A Sacramental Reading Of John 2–6 And The Extent Of The Atonement

By Kyle D. DiRoberts

[Kyle D. DiRoberts is Department Chair and Associate Professor of Biblical and Theological Studies at Arizona Christian University, Glendale, Arizona.]

Abstract

Charles Ryrie described the extent of the atonement as being both limited and unlimited in nature. He likened it to a father preparing a meal for all his children. However, such provision does not result in all his children eating. For Ryrie, one’s refusal does not mean the provision was made only for those who actually eat. A sacramental interpretation of the wedding in Cana (John 2:1–11) and the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1–14) strengthens Ryrie’s illustration.

Introduction

Charles C. Ryrie (1925–2016) was professor of systematic theology and dean of doctoral studies at Dallas Theological Seminary over a period of three decades until his retirement in 1983.[1] In his systematic theology, he devotes an entire chapter to a discussion concerning the atonement.[2] He notes that the doctrine of limited atonement is far from a “cornerstone doctrine” but rather a “hotly debated one.”[3] To demonstrate support for limited atonement, Ryrie cites Berkhof, who argues that the sine qua non of the atonement is “Did the Father in sending Christ, and did Christ in coming into the world, to make atonement for sin, do this with the design or for the purpose of saving only the elect or all men?”[4] Berkhof believes “that is the question, and that only is the question.”[5] But Ryrie believes the answer is clear: “The Atonement was limited, for Christ did not come into the world to save all men.”[6] The doctrine of election forms the basis for Ryrie’s conclusion. He proposes a different question: “Did Christ purpose by coming into the world to make provision for the salvation of all people, realizing that the Father would mysteriously draw the elect to Himself and allow others to reject the provision made?”[7] In other words, just because some might reject Christ’s atoning work on the cross, this does not invalidate the amount of provision provided by God. To illustrate this, Ryrie uses the example of a father providing a meal for his children.

If we say that a father provides sufficient food for his family, we do not exclude the possibility that some members of that family may refuse to eat what has been provided. But their refusal does not mean that the provision was made only for those who actually do eat the food. Likewise, the death of Christ provided the payment for the sins of all people—those who accept that payment and those who do not. Refusal to accept does not limit the provision made. Providing and possessing are not the same.[8]

With this illustration in mind, Ryrie asks, “Are there any Scriptures that broaden the extent of the atonement beyond the elect?”[9] His difficulty in answering this question seems to be due to the gap between the limited and unlimited advocates. He writes, “Unlimited advocates acknowledge that the atonement is both limited and unlimited; limited advocates insist that it is strictly limited and do not recognize any unlimited passages as teaching unlimited atonement.”[10] Ryrie’s “solution” to the dilemma allows for a certain mysterious tension that the extent of the atonement is both limited and unlimited in nature.[11] As a result, instead of explaining away those passages that seem to indicate one over the other, Ryrie affirms both. The thesis of this article is that John 2–6 forms a sacramental theological literary unit that supports Ryrie’s illustration that the extent of the atonement is both limited and unlimited in nature.[12]

John’s Literary Style

John’s literary style employs large thematic units that might initially appear to be autonomous events from the life of Jesus—for example, a certain wedding in Cana and the feeding of the five thousand by the Sea of Tiberias. However, when read in connection with one another, these events illustrate a larger theological point.[13] Borchert describes John’s creative abilities as “a great inspired artist and theologian who organized his episodes from the life of Jesus in such a way as to bring people to faith in Jesus as the Son of God.”[14] In addition, Barrett warns against disconnecting the events from the Gospel of John by itemizing and presenting each event in a neat compartmental fashion.[15] It seems that John organized the wedding in Cana and the feeding of the five thousand with an artistic literary style in order to illustrate the Lord’s Supper. His intentionality bolsters support for Ryrie’s illustration concerning the extent of the atonement.[16]

In order to successfully demonstrate this interpretation, John 2–6 must contain theological evidence in which the body and blood of Jesus were eucharistically provided in such a way that (1) the elements were offered successfully to all who desired to partake, which fulfills Ryrie’s illustration of the father providing a sufficient meal for all his children; and (2) they had a surplus of those elements after the meal was over.[17] These considerations would insinuate that some family members may refuse to eat, which results in an abundance of leftovers.[18] The offering to all and the surplus of the elements support Ryrie’s illustration that there is a difference between providing and possessing.[19]

Reading John 2–6 Sacramentally

A sacramental reading of the wedding in Cana (John 2:1–11) and the feeding of the five thousand (John 6:1–14) helps connect John 2–6 and Ryrie’s example of a father preparing a meal for his children. When discussing the nature of these two events, “sacrament” here is employed strictly as a reference to the symbolic and christological nature of these two events as they point toward Christ’s work on the cross.[20] This method of interpretation is not wholly accepted. Bultmann rejected a sacramental reading. He writes, “It is only consistent with this concentration that the sacraments also play no role in John.”[21] Borchert argues that linking Jesus’s turning water into wine with the sign of bread in chapter 6 in order to promote the Lord’s Supper should be avoided.[22] His reasoning is that it seems to “press the symbolism beyond the clear meaning of the text and the principle of sanctified restraint.”[23] Perhaps he is correct; there is no specific record of the institution of the Lord’s Supper in John.[24] However, there seems to be support for a direct relationship between these passages and the atonement.

