teenagers today were taught from an early age by their school, by the media, and even by their baby boomer parents to follow their dreams and pursue happiness above all else. Their own happiness and being true to themselves became paramount, not duty, responsibility, character, personal sacrifice, or service to others. What’s come out of it is that we’ve created a perfectly narcissistic generation. They have very high self-esteem and they get everything they want. So you’d think they’d be happy and content, but study after study shows that they are more confused, depressed, anxious, and unhappy than ever.”

So young people, the world—the post-Christian world, not yet pre-Christian, but totally pagan—but the post-Christian world that your parents have given you today in this country, at least, probably has left you ill-equipped for suffering. You’re told you shouldn’t have to suffer.

A church like ours, I think, has particular difficulties dealing with suffering as well. We’re postmillennial. We believe in obedience and blessing. And we believe that the world is getting better and all this stuff. And so what’s suffering about? It’s particularly difficult for churches that embrace a positive view of the future, I think, to acknowledge even suffering—to pull it up out of the corners and the recesses of our mind where it sits. We don’t like to tell each other we’re suffering. So here we are, and this is what we’re going to talk about today based on the scriptures.

C.S. Lewis says, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.” So sufferings have that purpose. God is getting our attention in particular directions, and we want to think about them. Now we’re going to have a conversation based on God’s word about them. This is what we do every Lord’s day, right?

The worship service—we can talk about the sacrifices and this and that and the other thing, but very simply: the Lord God called you here today. He said, “Come to my house. By the way, my house is in heaven. I’ll kind of bring it down, but it’s really a heavenly house, and I want you to come here today.” He called us to worship. And as we came into His house praising Him, He stopped us at the door and said, “Now, now I need you to wipe your feet off. You’ve got some sins still. I know you’ve confessed most of your sin. You’ve got some sin. Before you come into the center of my house here, wipe your feet off on the mat, please.” And we confessed our sins. And He assured us, “Yeah, okay. Come on in.”

And He sat us down in the living room. That’s where we’re at now. And He says, “You know, we’re going to have a great meal here in a little bit, but first, I want to have a talk with you. I want to explain some things to you. I want to explain your world and what’s going on from a heavenly perspective. You know, you can sort of get these bird’s-eye views of what’s happening and sort of things look different from a heavenly perspective. And the heavenly perspective, of course, isn’t just isn’t primarily geographic in being high, but it’s the perspective of the truth of the God who made all of this and who is superintending all of this. He’s the perfect one to help us understand it.

And so God always has this living room conversation as we’re getting ready to go to the dining room and have this wonderful communion meal with Him. This is where we’re at—that living room conversation is a heavenly perspective to help us process our world, help us to understand it, and then obey how He wants us to deal with the world in which we live.

So the discussion today is about sufferings, your sufferings. I don’t know what particular ones you’re going through, but I know we all got them, and I want you to think about them. I want you to think: why are these things happening? What does Scripture tell me? What does my heavenly Father tell me is His purpose in sovereignly superintending these things? And after we have this discussion, we’re going to pray that we can do what God’s told us to do. And then He’s going to say, “Come on into the dining room. Let’s have a communion meal together.”

So He calls us. We confess our sins. He consecrates us by helping us to understand things from His perspective through His word. And then He feeds us, has communion with us at the Lord’s supper, the Lord’s table. And then He commissions us. We’re supposed to go out and not just be intellectually satisfied that we know what suffering is and what His perspective is, but to do something about it.

And the single thing I want you to really—you know, there are many things we can do about it as the Lord will speak to you throughout the next 45 minutes or so. But the one thing I want you to do is to give thanks and rejoice in the context of sufferings. And I think once we understand God’s perspective on it, we’ll be able to do that better. We’re told in the scriptures to be thankful in everything. And so that includes sufferings.

And Paul today in the verse we just read from rejoiced in his sufferings. And that’s not an isolated statement in the New Testament. So you know, if you got one of those little red rocks here’s something to kind of put into it this year during Lent. Return to the Lord. Lent is sometimes focused on as a meditation of sufferings. We’re focusing the theme verses in the foyer as you come in on returning to the Lord and He’ll be gracious and heal you. And what I’m asking you to do today is to return to the Lord by forsaking grumbling about the many things that go wrong for us in our lives—forsaking swearing about it and getting upset about it and having a bad attitude.

