News

Suffering God

Quotations to stir heart and mind.

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

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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)

Also in this issue

The CT archives are a rich treasure of biblical wisdom and insight from our past. Some things we would say differently today, and some stances we've changed. But overall, we're amazed at how relevant so much of this content is. We trust that you'll find it a helpful resource.

Cover Story

Free at Last

Grace Afar and Near

Practicing Chastity

'Ordinary' Delights

Old Testament Sermon Solutions

Living with the Darwin Fish

Godly Emotion

Grandpa John

Jesus' Sermon for Moderns

A Spiritual Growth Industry

Emerging Monasticism

Leaps of Faith

Images of Mission

Jesus and the Sinner’s Prayer

Atheist Apostle

My Conversation with God

News

Quotation Marks

Seeing Both Sides

Editorial

The Slope Really Is Slippery

News

Majority Spoils

Not What It Seems

Q&A: Hugh Hewitt

The Devil's Yoke

Why Isn't 'Yes' Enough?

News

News Briefs: March 01, 2007

News

Amazing Abolitionist

On a Justice Mission

News

Passages

No Spoonful of Sugar

Witness Lee in the Dock

Editorial

What Would Wilberforce Do?

News

Home Sharks

News

Go Figure

Deeper into Terabithia

News

Day of Reckoning

News

Redirected Tithe

Receipt at the Ready

News

Fluid Solution

News

Dividing the Faithful

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