Barrett argues that more sacramental teachings exist in John than any other gospel: “John regularly uses categories of thought that might seem favorable to the development of sacramental theology.”[25] Similar to Barrett, Higgins also argues that the Gospel of John is “the most sacramentalist of all the New Testament writings.”[26] Brown cautions against exaggerating sacramentality in John’s Gospel.[27] But he still argues, “The suggestion (Clement of Alexandria, Cyril of Jerusalem, Cyprian) that the ‘choice wine’ of the Cana story may have been intended to remind the readers of the Gospel of eucharistic wine deserves more serious consideration.”[28] Along with Brown, other scholars support a sacramental reading of John’s gospel, especially the miracles of turning water into wine and the feeding of the five thousand. For example, Carson asserts that the Book of John has a rich discussion concerning the bread of life, which “millions of Christians have happily applied to holy communion.”[29] Corell affirms, “Most scholars agree as to its [John 2:1–11] sacramental significance.”[30] Thompson also provides a helpful argument for a sacramental reading of John. She writes,

The sign in John 2, with the plentiful provision of wine, should be read in tandem with the feeding of the five thousand in John 6. In each case Jesus provides a surplus, an abundance that sustains life. The visions of plenty in the messianic age are realized in the Messiah, who brings abundant bread and wine as tokens and conduits of God’s abundant grace (1:14, 16) and abundant life (10:10).[31]

In both events, Jesus is “cryptically and mystically by way of symbols signifying his intentions.”[32] In the first event, Jesus turns water into wine, signifying his blood. The second event, set in Capernaum prior to Jesus’s journey to Jerusalem for Passover, signifies the body of Christ broken and raised from the dead. Cullman supports this claim that the Cana miracle in chapter 2 “corresponds exactly” with the feeding of the five thousand in chapter 6.[33] Cullman asserts,

The one is a bread miracle, the other a wine miracle, the one a food miracle, the other a drink miracle. When we take into account the fact that the Cana story is regarded as a pointer to the death of Christ because of the word about the hour that is not yet come, and when we take into account further that in chapter 6 the bread is connected with the bread of the Last Supper, it seems a most likely explanation that the wine points to the blood of Christ offered in the Lord’s Supper.[34]

The culmination of John’s sacramental theology concerning the body (feeding the five thousand) and blood (water into wine) of Christ in the Lord’s Supper is revealed in John 6, after the two accounts.[35] In 6:53–56, Jesus says,

Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.[36]

Throughout church history, some have interpreted John 6:53–56 as a reference to the Lord’s Supper. Augustine wrote, “The sacrament of this reality, that is, of the unity of Christ’s body and blood, is placed on the Lord’s table and received from the Lord’s table.”[37] Cyril of Alexandria wrote in reference to John 6:53–58 that “those who do not receive Jesus through the mystery of the Eucharist will remain wholly bereft of any share in and taste of that holy and blessed life.”[38] One might argue that Jesus’s reference to himself as the bread of life (v. 35) and his reference to eating his own flesh (v. 54) is more obvious as it comes after the feeding of the five thousand (vv. 1–15).[39] We will return to that miraculous meal later; however, the idea that those in attendance should also drink his blood in order to inherit eternal life is less obvious from verse 53. Where should the reader of 6:53–58 be drawn back to in the narrative? John 2 holds the answer.

Water Becomes Wine—A Sacramental Reading

John describes a wedding at Cana in Galilee that Jesus attended with his mother and disciples (John 2:1). The narrative begins with the wine running out (v. 3). Sloyan observes, “The party has come to a desiccate halt: bone dry.”[40] This caused Mary to approach Jesus and tell him the problem (vv. 3–4). Jesus’s response to his mother was “My hour has not yet come” (v. 4). Augustine sees eucharistic meaning here: “Why then did he say, My time has not yet come?”[41] He concludes that Jesus’s meaning behind those words is a reference to his future suffering and bloodshed for his bride. He writes, “When I know that it is the right time for me to suffer, when my suffering will be of value (that time has not yet come), then I shall suffer because it is my will, so that you may hold on to each statement; both My time has not yet come, and I have the authority to lay down my life, and to take it back again.”[42] Corell argues that the Eucharist was John’s clear intention. He writes, “The reference in this story to this particular ‘hour’ is a clear proof of the sacramental and liturgical character of the passage. . . . It is his death that is the necessary condition for the celebration of the Eucharist.”[43] Higgins also argues that Jesus’s reference to his “hour” not yet coming refers to his passion and the institution of the Lord’s Supper, as the Eucharist “must be subsequent to the death of Christ.”[44] Thus, this statement by Jesus in 2:4 is the first clue that there is eucharistic meaning in what follows. In the narrative, Mary abruptly turns not to Jesus but to the servants at the wedding and urges them, “Do whatever he tells you” (v. 5).

John describes six stone water jars at the wedding “for the Jewish rites of purification,” which were about to contain wine created by Jesus (v. 6). Brown observes that for the Jew, “wine was the blood of the grape.”[45] Carson notes, “Each jar held two or three ‘measures,’ each measure the equal of eight or nine (imperial) gallons. The pots together held, roughly, between one hundred and one hundred and fifty gallons (between 500 and 750 liters).”[46] This is a significant amount of soon-to-be wine, considering they had already drunk their fill. Augustine interprets the jar filling Christologically as a fulfillment of a prophecy God gave to Abraham: “In your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed” (Gen 22:18). Augustine argues,

It is quite obvious that prophecy was also announced to other peoples, since Christ—in whom all peoples are blessed—was hidden in this prophecy, as Abraham was promised when the Lord said, “In your seed shall all the peoples be blessed” (Gen 22:19). But this was not yet recognized, because the water had not yet been turned into wine. . . . This is the Lord’s table, after all, and the one who serves must not cheat the guests, especially when they are as hungry as your eagerness shows you are.[47]

Higgins also interprets this sign as a reference to the Eucharist. He says that Jesus “performs the material miracle his mother desired, but it is only a pointer to the greater miracle for which the time has not yet come. The changing of water into wine is a sign (v. 1), the first of many. It is a sign because it points forward to the Eucharist.”[48] Although Ryrie does not reference Augustine or Higgins, his reasoning is similar. The Lord’s Supper is provided to the elect, as “Moses indeed was only sent to the people of Israel, and to that people alone was the law given through him, and the prophets themselves came from that people.”[49] However, the Lord’s Supper extends beyond the people of Israel to include “all peoples.”[50] This illumines Ryrie’s illustration that the Father has prepared a meal (Lord’s Supper) for all, even though not all will eat. In other words, by preparing a meal for all, it does not mean all will partake, and it does not mean God is unable to prepare the meal for all.