You know, if you’re old like me, you can either develop a habit of being thankful for the sufferings that God brings into your life or not. And if not, you become kind of a cranky old person who’s never happy. That’s what happens over a long life of not being thankful when God doesn’t do things the way we want Him to do. So I urge you today to repent of grumbling in relationship to sufferings. Embrace, you know—nature abhors a vacuum. God’s the same way. He made nature. Don’t just get rid of the old man in response to suffering. Put on the new man. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ who is thankful in the context of fulfilling the will of the Father by going through the sufferings He went through—all of which were unearned and were different from ours in that particular way.

So that’s what we want to do today. We want to see things from God’s perspective.

Another Lewis quote. Lewis said, “I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen. Not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else.” Now, as we examine the life and times of the Lord Jesus Christ, His death and resurrection, and the scriptures explain everything in our world based upon that. So God’s view, Christianity, explains everything. And that’s what He wants to do now, I believe, in the context of this worship service—is to explain sufferings to us and talk about this a little bit.

We’re going to have to get to verse 24, but first I want to kind of swap the outline around a bit. I want to actually talk first about what’s at the bottom of your outline—some of the things that the Bible tells us about suffering. We’re going to have to answer the question: what was lacking in Christ’s afflictions? That’s what Paul talks about in Colossians 1:24. But before we do that, I want to think in general about purposes or types of suffering in the scriptures. And we’ll go through this quickly.

So it’s the bottom part of your outline—the number six section actually: purposes or types of suffering. There are mysterious sufferings. I list the book of Job here. You know, there are sometimes, and we’ll look at various verses here, that directly tell us things about why suffering happens. And Job didn’t have anything like that. He didn’t know what was going on, really, right? And the reason Job was suffering—the primary purpose given to us in the book—is a demonstration to Satan of the righteousness of those whom God calls to Himself—their steadfastness, their character, their keeping to the covenant and belief in God.

Now, Job wouldn’t have any way of knowing anything about that. He went through a lot of sufferings, and really it was mysterious. And sometimes we’re not going to know what our sufferings are for. We can’t peg down an answer for everything. Now, one thing that the book of Job does tell us, though, is that it’s not always about us, right? Because I mean, God chose Job as an example to show Satan what God could do. Wasn’t really about Job. I mean, it’s sort of was, but not really. Job was trying to figure out, and his friends were helping him figure out, what’s in it for me? What’s going on with me here? Well, God is using you for other purposes, my friend. It’s not always about you.

So, number one: there are sufferings that you’re not going to understand, that are mysterious in your life. That’s okay. We trust the character of God to be doing all things well. He’s most powerful. He’s most wise, and He’s most loving to you. Now, that’s the context—the character of God—for understanding sufferings when we don’t understand sufferings.

So, first there are mysterious ones. Secondly, there are purifying ones—ones that make us better. Now, you know, they could be corrective against sin, but I’m not talking about that kind of suffering. I’m talking about sufferings that just move us ahead and mature us—not necessarily aimed at something we did. I mean, if you blow your hand off, you’re going to suffer for your sin. But beyond that, sufferings happen to us to bring us character.

Romans 5 says this. Paul says, “Through whom also we have access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations.” Why? “Knowing that tribulations produce perseverance; and perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope doesn’t disappoint because of the love of God which has been shed abroad in our heart.”

So some sufferings are not corrective in trying to get you to change something you did wrong. But they are sanctifying sufferings, right? They do have a moral effect on us. They’re sufferings that are involved with our general sanctification. He brings along things that are difficult for us. We persevere in doing what’s right. We develop character and hope and all that stuff. Just one example. But some sufferings are producing character in you.

And this is what Gregson was saying—how we failed our children so much. We’ve tried to shield them from all sufferings, and as a result they don’t, you know, have the character they would have had if they would have gone through the sort of sufferings that God says are good for us. And instead, you know, it’s just all about what great things you can be. Anybody can do whatever they want to do, and it’s just not true. Ask Job or ask all kinds of people in the scriptures. God’s interested in having us do things for Him—blowing our nose and listening to music to the glory of God and playing it for that purpose. And to that end, He brings sufferings into our lives.

So sometimes we thank God because we don’t know what’s going on. And sometimes we thank God because we can see that the particular suffering or affliction we’re going through is producing character.

In this last few days—it’s a very small, stupid example—but in these last few days, there have been a couple of times when I got a little panicky because this eye and the breathing and I can’t clear the lung out. And I’m like, I don’t know what’s going on. And so I begin to, you know, get fearful. I don’t know. I tamp that down. And see, I’ve grown then as a result. Not that I’ve done anything, but the Spirit of God grew me a little bit in my character. Small, stupid example.

