Suffering and the Perfection of Christ

In my last post I mentioned that when it comes to this particular week on the church calendar my wife and I have different preferences. My wife gets really uneasy about the whole crucifixion part of the narrative and cannot wait for Easter morning to arrive so she can celebrate the risen Lord. My attention for the weeks leading up to Easter is solely on Good Friday as that is what has had the biggest impact on me since a particular Good Friday back when I was in the 7^th grade. I will write about that later but for now I want to go through some things that I think are extremely important when it comes to the suffering and death of Christ.

In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.—Hebrews 2:10

Although he was a son, he learned obedience from what he suffered and, once made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.—Hebrews 5:8-9

The thought that Jesus is somehow perfected through suffering is a challenging one. How does what he endured on the way to the cross and on the way to his ultimate death perfect him? Nothing about what we see happening to him in the gospels seems perfect in any way. It all seems so unnecessary and in my head I can’t help but hear one of those infomercial voices saying, "There has to be a better way!". A couple years ago I was going through an online conversation about the incarnation and saw these two verses paired together and they hit me like a ton of bricks.

She wrapped him in cloths and laid him in the manger.—Luke 2:7

Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen cloth and placed it in a tomb cut in the rock.—Luke 23:53

We generally talk about incarnation, the Word becoming flesh, during Christmas because it is there where we see God doing something new. However, these two passages about his birth and his death are what truly bookend and complete the incarnation. The incarnation isn’t complete until God in Jesus experiences the full width, depth, and breadth of humanity. God experienced all that it means to be human and that includes suffering and death. Jesus is the perfect and complete author of salvation because he was fully man that he might represent us and was fully God that he might save us.

Jesus offers us no explanation of suffering but instead offers us his participation of suffering. His participation in suffering allowed for a kind of identification with us that could not have happened otherwise. It was his participation in suffering that powerfully changed my life when I needed it. Years ago, following the funeral of a friend on Good Friday I remembered what day it was and found it puzzling. This was the worst day of my life and was what I presumed to be the worst day of Jesus’ life and I asked God a big question. What possibly could be ‘good’ about this day? The immediate realization/revelation that God in Christ knew all about pain and suffering spoke immediately and profoundly to me in the midst of my pain and suffering. I was not alone in my suffering. You are not alone in yours. Ever.

In the resurrection of Jesus we see that death does not have the final word but we live in the ‘not yet’. Our prayer is still ‘Thy Kingdom Come’ because we know that the day when all will be made right is not yet fully here. Until that day we only see a shadow or reflection of resurrection in the midst of the tremendous suffering and death in our world. But until then we can offer the simple but powerful reassurance that God is with us.