Jesus’s directive to the servants was to “fill the jars with water” (v. 7). Γεμίσατε (“fill”) means to fill something to its capacity.[51] John even notes that the jars were filled “to the brim” (v. 7). Jesus did not take an inventory of the wedding guests that still wanted a glass of wine and then miraculously create just enough. Instead, he provided more than enough. This is remarkable if the wine symbolically represents his blood in the Lord’s Supper. And since the wedding guests had already drunk all the wine, the assumption is that by making roughly 100 to 150 more gallons, there would likely be an abundance left over.[52] Thompson writes, “There is a lack of wine, and no one to supply what is lacking; but Jesus can and does provide choice wine in abundance.”[53] Even with a paucity of wine, Jesus provided a surplus that exceeded expectations.54 Carson observes, “The sheer quantity of water turned into wine then becomes symbolic of the lavish provision of the new age.”[55] Having leftover or wasted wine did not concern Jesus. In light of Ryrie’s likening the extent of the atonement to a father preparing a meal for all his children, John 2:1–11 explains that having leftover food and wine does not trouble God.

Once the jars were filled, Jesus directed them to draw “some out and take it to the master of the feast” (v. 8). When the master of the feast tasted the “water now become wine,” he did not know where it came from (v. 9). The master of the feast then called the bridegroom and explained that typical protocol was to serve the best wine first, and once everyone had drunk “freely,” to serve the poor wine (v. 10). According to the master of the feast, the bridegroom at this wedding had done it incorrectly. He waited until the end to serve the good wine (v. 10). According to early Christian conceptualizations, the Lord’s Supper was a “foretaste of the Messianic meal.”[56] For example, Thompson asserts that serving the good wine last depicts the time of salvation when the mountains shall “drip with sweet wine” (Amos 9:13–14; Isa 25:6–9).[57] For the early Christian community, Jesus is the better hope and covenant “through which we draw near to God” (Heb 7:19, 22).

Whatever God creates is good. That the wine is good should not be a surprise. Being a member of a eucharistic community would have led the reader to connect good wine here with Jesus’s blood offered at the Lord’s Supper.[58] Jesus’s blood never decreases in its goodness, and it never runs dry. Even if one were to worry about whether Jesus’s blood could extend to all, even to those that would never believe, the account in John 2 seems to indicate that Jesus is not concerned with there being leftover wine. The assumption in the story is that one should not be worried about having enough wine. They had already consumed all the wine, and Jesus filled six stone water jars with more. The miracle of turning water into wine, Sloyan argues, was written “to make believers of his disciples,” which makes sense in the larger context of John 2–6.[59] At the very end of John 6, Jesus told the Jews that they must drink his blood and eat his flesh in order to inherit eternal life (6:53–54). When the disciples heard this, they said, “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” (v. 60). In fact, this saying was so difficult that some of the disciples “turned back and no longer walked with him” (v. 66). However, a remnant remained (vv. 68–71).

The very next event in the Gospel depicts a scene in which Jesus entered the temple in Jerusalem (v. 13). Exegetically, Carson notes that μετὰ τοῦτο (“after this,” v. 12) “is a frequent connective between narratives in John.”[60] Michaels also notes that the conjunction καὶ “links the account very closely to what has preceded.”[61] Entering the temple, Jesus found the Jews selling oxen, sheep, and pigeons, while the money-changers were sitting there (v. 14). Jesus made a whip of cords and drove them all out of the temple, saying, “Take these things away; do not make my Father’s house a house of trade” (v. 16). When his disciples saw this, they remembered Psalm 69:9, “Zeal for your house will consume me,” and perceived Jesus to be the fulfillment.

In response to Jesus driving them out of the temple, the Jews asked him, “What sign do you show us for doing these things?” (v. 18). He responded, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (v. 19). This clearly confused them: How could Jesus raise a temple in three days, when it took forty-six years to build? (v. 20). However, they had missed the point. Jesus was not talking about brick and mortar. He was referencing his body, which would be broken and three days later raised from the dead (v. 21). For the disciples, this moment in the Gospel of John was so impactful that they specifically remembered it when Jesus rose from the dead (v. 22).

The early church interpreted John 2:18–22 as a reference to the gospel. For example, Tertullian of Carthage wrote, “Indeed, because the word ‘resurrection’ refers to that which has fallen, that is the flesh, so the same meaning will hold for the word ‘dead,’ since the phrase ‘resurrection of the dead’ refers to that which has fallen down. . . . If it is the body that is dead, then there will be a resurrection of the body when we speak of the ‘resurrection of the dead.’ ”[62] Like Tertullian, Origen of Alexandria interpreted John 2:18–22 as a reference to Christ’s body: “So the resurrection of Christ from the passion of the cross contains the mystery of the resurrection of the whole body of Christ.”[63] Leo the Great also supported a eucharistic reading of this passage: “For just as the flesh truly died and was buried, so also it truly was raised again on the third day. For the Lord himself declared this when he said to the Jews: Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up (v. 19).”[64] Thus, this temple (body) must first undergo the passion, an event marked by the breaking of Jesus’s body and the pouring out of his blood. This brings back into focus the prior unit where Jesus miraculously changed water into wine so that it might be poured out to any and all who would drink.[65] This event also sets the stage for the coming miracle whereby Jesus feeds five thousand people with only five barley loaves.