You look at what the people in Japan have gone through for the last couple of weeks. Tremendous example of difficulties, trials, and tribulations. Not their fault, but the Lord God knows each one of those people and others that are in that country personally. We look at it as some big massive social event, and it is that. But it’s also a very personal event. Everything’s personal to us as well as corporate. And God is doing things in the lives of each one of those people through the suffering in Japan.

And for many of them it’s not that He’s correcting sin, but He is producing more character. He there’s a moral effect going on in their lives as a result of what they’ve had to suffer. So moral effect is another purpose of suffering—sanctification.

I think this is true in a general sense in terms of cultures too. Let me explain that. If somebody dies in a hospital—at least they used to—they’d have a morbidity and mortality conference. So they would get together and somebody would be held responsible. They’d want to know all the details of why somebody died in our hospital, and then they’d want to fix the thing that happened. Now that’s a really good thing. To evaluate failures produces a medical system that improves in ways that it wouldn’t have improved if nobody would have died, right? We had a lot of sick people lingering away. But no, health care gets better because particular problems happen, and then that test is followed by evaluation.

The reason why we’re talking about at the most tens of thousands of Japanese dying instead of hundreds of thousands of Japanese dying or millions perhaps is because mankind is being tested and evaluated. He knows that, and he responds to the earthquake by building better structures, right? You know, if they hadn’t have considered earthquakes when they built up the massive city of Tokyo, you’d have millions dead. But what they’ve done is they’ve learned from past earthquakes, and they’ve built building standards for houses and buildings, etc., that can withstand them. That’s a cool deal.

And that kind of construction technique that comes out of trials, it comes out of affliction and suffering, that produces a general soundness to the whole city that’s going to let it be much more productive and buildings won’t be falling over on themselves. You know, after 20 or 30 years, those things are going to last. So there’s a general beneficial effect of the trials that God brings along—the evaluations, the testings, the shaking in this case, and then the tsunamis. You know, it’s hard, but we trust the character of God. And one thing He’s doing is He’s maturing mankind. We know now so much more about how to build buildings and structures to resist these events than we ever did hundreds of or thousands of years ago. Mankind has progressed.

The sanctifying effect on the individual is also a sanctifying effect on the general culture. And one reason I think that bad things happen now that are difficult trials, afflictions is because God is maturing us individually, and He’s also maturing mankind generally. Now, you know, at the same time He’s doing his own thing with each individual involved. But there’s a corporate evaluation and testing going on as well. And so we can give God thanks in the midst of sufferings knowing that they have this moral positive effect.

Third, they deepen our relationship with Jesus. In Philippians 3:10, Paul says, “That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death.”

So Paul said that for him sometimes the sufferings were to deepen his knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ. Who’s Jesus? Part of who Jesus is—to be understood in His sufferings for us, okay? And our sufferings then build a sense of unity between us and Jesus. It deepens our fellowship with Him, okay? Now, Paul goes on to say that the end result of suffering is joy, right? There’s glory at the other end of suffering.

So we’re not talking about just whistling past the graveyard. It’s to an end. Jesus dies, so the resurrection happens. But the point here is a simple one: that sometimes sufferings—and we almost never do this, I think most of us don’t—sometimes the proper response to suffering is to give God thanks for causing us to meditate on the work of Jesus. Some friend betrays you—think of Jesus. They all abandoned Him on the cross, right? Peter denied Him three times. So sometimes it’s to deepen our fellowship and understanding of the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Kind of counterintuitive.

We think, again as postmillennialists, that the way to really know Jesus is to know the victory. But Paul says that at least part of it is knowing the afflictions and suffering, and we have a fellowship in those sufferings. And He focuses on death. Why do we die? I think it’s a pretty good question. We’ll take it up again later.

Fourth, there is a glorification effect—a glory effect. As an example, 2 Corinthians 4:17: “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.”

The weight of glory. So somehow our afflictions, probably in relationship to building this character stuff, results in an exceeding weight of glory for us in the end process. So some of our afflictions and sufferings are for the purpose of building our own glory. Now that’s what we want. But you know, this worship service is a reminder that you get in through the door only by pleading the blood of Jesus Christ. Everybody wants knowledge, and everybody wants a good time at the table, and everybody wants to be, you know, God’s men in the world. The question is: are you going to do that through the mediation of Jesus Christ or not, right?

