A Tale of Two Sufferers
And seeing the whole picture
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.” (Rom. 8:37)
If it were possible to zoom out and look at God’s people throughout the ages—every believer who has ever lived, from every place, time, nation, tribe, and tongue—what sort of picture might we see? One would think, given that these are God’s people we are talking about, that they would look fairly well-to-do: fairly dignified, regal, and prosperous. Images of English royalty spring naturally to mind, fair-faced and elegant trotting gently over field and fen.
And yet if we look at the sight that actually confronts us, both at present and throughout history, we find a picture quite different from the one our intuitions might suggest. Instead of a people spoiled with comfort and repose, we find a motley ensemble of sufferers, a ragtag collection of down-and-outers, a weak and wavering bunch who look by all accounts to be anything but loved by God.
“They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword. They went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, mistreated—of whom the world was not worthy—wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.” (Heb. 11:37–39)
“Five times I received at the hands of the Jews, the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from the Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.” (2 Cor. 11:24–28)
“Yet for your sake we are killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.” (Ps. 44:22; cf. Rom. 8:36)
As someone in some nineties movie once put it, “What gives, man?”
Hezekiah: A Case Study
There are a number of ways we can go about broaching an answer to this question, but a good start comes from the inimitable Charles Spurgeon. In Lectures to My Students, he makes the stout and keen observation that, “The Lord seldom exposes his warriors to the perils of exultation over victory; he knows that few of them can endure such a test, and therefore dashes their cup with bitterness.”1
In other words, we are not strong enough to enjoy ceaseless strains of joy and triumph; we “cannot bear unalloyed happiness,” as he puts it elsewhere. Thus, for our own good and protection, and with a healthy dose of tender, fatherly wisdom, God’s pattern is frequently to submit His children to that painful and temporary discipline that later yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it (Heb. 12:11). There will be a time for joy and triumph, but only after the pride, foolishness, and unbelief that make them dangerous to us has been rooted out.
We can see this pattern at work in the life of king Hezekiah in the Old Testament. Hezekiah was a man who embodied faithfulness to the LORD. Indeed, he is commended as such in Scripture: “Thus Hezekiah did throughout all Judah, and he did what was good and right and faithful before the LORD his God” (2 Chron. 31:20).
And yet, despite this (or if Spurgeon is correct, because of it), Hezekiah’s life was one flavoured with all the normal ups and downs common to fallen humanity. Soaring heights of national revival are followed shortly by foreign invasion (32:1); stunning victory over Judah’s enemies is soon eclipsed by life-threatening illness (v. 24). Hezekiah wasn’t ever granted long to bask on the “sunny side of the brae”2 before trial and hardship of some kind were soon added to his life.
And in fact, this seems to have been a blessing from God, since Hezekiah’s best moments were forged under the greatest distress and his downfall came in years of prosperity—when he was blessed with “very great possessions” (v. 29) and when he “prospered in all his works” (v. 30). This was when his heart grew “proud” and “wrath came upon him and Judah and Jerusalem” (v. 25). For God “left him to himself, in order to test him and to know all that was in his heart” (v. 31).
It would seem, then, that Spurgeon, as usual, is right on the money. “Poor human nature cannot bear such strains as heavenly triumphs bring to it.”3 We need that “gracious discipline of mercy” which “breaks the ships of our vainglory with a strong east wind, and casts us shipwrecked, naked, and forlorn, upon the Rock of Ages.”4
Conclusion
In the end, it is true that to look at the saints of God is very often to look upon tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, danger, and sword (Rom. 8:35). It is to see a people harassed and helpless, hated by the world and often burdened by a seemingly intolerable load of hardship and duress. But if this is all we were to see then we would not have seen the whole picture. For underneath these things—in them and through them and by them—God Himself is at work, preparing for them an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison (2 Cor. 4:17).
Their hardships, therefore, are simply the winds God uses to drive them speedily along the way; their troubles are like sheepdogs, keeping their feet upon the path. Their burdens are mercies, helping them live near unto God, and when all is said and done, when the veil has been lifted and they are seated round the table and death has been swallowed up forever and God has taken away their reproach, then they will say, “Surely, in all these things we were more than conquerors through Him who loved us.”
“And the ransomed of the LORD shall return and come to Zion with singing; everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” (Isa. 35:10)
Charles Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, Canon Press, 220.
Samuel Rutherford, The Letters of Samuel Rutherford, Banner of Truth, 44.
Spurgeon, Lectures to My Students, 220.
Ibid., 221.
Thank you for this
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