In these two events (John 2:1–11, 13–22), Christ symbolically revealed himself to those who believe (vv. 11, 22).[66] The first instance was through water turned into wine (blood) and the second was by the destruction and resurrection of the temple (body).[67] While each of these events is dramatically different, theologically they tell a eucharistic story, which is held together and formed around the idea of three days. For example, Carson sees significance in John’s use of three days: “Some have suggested that ‘the third day’ is such a stock phrase in the accounts of Jesus’ resurrection that John is using the time reference symbolically: on the third day, on the day of Jesus’ resurrection, the new age begins, represented here by the wine.”[68] Michaels also writes, “ ‘Three days’ is (as Jesus’s hearers had noticed) a ridiculously short time in which to build a temple, but (in light of certain synoptic traditions) an appropriate and familiar one in connection with Jesus’ resurrection.”[69] The account of the wedding in Galilee was “on the third day” (v.1, italics added). Jesus told the Jews that if the temple was destroyed, he would raise it up in three days (v. 19).[70] Then the Jews questioned Jesus about how he could raise the temple in three days when it took forty-six years to build (v. 20). John then clarifies, just like he does in the wedding narrative, that Jesus was actually talking about his body that would be raised on the third day (v. 21).[71] Finally, John notes that when Jesus had been raised from the dead, the disciples remembered, which is significant because Jesus rose from the dead three days after his death (v. 22).

In John 2, Jesus was invited to a wedding party. That Jesus would perform this miracle at a wedding is not without meaning. As a guest, he freely and unconditionally offered a gift by turning water into wine. Augustine writes concerning this scene, “What is surprising if the one who came into this world for a wedding went to that house for a wedding? If, in fact, he had not come for a wedding, he would not have a spouse here. And what is the meaning of what the apostle says: I joined you to one man, to present you as a chaste virgin to Christ?”[72] This has eternal significance, as Jesus came to earth and assumed full humanity for the purpose of offering himself as a gift—a sign that later in the gospel will be associated with wine as it represents Jesus’s blood. According to Augustine, Jesus’s incarnation is for the purpose of redeeming his bride with his blood—so much blood that there will be some left over.[73]

Thus, the first miracle in the Gospel of John draws readers to the reality that we are the bride, Christ is the groom, and Jesus is the embodiment of “Husbands, love your wife, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Eph 5:25). According to Carson, “the bridegroom was responsible for providing all the food and drink.”[74] Even though this human bridegroom fell short, Jesus as fully human and fully God, did not underestimate how much wine would be required for the wedding celebration. Jesus is the true bridegroom, and with Jesus, there is an overabundance. Augustine argues that Jesus did not worry about giving his blood to the bride that would become his wife because Jesus would rise again in the resurrection. Death will not separate this bride from the bridegroom.[75] In fact, the bloodshed would ensure that the husband and wife would live together for all eternity.

Feeding The Five Thousand—A Sacramental Reading

Concerning the connection between the Cana story and the feeding of the five thousand, Brown asks, “Is changing water into wine so different from the multiplication of loaves?”[76] As a result, he observes, “There are many possible hints of eucharistic symbolism. The changing of water to wine occurred before Passover (2:30), as does the multiplication of the loaves (6:4) and the Last Supper. Thus, before Passover we have a wine miracle and a bread miracle; these might be seen as taking the place of the eucharistic institution, which John does not mention.”[77] Similar to Brown, Higgins argues that the Cana narrative is closely tied to the miracle of feeding in John 6. Read together, there was a “miraculous supply” of the body (bread) and blood (wine) of Christ to those in attendance.[78] In addition, Michaels asserts that Mary’s claim that “they have no wine” is almost like a “parody of Jesus’s own comment in the synoptic tradition just before the feeding of the four thousand: ‘They do not have anything to eat’ (Mk 8:2; Mt 15:32).”[79] Michaels also argues that “the sheer magnitude or extravagance” of Jesus turning water into wine is compared with “the twelve baskets of fragments left over after feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two morsels of fish (6:13).”[80]

In chapter 6, John indicates that Jesus, at the time of the Passover, “went away” to the Sea of Tiberias (John 6:1, 4). Carson notes that intrinsic to the Passover was the “slaughter of a lamb in each household, which then ate it.”[81] In John’s Gospel, Jesus is the lamb; and for Carson, there is a connection to the Lord’s Supper: “The sacrifice of the lamb anticipates Jesus’ death, the Old Testament manna is superseded by the real bread of life, the exodus typologically sets forth the eternal life that delivers us from sin and desertion, the Passover feast is taken over by the eucharist (both of which point to Jesus and his redemptive cross-work).”[82] Even though Jesus was getting away, a large crowd followed him, because they wanted to see what other signs he might perform (v. 2). However, Jesus was able to get to the top of the mountain, and “there he sat down with his disciples” (v. 3).

Seeing the large crowds that were following him, Jesus asked Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” (v. 5). Kanagaraj observes that Jesus not only saw their physical need for food, but that he was also aware of a “deeper perception of their need for food.”[83] Kanagaraj argues, “The event in John only shows that Jesus fed the hungry, and that the abundance of Jesus’ supply is beyond human comprehension (6:7, 9).”[84] John records that Jesus’s question was merely a test, because Jesus knew “what he would do” (v. 6). Philip’s response was that even “two hundred denarii worth of bread” would not be enough to feed everyone a little (v. 7). Then Andrew added to the discussion that it was not enough, but “there is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish” (v. 9). Jesus’s response to it all was “Have the people sit down” (v. 10). Seeing a connection to the Lord’s Supper, Michaels asserts that the request of Jesus for the people to “sit down” was “literally ‘recline’ as if at tables, when there were no tables.”[85] Thompson observes, “Jesus is the host at this meal, even as he became the (unseen) host of the wedding feast at Cana by providing wine for it.”[86] In addition, Thompson asserts that the disciples could clearly see the need; however, “they do not understand that Jesus can provide abundantly beyond what they imagine.”[87]

The total number of people here is important. Scholars do not know the exact number; however, Carson is confident that the number exceeded five thousand. He writes, “The total number of people may well have exceeded twenty thousand or more.”[88] The lack of clarity in the text supports the idea that the atonement is both limited and unlimited in nature. Jesus was not concerned with how many people were there, nor was John concerned with telling the reader the exact number. Irrespective of the final count, all who wanted to eat did. In addition, after all had their fill, plenty was left over. Just like the father in Ryrie’s illustration, Jesus’s desire was to feed all who would like to eat. Jesus took the bread and fish, and after he had given thanks, he began to distribute them to all who were seated (v. 11).