So what I’m saying here is we all want glory. We all want to be somebody. But God says one of the ways that he builds our eternal glory is through suffering. We should be thankful for suffering because it actually gives us exactly what we want. Again, it’s a little counterintuitive. That’s what suffering is. It’s counterintuitive to the philosophies of the world that say “win-win-win. I’m a winner.” Well, yeah, but we win through suffering is what the scriptures tell us. We get glory through being humbled.

There’s another reason that’s not on your outline, but another reason is to comfort other people with these things. 2 Corinthians 1:4: “Who comforts us in all our tribulations, that we may be able to comfort those who are in any trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.”

So if you learn about the comfort of God with understanding your afflictions, and you know that the proper response is a degree of joy—not you know, ignoring the pain. There’s a time to be grieving, right, but to have some kind of deep-seated thankfulness to God for whatever He’s putting us through, trusting His character—we can be comforted by the Holy Spirit in our trials and our sufferings so that we comfort other people.

Again, it’s not about us at the end of the day. Even these things that we’re saying the scriptures teach us is to the end that we can minister that to other people. The context for all these things is the body of Christ. That’s Paul’s context in Colossians 1, which we’ll see in a couple of minutes. But there’s another purpose of suffering: so that we can help other people that are suffering.

You know, I went through some incredible panic attacks many, many years ago. Don’t hardly ever have them anymore, but you know, they were very helpful to me in my pastoral counseling relationship with certain people who are really struggling to keep a grip on reality. Very helpful to see things from that perspective. God puts us through these things. Sometimes our sufferings and affliction are for the purpose of helping other people who have these sufferings and affliction. God is pleased to deal with—usually through other people, right? Through other people.

That’s another purpose of suffering. Another purpose is fulfilling messianic suffering. What do I mean? This is kind of a strange one. I don’t want to spend a lot of time on it, but the scriptures tell us about this in Daniel 12:1: “At that time, Michael shall stand up, the great prince who stands watch over the sons of your people. There shall be a time of trouble such as has never been since there was a nation, even to that time. And all that time your people shall be delivered—everyone who is found written in the book”—talking about the coming of Jesus and the period of time that there’d be this great tribulation.

Now, there are eschatologies these days that put that way off in the future, but it seems a careful study of the scriptures say that during the time of Jesus—and you know, a few decades after His death and resurrection—was this great time of tribulation and suffering. And the prophecies were that the Messiah would bring in this new creation, this new order, and it would happen in the context of the people suffering as well.

And so, you know, what we see in the scriptures we have to remember is that a lot of the suffering going on from 30 AD to 70 AD is God filling up messianic sufferings—not Jesus Himself, but Jesus suffering through the church—so that the new creation would be ushered in at 70 AD with the destruction of the old world at Jerusalem.

Now, that probably doesn’t make sense to a lot of you. That’s okay. But just understand that there was a period of time at which apostolic sufferings were related to the witness of Jesus Christ to the Jews, and then the destruction of the Jewish church that had rebelled and—those portions of it that didn’t come to faith in Jesus Christ.

You’ll recall that Jesus in the Gospels talks about the birth pangs, right? And so there are these birth pangs of suffering and tribulation that lead up to this consummation of judgment on Jerusalem in 70 AD. And some people think that this is where we start to talk about Paul in Colossians 1:24—that what he’s making up in the insufficiency of Christ’s afflictions are the sufferings of Christ’s men, his apostles, in preparation for the world changing. So that’s not one that we share in, but that was one of the purposes of suffering for the 40 years following the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Related to that, and one that we do have relationship to, is the last one: Colossians 1:24. I think that the primary purpose—no matter what the specific details are—the primary purpose of Paul’s suffering is propagation. It’s missional effect. We suffer so that others will come to faith. Paul is suffering for the church, and what he’s doing is increasing the number of converts through his suffering. You know, you’ll often hear that the blood of the martyrs is the seedbed of the saints, or whatever it is. That’s frequently [true]—God is pleased to have martyrs. The purpose in sufferings—either temporal sufferings or even death—where people finally realize, hey, this thing’s real.

There was a Billy Graham evangelistic missions worldwide missions meeting some years back, and a man named Joseph who was a Messianic warrior from Africa came to the meeting and talked about his experiences evangelizing in Africa. Michael Card tells this story. John Piper in sermons on suffering relates this story as well. And you know, it’s not unusual—I mean, sort of unusual, but you hear these sorts of stories.

