On the first page of Paul’s letter to the Colossians we find a surprising statement: ‘I rejoice in sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I complete what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church’ (Col.1:24). What can these words mean? Are Christ’s sufferings, through which alone we receive salvation, not complete? Is there something lacking in them that we as Christians are meant to perfect?
The answer to this question is both Yes and No. Certainly Christ’s sufferings are complete as far as our redemption is concerned. When he cried ‘It is finished’ his work was ended. His death completely atones for sin. Nothing we can ever do can add to his suffering or affect its efficacy. We are totally dependent on Christ’s work for our salvation. But in several places the Scriptures teach that our sufferings, like his, may have significance for the church, his body. As with so many things concerning our salvation, this is a mystery. But it is a mystery in which all Christians have some part, and in which some of us may have a special part.
The Word of God has a number of things to say about suffering that ‘fills up’ Christ’s afflictions. In 2 Corinthians 1:3-7 we read of one way in which the suffering of Christians are meant to benefit others as well as themselves. Paul says that God will comfort us in our sufferings, for all who share Christ’s sufferings will also share his comforts. But he makes it clear that God does not impart his consolations to help only those who are suffering, but for the sake of his whole church; they are meant to be shared. ‘If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; and if we are comforted, it is for your comfort’ (v.6). Christians are all bound up together in Christ’s body; they share his sufferings and his comforts. How often have we been encouraged and strengthened in sorrow by God’s comforts mediated to us through the words of other Christians! This is one of God’s ways of using the suffering of one of his children to benefit another.
There are more promises concerning suffering in the New Testament than there are promises of prosperity and earthly well-being. God did not save us primarily to make us happy or healthy or prosperous, but to make us holy. Why should God’s people expect to escape suffering? God has told us very clearly that he will use the suffering that Satan has wrought through human sin to accomplish his purposes. How could we be made like the Lord Jesus if we did not share his suffering as well as his risen life. We’d all like to experience resurrection power without first suffering spiritual death, but this is not God’s way.
Only the sovereignty of God could make of the sufferings that are ours because of sin a means of knowing Christ and sharing his risen life. Only the wisdom of God could take the sufferings that his sinful creatures cannot hope to avoid and make them a means of nourishing his church. Only the humility and grace of God could honor his feeble saints by using their sufferings to ‘complete’ or ‘fill up’ the sufferings of his holy Son.
How are Christ’s sufferings ‘completed’ by ours? In his death and resurrection, Christ demonstrated God’s triumph over the powers of evil. His sufferings will only be ‘completed’ when his people display that same victory in their own lives. This can only take place as they learn to share Christ’s sufferings and death. By manifesting before the cosmic forces the reality of Christ’s conquest over sin amidst the pressures of human life in a sinful world, we are ‘completing’ Christ’s sufferings, showing their validity for the here and now.
Such vindication of God’s purposes is not an automatic thing; we must play our part in bringing it about. If God has entrusted us with suffering let us set our hearts and minds to work together with him to enable him to bring out of our trials all the glory he longs us to know. Most of us have been awed at some time or another by a glimpse of God’s glory in another’s suffering; few of us have faced the fact that God wants to work a like miracle in our own. Let us lay our suffering before him as a holy offering and ask him to give through it all the blessing – even glory – that he means us to know!
(Margaret Clarkson, Destined for Glory, pp.88-90)
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