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Christianity Today, March, 2007 |

Reflections

Suffering God

Quotations to stir heart and mind.

posted 3/05/2007 08:58AM

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HE WAS DESPISED and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity. … Surely he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the punishment that made us whole, and by his bruises we are healed.
Isaiah 53:3-5 (NRSV)

THERE IS GOOD biblical evidence that God not only suffered in Christ, but that God in Christ suffers with his people still. … It is wonderful that we may share in Christ's sufferings; it is more wonderful still that he shares in ours.
John R. W. Stott, The Cross of Christ

HAS NOT GOD in Jesus Christ become radically open to the life of the world and become vulnerable to human sin and suffering? In the light of the gospel story, God is not impassible, but passionate, suffering love. If God is love, then receptivity, vulnerability, and suffering are not strange to God's being. God is free to love and thus free to experience the suffering of the world.
Daniel L. Migliore, The Power of God

UNLESS GOD is on the balance and throws his weight as a counterbalance, we shall sink to the bottom of the scale. If it is not true that God died for us, but only a man died, we are lost. But if God's death and God lie dead in the opposite scale, then his side goes down and we go upward like a light or empty pan. But he could not have sat in the pan unless he became a man like us, so that it could be said: God dead, God's passion, God's blood, God's death.
Martin Luther, quoted in the Formula of Concord

IT IS A GOOD THING to learn early that God and suffering are not opposites but rather one and the same thing and necessarily so; for me, the idea that God himself suffers is far and away the most convincing piece of Christian doctrine.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

GOD not only participates in our suffering, but also makes our suffering into his own and takes death into his life.
Jurgen Moltmann, in Theology Today

A THEOLOGY that embraces the idea that God cannot suffer has to answer the question: Can God love? Abraham Heschel rightly said that the essence of Hebraic prophetic faith is that God takes the people of his covenantal love so seriously that he suffers for their actions.
Dennis Ngien, in Christianity Today

GRANT, O LORD, that in your wounds I may find my safety, in your stripes my cure, in your pain my peace, in your Cross my victory, in your Resurrection my triumph, and a crown of righteousness in the glories of your eternal kingdom.
Jeremy Taylor, The Westminster Collection of Christian Prayers

Related Elsewhere:

Other Lent, Holy Week, and Easter reflections include:

Lenten Inventory (February 1, 2004)

His Body, His Blood (June 2005)

Good Friday (April 3, 2000)

Jesus' Cross (March 1, 2004)

Crucifixion (March 11, 2002)

Holy Week (April 1, 2006)

Holy Week (April 23, 2001)

Cross and Resurrection (April 1, 2003)

Easter Sunday (April 3, 2000)

He is Risen (April 1, 2004)

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March 2007, Vol. 51, No. 3

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Displaying 1 - 3 of 15 comments.

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David Harrison

Posted: March 15, 2007 10:03 AM

When will we begin to realise that we are all part of the same family, and learn to love one another and not allow the enemy a foothold in our family. He doesn't even belong here, (among us, who are a part of the Body of Christ). To love God and to love one another, and not condemn others because they have a different opinion. Opinions should die with the flesh, as well as anything else which is not in agreement with the mind of the Holy Spirit. We are all at different stages in our respective walks with the Lord. May we learn to live with one another with this in mind. I'm still learning how to live with my own ignorance, let alone with anyone else's. Still trying to love, when not being so. Blessings Brethren

Trevor

Posted: March 10, 2007 4:18 PM

God made us in his image, and if there was not something inherently good in suffering (and only God is good) then he would not have made us able to suffer just like Him. Just think about how important it is to mourn with those who mourn and to celebrate with joy with those who rejoice. What a flat idol of a god our God would be if he was so abstracted and divorced from us that he did not suffer just as any person (Person in his case) would. Just because we refer to Him as a Person with a capital "P" to show our respect for His Majesty does not make him any less of a full person.

Jojo Bive

Posted: March 08, 2007 11:02 PM

The idea of God suffering is all over the prophetic writings. The issue here is whether these presentations were merely anthropopatic and anthropomorphic or real and actual sufferings, analogous to human suffering. I would have to say that while it is true that the prophecies are garbed in anthropopatic expressions, they were real sufferings of a loving God, who chose to suffer, in behalf of His redeemed. This suffering however cannot be defined in human terms nor can be likened to any earthly suffering. His transcendence will always be a mystery to us. But I would not confuse it with the transcendent God of Anselm which made God wholly insensitive and detached from human suffering. On the other hand, to say to the extent that God died would be putting too much sugar on the icing. I think this balance must always be kept in view. God's suffering is not uncaused for the very reason of his volition to suffer and this suffering is consistent with his communicable attributes.

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