And Joseph had been brought to Christ through the preaching of an itinerant evangelist, and he became one himself. And he went back to his own village that he grew up in. And he told them about Jesus suffering and dying on the cross for their sins. And they didn’t like it. The men held him down. The women beat him with barbed wire and nearly killed him. And they threw him out of town. And he wakes up, you know, next to some water. It takes him a couple of days to revive, but he gets back on his feet and thinks, “Man, I must have done something wrong here.”

So he gets back and he goes back to the village and he tells him the same thing. Tries to be more careful about the details, doesn’t understand why they’ve rejected him. He tells him the same thing—that Jesus suffered and died for their sins and they need to believe in Him and serve Him and not their false gods. Again, the men hold him down. The women beat him with barbed wire, reopening the old wounds, nearly dies. They throw him out of the village. He eventually recovers, goes back again.

Same thing happens. They hold him down. The women beat him with barbed wire, but this time he wakes up in his own bed in his village. In this village he was in. And the people that had beat him were around his bed crying because they felt bad about what they had done to this man three times. It took the third preaching of the gospel to convince them that what it was saying was true. And it took his suffering for them to see what they were doing to a perfectly fine guy. It took that—God used that, I should say, to bring them to conviction for their sins.

And so sometimes suffering is for the purpose—and this is suffering for the cause of Christ. Sometimes suffering is for the purpose of propagation. It’s not, you know, we don’t add anything to the atoning suffering of Jesus and propitiation, but this is suffering that produces propagation. And you know, you don’t know what it’s going to do in your life. You don’t know what suffering you go through that non-Christians see you go through in a thankful, non-bitter, non-grumbling way. You really have no idea what the end result of that witness of Christ and belief in Him—even in the context of sufferings—what that’s going to do in terms of the witness that you bear to Jesus with your words.

But it is certainly true that for the last 2,000 years, a myriad number of people have come to faith observing the sufferings of those who are trying to tell them about who the Lord Jesus Christ is. The word is matched by their deeds of self-sacrificial giving, going again and again to people that are going to kill you. And of course, Elizabeth Elliott’s husband was such a martyr, and the same story was true there, you know, and the killing of these missionaries and the martyrdom of them was essential to then eventually some of them becoming Christians and coming to the faith.

So this is another purpose of suffering. And it’s important to recognize that this is part of what’s going on, and I think it’s probably part of what’s going on in the text today in Colossians 1:24.

Let’s look now at Colossians 1:24. Look at your second sheet. I’ve got the entire section here of Colossians 1:15-2:15 laid out for you.

You know, what are these sufferings of Paul? What was missing in the afflictions of Christ? As I said, it can’t be His atoning death—the vicarious sufferings of Christ to produce salvation for us. This is not lacking. In verses 2:13 and 2:14, we read that “you being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven you all trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us.”

So the death of the Lord Jesus Christ is completely sufficient. There’s nothing lacking. That payment for our sins is totally finished. Paul says it right here in this very context in Colossians 2. And of course, this is the consistent witness of the New Testament—that there’s nothing lacking in Jesus’s sufferings on the cross.

And actually, this particular word for the afflictions of Christ—making up for the afflictions of Christ—I don’t think there’s ever any place in the New Testament where the death of Jesus for sinners is referred to as afflictions. You know, Paul uses the word cross. He uses—he talks about the blood. He talks about the death. But really, the afflictions of Christ are never given in relationship to His work on the cross for sinners. So that, in and of itself, a simple understanding that the word isn’t used in that particular way helps us to understand that’s not what’s going on here.

So the question is: what is going on? Let’s look at the overall structure. And I think this structure is from Peter Leithart. I’ve modified it a little bit—not much. It’s pretty much intact. I’ve changed a couple of verses here and there. And what I’ve done for you is underline the common words that match the sections up. And we won’t go through all of that, but I do think it’s quite important to read the first couple of sections—the A and B sections.

This is the beginning of what probably is an ancient hymn. Much of this section is involved with hymns to the Lord Jesus Christ, but these first five verses particularly: “He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers.” And those two words—principalities and powers—are picked up in the concluding section that matches the A prime section at the end.

So what we have here is the preeminence of the firstborn. If you wanted to put a title on this A section: the preeminence of the firstborn. “All things were created through Him and for Him.” That’s important as Paul talks about this section that he’s opening up, this great description of Jesus Christ and His preeminence in everything. He’s created all things. They were through Him, and they are for Him. He is the end of all things as well.