Carson observes that the cognate of “having given thanks” (εὐχαριστήσας) is “the ecclesiastical term ‘eucharist’ by which many Christians refer to the Lord’s supper, holy communion.”[89] Thompson also sees a connection with the Lord’s Supper: “John’s description reflects the words spoken over the bread and cup at the Lord’s Supper as recorded elsewhere: ‘And he took bread, and when he had given thanks he broke it and gave it to them’ (Luke 22:17–19; Matt 26:26–27; Mark 14:22–23; 1 Cor 11:24).”[90] Even though John here records the distribution of bread and fish, Thompson notes that John will “go on to speak of eating and drinking (v. 35) his flesh and blood (vv. 51–58).”[91]

John records that they were able to eat “as much as they wanted” (v. 11). For Thompson, this miracle is similar to that of turning water into wine, both aptly characterized as a miracle of “gift” or “supply.”[92] Similar to Thompson, Michaels notes that there is a connection between the feeding of the five thousand and the wedding in Cana, as everyone got their fill.[93] Kanagaraj also asserts that as a result of the miracle, all who wanted to eat were satisfied.[94] After that, Jesus told the disciples to “gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost” (v. 12). Just like at the wedding in Cana, there was an abundance of bread left over.[95] For Thompson, there is a connection between the wedding in Cana and the feeding of the five thousand as they both display that Jesus provides far more than the guests require.[96] Theodore of Mopsuestia also asserted that “this miracle showed the abundance of his grace through the large amount of what was left.”[97] Michaels writes, “Their hunger was more than satisfied, with plenty left over.”[98] As a result, the disciples gathered twelve baskets that were produced from the five barley loaves (v. 13). Because of this great sign, the people said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world” (v. 14).

Conclusion

John records that the next day the crowds sought for Jesus. These same people witnessed and perhaps ate the bread that Jesus had miraculously provided (John 6:23). When the people found Jesus, they asked him, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” (v. 25). Jesus’s response was to question their motives (v. 27). They were seeking Jesus because he gave them bread, but Jesus wanted to give them the bread of life (v. 27). Jesus then said to them, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (v. 35). The Jews “grumbled about him” because of what he was saying (v. 41). The Jews understood the meaning behind Jesus’s words, that Jesus was referencing himself as the bread the people were to eat (v. 52). Perceiving their hearts, Jesus said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink” (vv. 53–55).

Ryrie argues that the extent of the atonement is both limited and unlimited in nature. He likens the atonement to a father preparing a meal for his children.[99] Although the father serves enough for all his children, that does not mean that all his children will eat the meal. Thus, for Ryrie there is a difference between possessing and providing.[100] For Christians, there is not a more significant meal than the Lord’s Supper, and connecting these two miraculous events (John 2:1–11; 6:1–14) to the Eucharist is helpful as each element of the meal in this literary unit is (1) provided sufficiently to those in need, and yet (2) there is an element of abundance, which is demonstrated by the leftovers. Thus, the wine and bread miracles strengthen the imagery of Ryrie’s illustration and the limited and unlimited nature of atonement.

