We run our website the way we wished the whole internet worked: we provide high quality original content with no ads. We are funded solely by your direct support. Please consider supporting this project.

cross

Voluntary Suffering and the Kingdom

In a post from two days ago, I wrote about the call to voluntary suffering for others as it is laid out in the New Testament. For the first three centuries of the church, Christians understood this call as they sought to follow Jesus’ example of forgoing the use of violence and expressing God’s self-sacrificial love toward others, including their enemies. Unfortunately, this mindset was lost when the Church acquired political power in the fourth century. Because many leaders viewed this political power as a blessing from God rather than a temptation from the enemy, Jesus’ refusal to use coercive power had to be re-interpreted.

For instance, Augustine speculated that Jesus’ decision to suffer unjustly rather than use coercive force was not intended to be a permanent example for all Christians to follow. Rather, he reasoned, Jesus had to suffer and die unjustly because he was the Savior, and his suffering and death were necessary in order for us to be freed from the devil and reconciled to God. Now that this has been accomplished, however, and now that God (allegedly) had given Christians the power of the Sword, it was not only permissible for Christians to use violence when the cause was “just,” but they also had the responsibility before God to do so. Voluntary suffering was no longer necessary.

But if we take seriously the passages from the New Testament about voluntary suffering, it could be argued that the Church’s willingness to suffer cuts to the heart of what it means to manifest the kingdom of God.

Jesus’ willingness to suffer out of love for his enemies rather than use coercive force against them is consistently identified in the NT as the ultimate expression of God’s love and the ultimate means by which the powers of evil are defeated. It’s what Calvary is all about. And so, the willingness of God’s people to suffer out of love for others—including our enemies—rather than use coercive force against them must still be considered the ultimate expression of God’s love and the ultimate resistance against the patterns of this world.

This attitude expresses the most radical difference between the kingdom of God, ruled by God the Father, and the kingdom of the world, ruled by Satan. The kingdom of the world relies on using “power over” others, but the kingdom of God relies wholly on “power under” on behalf of others. This is the power of the cross. By removing the cross from the center of what it means to be a follower of Jesus, we eliminate the most fundamental distinction between these two kingdoms. And when this happens, the church takes on the character of the kingdom of the world.

Photo credit: Oli4.D via VisualHunt.com / CC BY-NC-ND

Related Reading

On Driving and Unsurpassable Worth

Our friends the Livesay’s live and work in Haiti, and their blog is amazing. They posted a reflection today entitled On Driving and Unsurpassable Worth. It’s so worth reading. From the article: Annoyed with someone?  Repeat after me: Unsurpassable worth, unsurpassable worth… Unsurpassable worth. Fine, be annoyed … but if keeping the annoyance from turning to rage…

Everybody’s Got a Prequel

My wife and I, along with some friends, recently attended the Broadway Play Wicked. Without giving too much away, I’ll tell you the play attempts to answer the question: What could have possibly made the “Wicked Witch of the West” so [apparently] evil (as presented in the original Wizard of Oz)? After all, normal young…

Remembering that We are Finite

Here’s a little reminder from Joshua Becker that we live with limited resources in the areas of “Money. Time. Energy. Attention. Physical Space. Relationships. Mental Capacity. Body. Talents. Natural Resources.” Let’s spend these things with wisdom and love. From the blog: This reality of our finiteness is an incredibly important truth. It is one we should intentionally choose to focus on…

To My Offender

We’re happy to introduce you today to Brandon Andress. He is the author of AND THEN THE END WILL COME! and UNEARTHED: How Discovering the Kingdom of God Will Transform the Church and Change the World. He has served as an elder and teaching pastor at The Living Room Church in Columbus, Indiana. Brandon writes…

Beyond Theoretical Salvation

Profession of Christ’s lordship in our lives isn’t a magical formula. It’s more than a theory about how we can get saved if we confess the right doctrines. The confession has meaning only when it’s understood to be a genuine pledge to surrender one’s life to Christ. (See yesterday’s post.) But I want us to…

God’s Big Toes

Last weekend, Greg preached a sermon on what it means to function as the body of Christ. You can visit the Woodland Hills Church website to download audio or video as well as presentation slides. We hope you’ll enjoy this call to serve one another the way Christ has called us to serve.