So creation in its origin and in its destination really finds its sense in the person and work of Jesus Christ. That heavenly perspective that God is talking to us about in terms of our sufferings says—as we’re moving into the suffering that Paul talks about here—that everything that is has to be understood as being created by Christ and made for the purpose of culminating in His preeminence. So without Jesus, you can’t understand one thing in the world because it’s all about Him. He’s preeminent.

And notice that this isn’t a matter of personal—this isn’t just some kind of personal announcement of Jesus relative to you. Jesus has preeminence over all principalities and powers. Everything in the world, Jesus Christ is preeminent over. “He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.”

So we have this great statement of the preeminence of Jesus Christ. And then Paul relates it directly to the church. Very importantly, for Paul to talk about Christ and His preeminence immediately leads him into a discussion of ecclesiology. It immediately relates to the church. The church is the body of Christ. And so Christ’s preeminence has an immediate impact on the church. He brings the church into the discussion.

The next section: “For it pleased the Father that in Him all the fullness should dwell. By Him to reconcile all things to Himself, by Him, whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of the cross.”

So we have here in this next section—this B section—a pleasing reconciliation of all things by the suffering of the One in whom is all fullness. This One in whom is all fullness dies, suffers. He talks about that. This peace has been made through the blood of the cross. So the work of the Lord Jesus Christ—the blood of the cross—is how the fullness of Christ is made manifest and works out this reconciliation in the world.

And notice this, folks: it says in verse 19 that this—describing in these two verses—the atonement was not some sort of secondary plan. It wasn’t something that God was forced into because of man’s rejection of a first plan or something. This says that God—it was His pleasure—the incarnation and the vicarious death of the Lord Jesus Christ, His blood on the cross, very explicitly spoken of here. This was done as a result of the pleasure of God. It’s the pleasure of God to send the One who is preeminent over all things, principalities and powers, in whom all the fullness of deity dwells, right? It pleases God the Father, and it pleases the Son as a result, and it pleases the Spirit to have Him die, to shed His blood on the cross, to make peace between heaven and earth.

So the section in which is found our verse about the sufferings of Christ and Paul’s sufferings and rejoicing in them is preceded by an explanation that the suffering of Jesus on the cross, particularly, is part of the pleasure of God to make manifest the preeminence of Jesus Christ.

Now that, again, is counterintuitive. I mean, just think about that. It pleased God. It is the nature of God to love to suffer for other people, to shed His blood on the cross so that you might be brought back to life, so that you might be reconciled to the Father. It isn’t something He did grudgingly. He didn’t say, “Darn it.” He didn’t do it with a firmness of faith. “I just have to do this thing for these people.” Uh-uh. It was His pleasure to do it. It is His character.

You see, now if we share in the divine nature, so to speak—the character of God, not His deity, but in character—we’re made in the image of Christ. Now, if our whole being is found in relationship to who Jesus is, then in our being, it pleases us when we can suffer if it’s helpful to other people, to our own development, or for the purposes of the world. Is it not? It’s the nature of God to be pleased to send His Son to suffer and die on the cross for us. And if we’re going to be true to who Jesus has said we are, then—and it is in our new nature, it’s in our new man, which is in union with the Lord Jesus Christ—to embrace suffering for the purposes of serving others. Not to think, “I’m number one, and I don’t ever want to suffer.” But to rather say, you know, “Jesus is number one, but He’s number one because of His willingness and the pleasure of God to have Him suffer and die on the cross for us.”

And then this is related immediately to the Colossians in the third section: “And you, who once were alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, He has reconciled.”

So now the Colossians—were they like the Ephesians that Paul is preaching about? They were Gentiles. So he’s not saying, “you particular people, rebels.” I mean, that’s true. But what he’s saying is: you Gentiles who were cut off from everything have been brought into this.

Now, this is the great mystery revealed—that the church, the new ecclesiology of Jew and Gentile together, the division of the world that existed from the fall of man up to the coming of Jesus Christ, the division that existed because of sin, has now been done away with through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jew and Gentile themselves, emblematic of the split, the fracture in humankind, the brokenness of humankind has been brought together through the work of Jesus.

So the preeminence of Jesus and His nature to shed His blood on the cross for us, to give so that we might live, to suffer for the purposes of things other than Himself—that nature is now directly related to who Gentiles are. And it’s brought down to the Colossians themselves.