Notes

1. John D. Hannah, An Uncommon Union: Dallas Theological Seminary and American Evangelicalism (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2009), 148.
2. Charles C. Ryrie, Basic Theology: A Popular Systematic Guide to Understanding Biblical Truth, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Moody, 1999), 367–73.
3. Ryrie, Basic Theology, 367. Ryrie also uses the term “particular redemption” to describe limited atonement.
4. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology, New Combined Edition (1932; repr., Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 394 (italics original).
5. Berkhof, Systematic Theology, 394.
6. Ryrie, Basic Theology, 394.
7. Ryrie, 367.
8. Ryrie, 367.
9. Ryrie, 368.
10. Ryrie, 369.
11. Ryrie notes that “unlimited redemptionists are not universalists. They do not believe that all will ultimately be saved. Nor does their view require or logically lead to such a heretical conclusion. To assert this is to create a straw man” (Basic Theology, 368). The phrase “unlimited redemptionists” is another term for those who adhere to unlimited atonement.
12. Ryrie appeals to various passages that seem to suggest the atonement is both limited and unlimited: 2 Peter 2:1; 1 John 2:2; 1 Timothy 2:4–6; 4:10; Hebrews 2:9; John 3:16; Acts 17:30 (Basic Theology, 369–72).
13. Gerard Sloyan, John, Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1988), 5. Sloyan then illustrates his point, asserting, “There is the master idea that Jesus is the true teacher sent by God from heaven (‘above’), his proper home (3:31–34), to a human world ‘below’ (8:23), thence to go back to reclaim the glory which he had with God from the beginning (17:5). He has come to the world as its light to keep anyone who believes in him from remaining in the dark (12:46). He is a revealer of the reality of God who has no previous rival in his intimacy with godhead (5:19c-20a; 6:46): not Abraham, not Moses, not any of the prophets. John’s favored term to describe God is ‘the Father,’ just as he inclines toward ‘the Son’ for Jesus. Everything that Jesus says or does discloses who he is. His speech and action in so doing likewise disclose no less than the mystery of deity” (Sloyan, John, 5–6).
14. Gerald L. Borchert, John 1–11, New American Commentary 25A (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 1996), 161.
15. C. K. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John: An Introduction with Commentary and Notes on the Greek Text, 2nd ed. (1955; repr., Philadelphia: Westminster, 1978), 67.
16. D. A. Carson notes that works on John’s theology in the Fourth Gospel have largely been limited. “Although there are countless volumes that examine this or that aspect of his thought, there is no full-scale treatment of Johannine theology that is worthy of the name” (D. A. Carson, The Gospel according to John, Pillar New Testament Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991], 95). An exception is Andreas J. Köstenberger, A Theology of John’s Gospel and Letters: The Word, the Christ, the Son of God (Grand Rapids: Zondervan 2009).
17. Ryrie, Basic Theology, 367.
18. Ryrie, 367.
19. Ryrie, 367.
20. Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel according to John (I–XII), Anchor Bible Commentaries 29 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), cxi. See also, Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 82–5.
21. Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel, 2 vols. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1955), 2:58.
22. Borchert, John 1–11, 158.
23. Borchert, John 1–11, 158–59.
24. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 99.
25. Barrett, The Gospel according to St. John, 82.
26. A. J. B. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, Studies in Biblical Theology 6 (1952; repr., London: SCM, 1956), 74.
27. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII, 109. He is especially wary of exaggerating the Johannine scene in order to argue for a reference to matrimony as a sacrament.
28. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII, 110.
29. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 99.
30. Alf Corell, Consummatum Est: Eschatology and Church in the Gospel of St. John (1958; repr., Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2016), 56.
31. Marianne Meye Thompson, John: A Commentary, New Testament Library (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2015), 63.
32. Theodore of Mopsuestia, “Commentary on John” in John: Interpreted by Early Christian and Medieval Commentators, trans. and ed. Bryan A. Stewart and Michael A. Thomas, The Church’s Bible, ed. Robert Lewis Wilkin (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2018), 81.
33. Oscar Cullman, Early Christian Worship, Studies in Biblical Theology First Series 10 (London: SCM, 1953), 69.
34. Cullman, Early Christian Worship, 69.
35. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, 79–82.
36. All Scripture quotations are from the ESV.
37. Augustine, “Homily 26, ” in Homilies on the Gospel of John 1–40, ed. Allan D. Fitzgerald, trans. Edmund Hill, Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st century 12 (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2009), 463.
38. Cyril of Alexandria, “Commentary on John,” in Stewart and Thomas, John, 217.
39. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII, 274.
40. Sloyan, John, 34.
41. Augustine, “Homily 8, ” in Fitzgerald, Homilies, 180–81.
42. Augustine, “Homily 8, ” 180–81.
43. Corell, Consummatum Est, 57.
44. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, 78.
45. Raymond E. Brown, “The Johannine Sacramentary Reconsidered,” Theological Studies 23 (1962): 201. See also Genesis 49:11; Deuteronomy 32:14.
46. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 173. However, scholars vary in their measurements. For example, Brown asserts that the total was fifteen to twenty-five gallons. “The jars hold two or three measures; a measure is about eight gallons” (Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII, 100). Borchert says the pots held “somewhere between sixteen and twenty-seven gallons” (Borchert, John 1–11, 156).
47. Augustine, “Homily 9, ” in Fitzgerald, Homilies, 190.
48. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, 78.
49. Augustine, “Homily 9, ” 190.
50. Augustine, 190.
51. Frederick W. Danker, et al., eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 191.
52. W. F. Howard, The Fourth Gospel in Recent Criticism and Interpretation, ed. C. K. Barrett, 4th ed. (1961; repr. Eugene: Wipf and Stock, 2009), 191–92.
53. Thompson, John, 60.
54. Borchert writes the following concerning whether the wine contained alcohol: “Jesus’ making wine in this case has caused some readers another major problem. One of my sons once returned from a class and informed me that Jesus made nonalcoholic wine in this story. His teacher also had informed him that the Greek word for the drink here meant nonalcoholic grape juice. It serves no purpose for evangelicals to twist the Greek language for the sake of their ethical opinions because such an argument cannot be sustained from Greek” (John 1–11, 157).
55. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 174.
56. Cullman, Early Christian Worship, 71.
57. Thompson, John, 63.
58. Cullman, Early Christian Worship, 69, 71.
59. Sloyan, John, 41.
60. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 175.
61. J. Ramsey Michaels, The Gospel of John, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 157.
62. Tertullian of Carthage, “On the Resurrection of the Flesh,” in Stewart and Thomas, John, 81.
63. Origen of Alexandria, “Commentary on John,” in Stewart and Thomas, John, 81.
64. Leo the Great, “Letter 15.18,” in Stewart and Thomas, John, 84.
65. Brown, “The Johannine Sacramentary Reconsidered,” 201.
66. Theodore of Mopsuestia, “Commentary on John,” 81.
67. Cullman, Early Christian Worship, 71–74.
68. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 167.
69. Michaels, The Gospel of John, 167.
70. Michaels, 164.
71. Michaels, The Gospel of John, 166.
72. Augustine, “Homily 8, ” 171.
73. Augustine, 171.
74. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 174.
75. Augustine, “Homily 8, ” 171–72.
76. Brown, The Gospel according to John I–XII, 101.
77. Brown, “The Johannine Sacramentary Reconsidered,” 200.
78. Higgins, The Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, 78.
79. Michaels, The Gospel of John, 143.
80. Michaels, 149. He also compares the miracle of turning water into wine with other extravagant miracles, such as “the ‘153 large fish’ which the disciples caught in their net at Jesus’ command (21:11), or (in a different vein) the whole pint of precious perfume which Mary of Bethany poured out on Jesus’ feet (12:3), or the seventy-five pounds of spices used to embalm Jesus’ body after his death (19:39).”
81. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 268.
82. Carson, 268.
83. Jey J. Kanagaraj, John: A New Covenant Commentary, New Covenant Commentary (Cambridge: Lutterworth Press, 2013), 63.
84. Kanagaraj, John, 64.
85. Michaels, The Gospel of John, 347.
86. Thompson, John, 140.
87. Thompson, 140.
88. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 270.
89. Carson, The Gospel according to John, 270.
90. Thompson, John, 141. See also Michaels, The Gospel of John, 348.
91. Thompson, John, 141.
92. Thompson, 138.
93. Michaels, The Gospel of John, 349.
94. Kanagaraj, John, 64.
95. Thompson, John, 140.
96. Thompson, 141. See also Cullman, Early Christian Worship, 96.
97. Theodore of Mopsuestia, “Commentary on John,” 189.
98. Michaels, The Gospel of John, 349.
99. Ryrie, Basic Theology, 367.
100. Ryrie, 367.

