Suffering. We see it all over the place. Economic suffering. Physical suffering due to disease. Social suffering because of racism. These are just a few of the present areas of suffering, on top of the ongoing, day in day out sufferings around the world of poverty, homelessness, human trafficking, labor abuse, racial and gender inequality, famine and drought. But what I have discovered is that unless it touches me personally, I experience a momentary grief before continuing about my life. I see for a moment and then blink and open my eyes to something less distressing.
See, I, like most people, pay little attention to any suffering unless it is personal. If it doesn’t affect me personally, I have very little staying power. So when I come to passages like Romans 8:16-28, I fail to grasp Paul’s meaning. Here we find him saying that if the Spirit has moved in to live in our hearts, then we are children of God and heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ. But there is a condition on that statement: “if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory” (v.17).
OK, it seems that Paul is saying we can know that we are children and heirs if we share in Christ’s sufferings. Reading from a personal suffering paradigm, this is very difficult to understand. How am I to share in suffering that is already done? Christ lived over 2000 years ago: whatever was personal suffering for him was over and done a long time ago.
But what if this isn’t personal suffering? What if we are talking about Christ’s present sufferings? How is Christ presently suffering? God is present in all the earth. God is love, and love is vulnerable and long-suffering, and present. While I have no trouble imaging God as present in my personal suffering, I can’t quite wrap my mind around God being that present with every suffering being in all creation. He doesn’t sleep; he doesn’t look away; he doesn’t numb; he doesn’t lash out. God has created us in his likeness, but I think its like comparing a LEGO person to its human creator. Sure there are arms and legs, torso and head, hands and face, and yet there are so many differences its hard to comprehend. God is not bound to the limitations we are: he can weep even as he laughs and growls in outrage.
God is suffering with his creation. He is in anguish with us over the injustice, the pain, the systemic structures that keep some in power and others in bondage. We have learned that outrage from God. We do not have to pray that he would see and act. The Spirit in us that tells us we are sons and daughters is the same Spirit that opens our hearts to the suffering of others. This is Christ’s suffering.
The next part of that verse reads “...in order that we may share in his glory”(v.17b). What is his glory? It is so rich and multifaceted, I’m not sure we can truly grasp what it is in our present time, but I do believe that if his sufferings is the sufferings of all creation, then his glory must include the redemption and healing of all creation as well. It’s not personal glory, that fake glory the enemy tempts us to pursue. If anyone had a right to pursue personal glory, Christ did, but then he wouldn’t be the Christ. No, his glory is the glory of every wrong being made right, of sinners embracing grace, of creation being reborn. So if we want in on this glory, we must engage in the suffering.
But just in case that freaks you out a little, Paul follows it up with “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the future glory that will be revealed in us” (v.18). Do not be afraid. As overwhelming as the suffering of the world is, the glory of all being freed from death, decay, bondage, sin, and pain is going to be so totally worth it all. It’s gonna be so good we’ll think to ourselves, “That’s it?! That’s all we had to do for all of this?! Wow...that just doesn’t seem like enough. Maybe we should go back and do more....”
In the meantime, we hope. We wait. We eagerly look to that future even as we patiently go about God’s Kingdom work now. Remember, “God is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Our faith is not weak if we suffer, if we feel stretched between hope and despair. Much healing is needed. And we were not created to hold all the earth’s pain like God does. Beholding that much pain leaves us gasping for breathe, eyes wide, nostrils flared, heart racing. In those moments, we don’t know what we should to do.
“We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.”
(Romans 8:26-28)
And so we give thanks. We thank God that He in Christ already bore all of that for us, that God is still bearing it, and that we are never called to bear it alone. We thank God that He is at work in the world through the Spirit of grace, love, and creation. If the Spirit is in you then you have hope; in fact, you are part of that hope embodied as you go about the Kingdom work of saving and restoring and reconciling. Live in hope; walk in faith; pray in the Spirit. And don’t be afraid to bear with God others’ suffering.
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