Paul had never visited the Colossians. What sufferings did he do? Well, that’s the next thing he begins to talk about. By the way, he talks then about them being staying firm in the faith, grounded, and steadfast. But then in the D section, he says, “I now rejoice in my sufferings for you. What sufferings did Paul do for the Colossians? He never visited them. He’s writing from prison. But well, for you is not just the Colossians here. It includes the Colossians, but what he’s saying is—for the Gentile converts, the whole church.

His sufferings are not just for the Philippians. So the sufferings that he’s doing is his entire apostolic ministry, which among other things has led to him being imprisoned and he’s been beaten. He’s gone through all kinds of difficulties. We know about Paul’s life. And Paul interpreted all these sufferings as for the sake of the ministry to the Gentiles—that God might reveal this unity of mankind once more.

So he rejoices in sufferings for them, and he fills up in his flesh what is lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Why? For the sake of his body, which is the church. Now, if we go down to the center section—going quickly now—if we go down to the center section of this, what we have in the F section is: “Him we preach, warning every man and teaching every man in all wisdom that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus. To this end I also labor, striving according to His working which works in me mightily. For I want you to know what a great conflict I have for you and those in Laodicea and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh.”

So at the very center of this section in which we find the sufferings of Paul making up for the missing afflictions of Christ—whatever that means—the very center is the apostolic proclamation, labor, and conflict. The sufferings that he’s enduring so that the Gentile churches might be brought in, encouraged, and made steadfast and walk in the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So what Paul is saying is: the sufferings that he’s talking about are for the purpose of his apostolic work of propagation of the faith. [They] may be related to the filling up of the messianic period from 30 to 70 AD. But in terms of application to us, it’s his work propagating the faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

There’s a parallel text that we could look at that might make this a little clearer. It is found in Philippians chapter 2. Turn to Philippians chapter 2. We’ll look at verse 30.

You know, this section begins actually in verse 25. He introduces—he says, “I consider it necessary to send you Epaphroditus, my brother, my fellow worker.” So he’s talking about Epaphroditus, but verse 30 is what we want to look at that has similar language to what we read here in Colossians 1:24: “Because for the work of Christ, he came close to death, not regarding his life to supply what was lacking in your service to me. To supply what was lacking in your service to me.”

Paul says that he’s suffering to make up what was lacking in the afflictions of Christ. Now, what was Epaphroditus doing? The Philippians had gathered help for Paul—probably money, books, materials, whatever it was. And they were giving this stuff to Paul for his ministry, the propagation of the faith. They had this great stuff, and they had to get it to him somehow. And Epaphroditus was going to go and get that stuff and bring it to Paul. And in the process of doing that, Epaphroditus has troubles. He nearly dies as a result. And he’s dying for the sake of taking this great wealth from the body of Christ to Paul for the purposes of other members of the body, for his ministry.

Now, there was no lack in the money that the Philippians had. The lack was getting it to where it was supposed to be used for kingdom work. That was the lack that Epaphroditus was willing to suffer death, if need be, to try to accomplish for the purposes of Christ. And in the same way, Paul seems to be saying in Colossians 1:24 that it’s not as if Christ’s vicarious atonement has anything lacking. It’s fully valuable. But it needs to get to the people for whom it was intended—just like the money from Philippi needed to get to Paul for the purposes of his work.

And so what’s lacking is not anything in Christ’s afflictions, His death on the cross, and His sufferings. What’s lacking is getting the purpose for which Christ died and suffered to the recipients that it’s intended to go to. It’s missional. It’s propagation. It’s not propitiation, right? That’s the purpose, I think, of what Paul is saying.

Now, you know, additionally, we have to say that, you know, that he could as well be saying that Christ’s afflictions—he’s using the term, but he’s really talking about his own afflictions—because for Paul to live is Christ. And whatever sufferings he’s going through are the sufferings of Jesus Christ in one sense, because his life is in Christ. Now his whole identity is wrapped up in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So maybe that’s what he’s saying too: well, Christ’s afflictions—that He’s called me as an apostle to the Gentiles to endure for the sake of the gospel. These aren’t quite done yet. And in fact, they won’t be done until he dies on the cross.

Remember I mentioned Philippians 3. He says, Philippians 3: “And I may know Him in the power of His resurrection, the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death—if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead.” Now, Paul knew he was attaining to the resurrection, but he says, “I haven’t got it yet because I haven’t died yet. If you don’t die, you don’t get resurrection life. If you don’t let this body die, you’re not going to get resurrection life.”

