The Cross of Christ

by John R.W. Stott

Thirdly, suffering is due to our human sensitivity to pain.

Fourthly, suffering is due to the kind of environment in which God has placed us.

What then is the relationship between Christ’s sufferings and ours? How does the cross speak to us in our pain?

suggest from Scripture six possible answers to these questions, which seem to rise gradually from the simplest to the most sublime.

First, the cross of Christ is a stimulus to patient endurance.

Although both these examples relate specifically to opposition or persecution, it seems legitimate to give them a wider application.

Secondly, the cross of Christ is the path to mature holiness.

Both verses speak of a process in which Jesus was ‘made perfect’, and both ascribe the perfecting process to his ‘suffering’.

Not of course that he was ever imperfect in the sense that he had done wrong, for Hebrews underlines his sinlessness.13 It was rather that he needed further experiences and opportunities in order to become teleios, ‘mature’. In particular, ‘he learned obedience from what he suffered’. He was never disobedient. But his sufferings were the testing-ground in which his obedience became full-grown.

We should not hesitate to say, then, that God intends suffering to be a ‘means of grace’.

promote holiness

develops humility,

deepens insight,

Since Jesus Christ is the one and only Redeemer, and the New Testament never uses redemption language of anything we do, we will be wise not to talk of ‘redemptive suffering’.

Biblical teaching and personal experience thus combine to teach that suffering is the path to holiness or maturity. There is always an indefinable something about people who have suffered. They have a fragrance which others lack. They exhibit the meekness and gentleness of Christ.

Thirdly, the cross of Christ is the symbol of suffering service.

Death is more than the way to life; it is the secret of fruitfulness.

Does Paul really imagine that his sufferings will obtain their salvation and glory? Yes, he does. Not directly, however, as if his sufferings had saving efficacy like Christ’s, but indirectly because he was suffering for the gospel which they must hear and embrace in order to be saved. Once again, suffering and service were bracketed, and the apostle’s sufferings were an indispensable link in the chain of their salvation.

The place of suffering in service and of passion in mission is hardly ever taught today. But the greatest single secret of evangelistic or missionary effectiveness is the willingness to suffer and die. It may be a death to popularity (by faithfully preaching the unpopular biblical gospel), or to pride (by the use of modest methods in reliance on the Holy Spirit), or to racial and national prejudice (by identification with another culture), or to material comfort (by adopting a simple lifestyle). But the servant must suffer if he is to bring light to the nations, and the seed must die if it is to multiply.

Fourthly, the cross of Christ is the hope of final glory.

The future prospect which makes suffering endurable, then, is not a reward in the form of a ‘prize’, which might lead us to say ‘no pain, no palm’ or ‘no cross, no crown’, but the only reward of priceless value, namely the glory of Christ, his own image perfectly recreated within us. ‘We shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’24

But gradually she came to believe in the sovereignty of God, namely that God ‘displays his sovereignty over evil by using the very suffering that is inherent in evil to assist in the working out of his eternal purpose’ (p.37). In this process he has developed an alchemy greater than that sought by the early chemists who tried to turn base metals into gold. For ‘the only true alchemist is God’. He succeeds even in the ‘transmutation of evil into good’ (p.103).

‘We may wish, indeed,’ wrote C. S. Lewis, ‘that we were of so little account to God that he left us alone to follow our natural impulses – that he would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more love, but for less....To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God....’25

This is not the gospel of the New Testament, however. Scripture gives us no liberty to assert that all human suffering leads to glory. True, Jesus referred to wars, earthquakes and famines as ‘the beginning of birth pains’ heralding the emergence of the new world, and Paul similarly likened nature’s frustration, bondage to decay and groans to ‘the pains of childbirth’.27 But these are references to the promise of cosmic renewal for both society and nature; they are not applied in the Bible to the salvation of individuals or peoples.

apart from the inspiration of his example, we have seen that suffering (for us as for Jesus) is God’s appointed path to sanctification (mature holiness), multiplication (fruitful service) and glorification (our final destiny).

I hope it does not sound glib. It is easy to theorize, I know. But things look different when the horizon closes in upon us, a horror of great darkness engulfs us, and no glimmer of light shines to assure us that suffering can yet be productive. At such times we can only cling to the cross, where Christ himself demonstrated that blessing comes through suffering.

Fifthly, the cross of Christ is the ground of a reasonable faith.

The reasonableness of trust lies in the known trustworthiness of its object. And no-one is more trustworthy than the God of the cross. The cross assures us that there is no possibility of a miscarriage of justice or of the defeat of love either now or on the last day.

So between the cross, where God’s love and justice began to be clearly revealed, and the day of judgment when they will be completely revealed, it is reasonable to trust in him.

The cross does not solve the problem of suffering, but it supplies the essential perspective from which to look at it.

There is a sixth way in which Christ’s sufferings are related to ours. It is the most important of the series. It is that the cross of Christ is the proof of God’s solidary love, that is, of his personal, loving solidarity with us in our pain.

Pain is endurable, but the seeming indifference of God is not.

