Many of life’s experiences, sickness, injustices, death, don’t make much sense apart from the vision of faith. Without the perspective of faith many of them would make no sense at all. With the perspective (seeing through) of faith they can be reconciled in light of future events in this life or certainly in eternity.
We see this mystery in the life of Jesus, the holy Son of God from all eternity, becoming human and undergoing the penalties of sinful humanity. The letter to the Hebrews gives the faith view. “Jesus was made for a little while lower than the angels, that through God’s gracious will He might taste death for the sake of all men.”
We are created lower than the angels. The eternal Son of God came to conquer death for the human race under the sentence of death from sin, by passing through it Himself. His resurrection from death as a human makes it possible for all to conquer death. Looked at only from the perspective of this life, His death makes no sense.
Not only did Jesus undergo death but considerable suffering as well. “Indeed, it was fitting that, when bringing many sons to glory, God, for Whom and through Whom all things exist, should make their leader in the work of salvation perfect through suffering.” Isn’t that a hard thing to understand, the One through Whom creation came undergoes suffering?
The letter goes on to teach that Jesus by His life consecrates the human race and gives us the same Heavenly Father. The Lord considered the sufferings Jesus had to endure in our human nature to be worth the end result of our redemption and our eternal life in Christ.
The faithful Christian who understands and accepts the Good News of Christ begins to view human sufferings, which otherwise seem unexplainable, with an eternal perspective. The faithful Christian can see that even sufferings that make no sense can in some way be a help to one’s salvation. Those connected with the normal life processes, which include death, can been seen in a faith light.
The normal sufferings of human life become a way of helping us to know God’s great love in allowing His Own Son to experience them. Some are lead to embrace sufferings they could even avoid out of love in return for the Lord. We cannot avoid a certain amount of suffering in human life. We can with the perspective of faith and eternal life realize to some extent their work in our salvation and the salvation of the human race.
Often sufferings come in the key areas of life. They come from living the teachings of the Scriptures. Two of the most important of these areas are marriage and children. Respect for and considering all of life from the perspective of eternity, and working to preserve, protect and foster human life involves various forms of suffering. For the faithful believer these kinds of sufferings are acceptable and seen as necessary.
There are so many areas of human life that need to be protected, fostered, and developed. One third of the babies conceived in this nation are aborted. More people seem to be considering “assisted suicide” in the case of old age and terminal diseases. All across the board of the human life span from conception to the end of the life span there are many injustices that call for redemptive suffering. They call for people willing to sacrifice and suffer to take part in God’s plan of life for the human family. Jesus is our “leader in the work of salvation” who was made “perfect through suffering”. If this was the way of our leader who opens us to and makes possible our salvation, we cannot expect to live our lives free of suffering in the right ways of working to preserve, defend, and foster human life.
With the faith perspective on suffering, we approach necessary human suffering in its various forms in a different way than those who have no hope of or belief in risen eternal life. That doesn’t mean we don’t experience the suffering. It means the normal human suffering built into all human life doesn’t lead us into despair. Rather, it leads us to know the love of God and surrender to the Lord in dependence. “May the Lord bless us all the days of our lives.”
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