Now, that’s a suffering. That’s the ultimate suffering, I suppose—death of our bodies. But why do we have to go about doing that? Didn’t Jesus pay the price for death? Didn’t He release us from the power of death? And yet our bodies have to die.

Well, I think what we have to say is: the death of our bodies, the sufferings we go through, are in relationship—they’re in union with the Lord Jesus Christ. And they are therefore not bad things. We’re not dying for our sins. Jesus did that. We’re dying for new life. We’re saying goodbye to what is no longer needed and required for the purposes of grabbing ahold of the body in which we will serve Him. That’ll be much better than this one. I believe that’s the purpose of death. I believe that’s the purpose of sufferings. It’s efficacious. It’s good. We need to rejoice and be thankful in some sense, at least, because of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ—Christ and His death and resurrection itself.

Let me read a quote here from N.T. Wright from his book “Evil and the Justice of God.” Jesus on the cross towers over the whole scene as Israel in person, as Yahweh in person, as the point where the evil of the world does all that it can, and where the Creator of the world does all that He can. Jesus suffers the full consequences of evil, and He does so precisely as the act of redemption—of taking that downward fall and exhausting it so that there may be new creation, new covenant, forgiveness, freedom, and hope. That’s the death and resurrection. That’s the ultimate suffering of Jesus, that was victorious and created [a] new world, new creation, new covenant, new blessing. That’s what we’re linked up to now.

And so, yeah, when we die, it’ll be a great thing because we’re joined to His resurrection as well.

May the Lord God give us grace in our sufferings.

Another Lewis quote. Lewis says, “We’re not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us. We’re wondering how painful the best will turn out to be for us.” That’s right, isn’t it? But, you know, to know that sufferings are coming and then to know that they have a purpose and a meaning, you know, makes us then be able to blow our nose thankfully to God. I’m not kidding. I believe we should be blowing our nose to the glory of God by doing it—with a sense of thankfulness—by doing it with a sense of knowing that every suffering we have, whatever trials the Lord God puts upon us, whatever scratched-out eye or broken rib or foot or whatever it is—somehow we trust the character of the Lord God, and He’s revealed to us a whole bunch of reasons. You know, a whole bunch of ways these sufferings actually do help us and others. But we trust the character of God because we’re united to Jesus Christ, who in His ultimate suffering wasn’t dying but was winning the whole time—was bringing into effect the new creation, the new covenant, and all the blessings that we know are ours in Him.

Lewis had one last quote I’m going to read. “God who foresaw your tribulation has specially armed you to go through it—not without pain but without stain.” God empowers us to embrace sufferings that God in His sovereignty gives to us because of the person and work of Jesus. He empowers us to do that—not to go through our life not without pain but without stain, without sin, without grumbling.

May each of us today commit ourselves afresh to take even the hard times that the Lord God is going to put us through, knowing that His word has helped us to get a perspective on them, and ultimately we embrace these things as being the sufferings of the Savior that He is pleased to allow us to share in for His sovereign purposes in the world. May we trust the character of God this week. If you stub your toe or get in a car accident or have some friend treat you poorly or get sick—whatever suffering and difficulty you may go through this week—may you certainly suffer, and may we suffer with you.

The scriptures teach that. May we grieve with those who are grieving. But underneath it all, may the Lord God grant us not to grumble, not to dispute, not to get bitter, but to have a deep thankfulness and knowledge, knowing that the Lord God used the biggest suffering of the world—the suffering of the Savior on the cross—to bring life and new creation.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for the sufferings that you bring into our lives. I thank you, Lord God, for this last week and the different trials and tribulations. I know how small they are. We pray for the people in Japan, Lord God, who are suffering great things—great fears, great difficulties, these great tasks of rebuilding. Bless them, Lord God. Bless the money that we send over to Christians there to minister in the name of Jesus Christ. Help those people in Japan who are suffering to look beyond the suffering to see Your sovereign hand and trust in Your character when they can’t understand or trust in exactly what it is You’re doing.

Help them to trust Your character, Your love, and help them to look beyond themselves to the suffering of Jesus Christ, His afflictions, and know that what they go through is called as well for the purpose of Christ’s kingdom. Bless us, Lord God. Bless them. Bless this world, that we might indeed be thankful and rejoice even in our sufferings. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.