Christ: Our Example in Suffering

Throughout the course of history, one of the greatest philosophical questions has involved the ultimate cause and purpose of human suffering. Pastors are often confronted with the question: “Why do good people suffer?” In response, brilliant theologians are quick to point out that “there is none who does good, not even one” (Psalm 53:3). While this is theologically correct, the Bible also teaches that we should never assume that a person’s sufferings are God’s judgments upon a sinful life. Consider Job. God allowed him to be afflicted, precisely because of his faithfulness (Job 1:8). God even rebuked his friends for assuming that Job’s afflictions were the result of hidden transgressions.

In this week’s passage (John 9), Jesus expands upon this same powerful lesson — revealing that our sufferings are often gifts that are intended to glorify God and to reveal our need for the Savior. 

As he passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him. We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means Sent). So he went and washed and came back seeing. (John 9:1-7). 

In this passage, Jesus invokes language that clearly intends to draw our minds back to the creation narrative. At the dawn of creation, God declared, “Let there be light” (Genesis 1:3), and now Jesus was declaring himself to be the life-giving “light of the world.” And just as God had created Adam from the dust of the ground, Jesus likewise scoops dirt from the ground, spits into his hands, and uses the mud to restore the man’s sight. What message was Jesus giving the crowds of Jerusalem? The Creator God was walking among the people of Israel! Tragically, his message was entirely lost upon the religious Jews.

After being healed of his blindness, the man praised Jesus, but the Jews arrogantly condemned his praise. They declared, “Give glory to God. We know that [Jesus] is a sinner” (John 9:24). In one of the most famous responses in all of Scripture, the formerly blind man responded, “Whether he is a sinner I do not know. One thing I do know, that though I was blind, now I see” (John 9:25).

More than seventeen centuries later, this response to the religious leaders was incorporated into the lyrics of perhaps the greatest Christian hymn ever penned — Amazing Grace! John Newton, who was once a notoriously immoral slave-trader, understood what the religious leaders failed to understand. We are all in desperate need of a Savior and a healer for our souls. Indeed, we can all sing along with this formerly blind man with the words that Newton wrote: “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I once was lost but now am found, was blind, but now I see.”

The gospel does not teach us that some people are handicapped and in need of a Savior, while others are blessed and free to go it alone. That was the great error of these religious leaders. They refused to acknowledge their need for a Redeemer, so they masked their wounds behind a veil of religious hypocrisy. Ironically, as these men hid their brokenness, they revealed a handicap far more severe than that of this blind man. They placed their confidence in themselves — opting to walk through the pains of this life on their own. Consider the cautionary words of Jesus recorded in the book of Revelation. 

For you say, I am rich, I have prospered, and I need nothing, not realizing that you are wretched, pitiable, poor, blind, and naked. I counsel you to buy from me gold refined by fire, so that you may be rich, and white garments so that you may clothe yourself and the shame of your nakedness may not be seen, and salve to anoint your eyes, so that you may see. Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline, so be zealous and repent (Revelation 3:17-19).

No one is immune to suffering and affliction. In our hearts, we all instinctively realize that our entire world is filled with brokenness. We know the pains of loneliness, rejection, fear, and despair. Each of us is plagued by a sinful nature and the ominous fate that invariably ends at the grave. We all need a Savior. In our fallen world, life is a terminal condition. In time, our sight will grow dim; our hearing will become muffled; our bones will grow brittle; our minds will begin to fail us; and our heartbeats are numbered. Without Jesus, we are doomed to an everlasting fate of blindness, deafness, disease, despair, and death! As we read John 9, we are called to recognize that we all desperately need the healing salve of our Savior!

Jesus: Our Example in Suffering

Incredibly, Jesus did not come into this world to teach us about theoretical suffering from an ivory tower. Instead, the Lord ordained a path of suffering for himself, so that he could relate to us with compassion. The book of Hebrews declares, “He can deal gently with the ignorant and wayward, since he himself is beset with weakness” (Hebrews 5:2). Our God has walked the road of suffering. 

In order to atone for our sins, Jesus needed only to live a perfectly righteous life, die for our sins, and be raised from the dead. This would have satisfied the fundamental requirements for our salvation. Yet the Lord ordained a path of far greater suffering for himself than we will ever endure in this fallen world. 

Jesus could have ordained a noble birth with royal parents. Instead, his virgin birth left him to be mocked by the religious leaders as a bastard child (John 8:41). He could have entered the world in the finest of palaces with the most ornate of cribs. Instead, he was born in barnyard stall and placed in a feed trough. Just as Moses was raised in the house of Pharaoh, Jesus could have ordained a childhood of luxury in the house of Caesar. Instead, he was ridiculed for his lowly origins in Nazareth (John 1:46). 

Jesus could have used his divine powers to manipulate the affections of men. Instead, he agonized through pains of their rejection (Luke 13:34). Our Lord could have basked in a constant state of glory (e.g. the Transfiguration) bringing people to their knees in reverent awe, but he chose to have “no form or majesty that we should look at him” (Isaiah 53:2). And he could have entered this world as an attractive man like King Saul, but Jesus had “no beauty that we should desire him” (Isaiah 53:2). 

Like Herod, he could have littered the Judean hills with mountaintop mansions and fortresses. Instead, the Creator of the universe was a homeless man with “nowhere to lay his head” (Luke 9:58). He could have assembled an elite group of Roman politicians, Athenian philosophers, Alexandrian scholars, and Judean theologians for his apostles. Instead, he chose uneducated commoners (1 Corinthians 1:26-29). He could have enjoyed the greatest of feasts, yet he chose to endure hunger (Luke 4:2). He could have chosen a secluded life in a monastery to protect his righteousness, yet he chose to be tempted (Matthew 4:1). He could have turned a blind eye to our afflictions, yet he was a “man of sorrows and familiar with suffering” (Isaiah 53:3). He could have ordained his crucifixion to be a great celebration filled with fanfare, doting speeches, ceremony, and love, yet he was “despised and rejected by men” (Isaiah 53:3). 

And Jesus chose this path of suffering, so that we can rejoice and declare:

For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need (Heb. 4:15-16).