The God who allows us to suffer, once suffered himself in Christ, and continues to suffer with us and for us today. Since the cross was a once-for-all historical event, in which God in Christ bore our sins and died our death because of his love and justice, we must not think of it as expressing an eternal sin-bearing in the heart of God. What Scripture does give us warrant to say, however, is that God’s eternal holy love, which was uniquely exhibited in the sacrifice of the cross, continues to suffer with us in every situation in which it is called forth.

Yet, to acknowledge that his feelings are not human is not to deny that they are real.

The frequent Old Testament ‘anthropopathisms’ (which ascribe human suffering to God) are not to be rejected as crude or primitive, he writes, but rather to be welcomed as crucial to our understanding of him: ‘the most exalted idea applied to God is not infinite wisdom, infinite power, but infinite concern’ (p.241).

If God’s full and final self-revelation was given in Jesus, moreover, then his feelings and sufferings are an authentic reflection of the feelings and sufferings of God himself. The Gospel writers attribute to him the whole range of human emotions, from love and compassion through anger and indignation to sorrow and joy. The stubbornness of human hearts caused him distress and anger. Outside Lazarus’ tomb, in the face of death, he both ‘wept’ with grief and ‘snorted’ with indignation. He wept again over Jerusalem, and uttered a lament over her blindness and obstinacy. And still today he is able ‘to sympathize with our weaknesses’, feeling with us in them.37

If love is self-giving, then it is inevitably vulnerable to pain, since it exposes itself to the possibility of rejection and insult. It is ‘the fundamental Christian assertion that God is love’, writes Jürgen Moltmann, ‘which in principle broke the spell of the Aristotelian doctrine of God’ (i.e. as ‘impassible’). ‘Were God incapable of suffering..., then he would also be incapable of love’, whereas ‘the one who is capable of love is also capable of suffering, for he also opens himself to the suffering which is involved in love’.39

The pain of God is ‘a synthesis of his wrath and love’ (p.26) and is ‘his essence’ (p.47). It was supremely revealed in the cross. For ‘the “pain of God” results from the love of the One who intercepts and blocks his wrath towards us, the One who himself is smitten by his wrath’ (p.123). This is strikingly bold phraseology. It helps us to understand how God’s pain continues whenever his wrath and love, his justice and mercy, are in tension today.

It is wonderful that we may share in Christ’s sufferings; it is more wonderful still that he shares in ours.

I could never myself believe in God, if it were not for the cross. The only God I believe in is the One Nietzsche ridiculed as ‘God on the cross’. In the real world of pain, how could one worship a God who was immune to it?

I have entered many Buddhist temples in different Asian countries and stood respectfully before the statue of the Buddha, his legs crossed, arms folded, eyes closed, the ghost of a smile playing round his mouth, a remote look on his face, detached from the agonies of the world. But each time after a while I have had to turn away. And in imagination I have turned instead to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in God-forsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross which symbolizes divine suffering. ‘The cross of Christ...is God’s only self-justification in such a world’ as ours.44

At the end of time, billions of people were scattered on a great plain before God’s throne. Most shrank back from the brilliant light before them. But some groups near the front talked heatedly – not with cringing shame, but with belligerence. ‘Can God judge us? How can he know about suffering?’ snapped a pert young brunette. She ripped open a sleeve to reveal a tattooed number from a Nazi concentration camp.‘We endured terror...beatings...torture...death!’ In another group a Negro boy lowered his collar. ‘What about this?’ he demanded, showing an ugly rope burn. ‘Lynched...for no crime but being black!’ In another crowd, a pregnant schoolgirl with sullen eyes. ‘Why should I suffer’ she murmured, ‘It wasn’t my fault.’ Far out across the plain there were hundreds of such groups. Each had a complaint against God for the evil and suffering he permitted in his world. How lucky God was to live in heaven where all was sweetness and light, where there was no weeping or fear, no hunger or hatred. What did God know of all that man had been forced to endure in this world? For God leads a pretty sheltered life, they said. So each of these groups sent forth their leader, chosen because he had suffered the most. A Jew, a Negro, a person from Hiroshima, a horribly deformed arthritic, a thalidomide child. In the centre of the plain they consulted with each other. At last they were ready to present their case. It was rather clever. Before God could be qualified to be their judge, he must ...

Edward Shillito, shattered by the carnage of the First World War, found comfort in the fact that Jesus was able to show his disciples the scars of his crucifixion. It inspired him to write his poem ‘Jesus of the Scars’: If we have never sought, we seek thee now; Thine eyes burn through the dark, our only stars; We must have sight of thorn-marks on thy brow, We must have thee, O Jesus of the scars. The heavens frighten us; they are too calm; In all the universe we have no place. Our wounds are hurting us; where is the balm? Lord Jesus, by thy scars we know thy grace. If, when the doors are shut, thou drawest near, Only reveal those hands, that side of thine; We know today what wounds are, have no fear; Show us thy scars, we know the countersign. The other gods were strong; but thou wast weak; They rode, but thou didst stumble to a throne; But to our wounds only God’s wounds can speak, And not a god has wounds, but thou alone.45

First, the cross is the ground of our justification.

Secondly, the cross is the means of our sanctification.

Thirdly, the cross is the subject of our witness.

Fourthly, the cross is the object of our boasting.