Jesus Suffers

A quick look back over the first five chapters of Hebrews and one thing is clear: before Jesus Sits, Jesus Suffers.

Here are some of the highlights of Jesus' suffering:

-Jesus suffers death so that he might taste death for everyone (2:9)
-Jesus suffers in order that he might be made perfect (2:10)
-Jesus suffers to be able to help us/empathize and sympathize with us in our own struggles (2:18)
-Jesus suffers in order to learn obedience (5:8)

There's a couple of take-homes here.

First, Jesus is God become human. The "lowest common denominator" in all our shared humanity is suffering. Certainly suffering is not distributed equally across all people.; indeed, some seem to get through life with very little obvious suffering. But suffering is nevertheless the most commonly shared experience in all of humanity. We suffer, and so Jesus does as well.

But second, notice that there's always an "in order to" or "so that" attached to Jesus' experiences of suffering. Jesus enters into suffering not merely to experience it and so to throw a meaner pity-party for us when we, too, enter into suffering. Instead, Jesus enters into the full experience of suffering in the land of the ruins and he redeems it.

The tragedy of life here among the ruins is not that some suffer but that some suffer without purpose, without some sort of redemptive benefit on the other side. Jesus enters into all our suffering and he does so in order to ensure that for all who will trust him, walk in him, live in him, for all who would be united with him, all our sufferings might be forced to serve us rather than the other way around. The tyrant of suffering which once held us captive has now become our servant. In Christ, all of our hardships must bless us.

Of course, we do have a critical role to play in this. Apart from faith-full perseverance sufferings can bear the fruit of cynicism and despair and bitterness in our hearts. And so the call from the Scriptures to hold on, to walk in this way by faith no matter what. The promised rest for our souls is ahead.