Lament: The Path Through Suffering

By M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

[M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall is Professor of Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California.]

[This is the fourth article in the four-part series “Suffering and the Christian Life: The Hard Road to Glory,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2–5, 2021.]

Shortly after my diagnosis with breast cancer at age forty-five, my neighbor Stephanie came over to see how I was doing. My family had moved into a house across the street from Stephanie’s family when both our oldest sons were babies. Over the years, we’ve shared resources, watched our children growing up together, and enjoyed catching up in our front yards. Stephanie is a devout Greek Orthodox Christian, and after I had caught her up on my cancer news, she asked if she could pray for me. In her prayer she asked God to make my suffering a beautiful offering to him. The imagery stuck with me. It’s not one that I had heard in my evangelical world, suggesting as it did that suffering could somehow be connected to worship. That image of suffering as an offering to God stayed with me throughout my cancer journey and shaped my response to my suffering.

As I’ve done more work in this area, I’ve discovered that the connection between suffering and worship is a deeply biblical one. When Job learned of the worst catastrophe of all, the loss of all his children, we are told that he “fell to the ground in worship, and said: ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised’ ” (Job 1:20).[1] One thing that should be clear from Job’s story is that the connection between suffering and worship is not an easy or a quick one. The story of Job contains many, many chapters of lament, of wrestling with God. Today I will be talking about the road from suffering to worship, a road that is clearly marked in Scripture and that is modelled for us by Jesus—the road of lament.

Lament is making a slow comeback in conservative Christian circles. Just a few years ago, when Todd Billings’s excellent book on the subject fell into my hands, I had never heard of lament.[2] Now more sustained theological work is being done on lament, and a few churches have even started introducing lament into their services. But there is still much work to be done to make lament part of the typical religious experience of Christians.

My own interest in lament, in addition to putting words to something that I engaged in intuitively during my own long, hard year of cancer treatment, was in its potential as a uniquely Christian meaning-making process. Lament facilitates the creation of new meaning by providing a narrative structure, a narrative arc for the meaning-making story to emerge. Quite simply, when we as Christians face suffering, the meaning we are given as Christians to work with is what I spoke of yesterday, having largely to do with identifying with Christ in his sufferings. The process we are given is lament. It is a structure embedded in various parts of Scripture, which is intended to help us engage with our sufferings in ways that will lead to the right kind of outcome, ultimately intimacy with God, which I discussed on Tuesday.

Lament is the bridge between suffering and worship. How does it accomplish this? Seen from a psychological perspective, lament moves through a specific trajectory that is psychologically helpful. So today I’d like us to consider lament as a kind of narrative structure that helps to scaffold our distress in suffering. Lament is found throughout the Old Testament, paradigmatically in the Psalms, and these passages of lament are referenced extensively in the New Testament. Approximately 40 percent of the Psalms can be categorized as laments.[3] In discussing this structure, I’ll be relying on Pemberton’s work on the psalms of lament, which has identified the common elements of this narrative structure: an address to God, complaints, request, and expressions of confidence in God—in short, a process of meaning-making that leads from suffering to worship.[4] I’d like to discuss briefly from a psychological perspective why each of these elements is important in leading from the threat of meaninglessness to the creation of new meaning, from the chaos of shattered worldview assumptions to the order of a rebuilt worldview, from suffering to worship. An important theme to note in this trajectory is that it is essentially a relational trajectory from a place of struggle with God to a place of surrender and trust, out of which flows worship. This involves a shift from a focus on one’s self and struggles to a focus on God.

The Address To God

The psalms of lament typically begin by crying out to God. Psalm 13, which I’ll be using as an example, starts, “How long, Lord?” (v. 1). Lament is, by definition, engagement with God. The whole purpose of lament is to bring our suffering to God. It is not lonely catharsis. It is not mere expression of our feelings, as in secular usage of the term. It is not grumbling to others behind God’s back, which the Israelites were chastised for during their wanderings in the desert. So one crucial element in biblical lament has to do with the fact that we can bring all of our experiences, including our suffering, to God. Brueggemann notes the relational significance of this: in bringing the suffering to God, the believer can take initiative in the relationship with God and be responded to.[5] Consider the alternative. We have all been in relationships where we didn’t really matter, perhaps in relationship to a professor or a boss. The other person called all the shots in the relationship; we simply responded. There was no room in this relationship for our own concerns, needs, or preferences. We had no confidence that attempts to bring those into the relationship would result in them being attended to or responded to by the other person. This kind of relationship lacks any kind of intimacy. Intimacy requires responsiveness. The relationship with God could very easily take this form. After all, God is all-powerful. Our interactions with God could be limited to only responding to his greatness with worship instead of also being responded to. As Brueggemann notes, “The absence of lament makes a religion of coercive obedience the only possibility.”[6] But God is not that kind of God. Our God is one who invites expression of our concerns and needs and responds to them in the way that an attuned mother responds to her child.

As we look back at the psalms of lament through the cross, this relational dimension to the crying out becomes even more intimate. While the Jews had the image of God as a father, this was not a central part of how they thought of God.[7] Jesus’s use of Abba to refer to God—a term of intimacy—was adopted by Paul, who encouraged believers to likewise go before God in the certainty that God was their loving heavenly father.[8] When we cry out to God in lament, we can cry out to him as our Abba Father.

