Let me tell you a little about where I’m coming from: everything – every thought, every deed, every emotion, every motivation, every travel, every relationship, every thing - is a gift. If you’re a human on planet earth then you have discovered (like me) that sometimes thoughts, deeds, emotions, motivations, etc. etc. etc. have been twisted, marred, and/or perverted which result in wrath and pain. Living is so dear. Life is so wonderful and a gift from the very Word of God. Yet sometimes (perhaps always?) we get off track and what was intended for life has been derailed and turned into death.
Thus the need for salvation/ redemption/ reconciliation/ putting-things-to-rights: eternal life. The whole point is quite simple yet immeasurable and incapable of obtaining without a divine grace: “to know the only true God, and his Son Jesus Christ whom [the Father] sent” (John 17:3b). Everything else flows from this relationship - like the river of life in the garden of Eden and as seen in Revelation.
This post is not an exegesis of the Johannine text. But it needs to be known that everything is nothing compared to knowing the Triune God. As the Apostle wrote, “Indeed, I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and count them as crap, in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (Philippians 3:8-9a ESV. Paul uses the word scubala. The only occurrence of the word in the Scriptures is found here and probably meant “crap” or “shit.” See BDAG pg. 932).
If we have died with Christ then our life is indeed “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). So I greatly admire the Saints who live(d) by this reality. Even though they produced abundant fruit it did not really matter to them compared to knowing God. Thomas Merton and Henri Nouwen are two of my favorite authors. Both strived for love, justice, mercy, and peace for the world. Yet they knew that at the end of the day, the end is to know the One. But wait, “if we have died with Christ?”…
John Piper’s Let the Nations Be Glad has a poignant chapter on the importance of suffering. Not many modern American Protestants sans Piper have the balls to write about the paradoxical nature of life-in-Christ yielding life and suffering (kudos to him for being a wealthy Anglo-American male for teaching this important reality of the Christian faith). I don’t want to imply that “dying with Christ” simply means suffering. Rather, “dying with Christ” is an impressively deep theological and practical reality of the faith.
But what is the importance and significance of suffering (again, Piper has a good chapter on that pertaining to Christian mission)? What did Paul mean by, “For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him” (Romans 8:14-17 ESV italics emphasized).
I’ve babbled on long enough. What I’m getting at is that in this divine romance of knowing God sometimes requires suffering to grow into Christ – thus the Dark Night of the Soul.
To Be Continued…
