What does the Bible say about suffering?

If we speak of the sufferings of Christ, there were two kinds of suffering, quite distinct from one another. In one sense He went through every possible kind of suffering. He suffered from man for righteousness' sake, and He suffered from God for sin's sake. The suffering from God for sin He took for us entirely alone; He suffered it that we might not suffer it... In His sufferings for righteousness' sake, He gives us the privilege of suffering with Him... but with suffering for sin we have nothing to do. He has taken it entirely alone: not one drop is left.

Now the greatest favour that God has conferred upon His saints is the privilege of sharing in His sufferings. To be granted faith is surely a wonderful favour from God, but to be allowed to suffer a little for His sake is a still greater display of His favour to us. It is only to a great friend that an upright and self-respecting man would grant such a privilege; it is also one way in which God allows us to show our love and gratitude to Him.

This is the condemnation, that the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. The light is hated and persecuted, whether in Christ or in His followers... those who walk with God are a constant rebuke to the worldling, and must experience in this world hatred and persecution.

But God had no pleasure in allowing His people to suffer. He permitted it; and if Christ had to suffer for us when He who knew no sin did not need it for Himself, the people of God often have need on their own account to be exercised with suffering... Perhaps the individual who suffers is full of faith and devoted love to the Lord; but under persecution, the heart feels that the world is not its rest, that it must have its portion elsewhere, its strength elsewhere.

Job's case is specially instructive, as in his troubles we learn that, whatever trials we are permitted to pass through, God uses them for our discipline... Job had begun to take pleasure in his own goodness and trust in his own righteousness... The result of all the trials that Job passed through from Satan the accuser, from his wife and from his friends, was that he not only triumphed over all the power of the enemy, but through the trials he learned and judged the secret and unsuspected evil of his own heart... but when at last he gets into the presence of God, he says, "now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes."

The priesthood of Christ in Hebrews is not about our sins... but about our weakness... What I do get in Hebrews is that Christ can enter into all my temptations. I find temptations every moment, the world is a snare; if I want to live in a godly way, I need His sympathy. Christ found none in this world. He, the most accessible and gracious of men, sympathised with everybody, but there was no one to sympathise with Him. He knows them a thousand times better than I can, because He has suffered a thousand times more.

Distress is not sent from God for the sake of suffering but for the sake of enlargement. In times of distress, God sympathizes with His own... And Paul's troubles were not light, for he says, "We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself."

But he presents the future glory before he speaks of the present affliction. Thus we are called to face afflictions in the light of the glory. In the same way, in the Lord's last discourse, He sets before His disciples the blessedness of the Father's home into which He was going to receive them; then, having comforted their hearts with the Father's home of love, He says, "In the world you will have tribulation."