The Complaint

In the second component of lament, the cause of the suffering is brought before God in complaint. The threatened loss of meaning in the face of suffering is also expressed. Psalm 13:1–2 says, “Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I wrestle with my thoughts and day after day have sorrow in my heart? How long will my enemy triumph over me?” There is a remarkable array of causes of suffering represented in the psalms of lament. As summarized by Pemberton, they include bodies that are not working well; disease and pain; disappointments in life; depression; people in our lives who by no fault of our own have become our enemies; people who lie about us, take us to court, scheme to cause us trouble or shame us and try to take advantage of us at our weakest moments; lifelong friends who abandon us at our time of greatest need, who turn on us, and who return trouble for all the good that we have done for them.[9]

But the most startling thing about the complaint is that often God himself is the focus of the complaint. Bible teacher and musician Michael Card writes that the two fundamental questions of complaint across the range of difficult life circumstances expressed are “God, where are you?” and “God, if you love me, then why?”[10] It would appear that nothing is off-limits when it comes to expressing our suffering to God. Doubts about God, anger at God, hatred of our enemies—God is open to our expressing honestly whatever is in our hearts. Again, this is remarkable. In our other relationships, our honesty is often bounded by power differentials in the relationship, by concern for the well-being of others, by fear of the reactions of others. God alone is big enough to deal in absolute honesty with what is in our hearts. Some may disagree with me about the need to express doubt, anger, and hatred to God, arguing that this is sinful. Time limits preclude me from going into a discussion regarding whether or not these reactions are in fact sinful. However, let me merely point out here that, if they are sinful, the sin has already occurred in our hearts. Bringing them before God is not the sin; instead it is the beginning of the process of turning away from those distressing feelings.

This expression of suffering is a crucial element of lament. In lament, suffering is not denied or minimized. Suffering is not dealt with by explaining it away or by distracting ourselves from it. It is recognized, and in so doing, the experience of the sufferer is legitimized. I made the argument Tuesday that our contemporary theology of suffering tends to be triumphalistic, skipping the process of working through suffering in order to arrive at the victorious endpoint. But meaning-making in suffering does not work that way. Research suggests that processing the suffering cognitively and emotionally is necessary for growth to occur.[11] The time that we spend sitting in our suffering, grappling with issues of meaning, is crucial. In fact, some studies suggest that the amount of growth is directly related to the amount of intentional engagement with the suffering.[12]

Putting our suffering into words in lament assists in this engagement with suffering, allowing it to be processed. But there is an even more important value to putting our suffering into words.

It allows us to bring it into the interpersonal realm. We are able to express our suffering to someone else, allowing for the sharing of burdens. Even in the relationship to God, who already knows what is in our hearts, voicing our suffering brings with it the intentionality of bringing it to the shared attention of the two people in the relationship. This shared attention, as we saw on our first day together, allows for intimacy.

The Request

While avoiding our suffering is not helpful, neither is it helpful to get stuck in it. In this third element of lament, the request, God is acknowledged as the one who can actually do something about our suffering. In Psalm 13:3, the request is “Look on me and answer, Lord my God. Give light to my eyes.” Wolterstorff distinguishes two kinds of requests for deliverance: deliverance from suffering but also deliverance from the threat of meaninglessness that often accompanies suffering.[13] This distinction highlights the difference between the difficult life event itself and the disorientation it produces. Both are brought to God for deliverance.

The acknowledgment of God’s power implicit in the request also introduces hope into the process of lament. When we ask God to act, we are reminded that God can act to change situations. Hope is central to meaning-making and consequently to flourishing. In fact, hope is a common component of all theories of meaning. Psychological research shows that hope is intrinsic to a sense of meaning in life and that when hope is separated from a sense of meaning, the inverse relationships between meaning and both depression and anxiety decrease.[14] In other words, hope is the engine that helps meaning translate into better psychological outcomes. Meaning-making must evoke hope in order to lead a sufferer into a better place. Research also supports this claim. For example, one study found that hope mediated the relationship between a sense of meaning in life and well-being.[15] In other words, hope is one of the reasons that people with meaning in life flourish. And people who identify with a religion tend to report greater hope.[16]

When psychologists study hope, they study a psychological construct that is rather vague, expressing a sense of optimism about the future. However, hope has a distinct theological focus throughout Scripture. The development of hope as we turn to God with our requests is shaped in the New Testament with a particular eschatological vision. The vision is one of suffering leading to glory. For example, in 2 Corinthians 4:17–18 Paul says, “Our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” “Glory” appears to be a kind of shorthand for salvation and, more specifically, for that part of salvation having to do with the process of transformation that will make us like Christ, resulting in our ultimate transformation into glorious Christ-likeness. As Paul puts it in 2 Corinthians 3:18, “And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

The particular content of hope from a Christian perspective is important because faith does not pit our current suffering against the eschatological glory to come. If it did, then our faith would indeed be a faith that silences the sufferer by simply distracting us from our current circumstances. Instead, our hope legitimizes our experience of suffering in two ways. First, the suffering itself is reconceptualized as a mechanism that can bring us closer to that eschatological vision (“this light momentary affliction is preparing for us,” 4:17, ESV). Second, the difficult events in our life are not diminished by minimizing their consequences in our lives or by denying their existence. Instead, resolution of our pain is achieved by seeing our current afflictions in the light of our eschatological hope (“an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen” 4:17–18, ESV). We are reminded that we live in a transitional age and that our current suffering is transient, but our future hope is eternal. Christ has defeated suffering and death, but we are still living in anticipation of the end of the story. There is still the need for lament in our hope; we “groan as we wait” (cf. Rom 8:22–23).

Our suffering does not disappear, but it is set in a different context—not the context of our current life, hopes, and dreams, but the much larger, glorious (to use the biblical descriptor) reality of our future hope. The context makes all the difference.

The Expression Of Confidence In God

The last component, found in all but one of the psalms of lament, is the expression of confidence in God. The transition to praise and worship is completed. The transition into this part of lament is often marked with the word “but.” It signals a contrast, a movement into a new way of experiencing reality. It signals a line that is crossed, at which the focus shifts from one centered on the psalmist and his own pain to one centered on God. The transition can seem quite abrupt, leading Brueggemann to say, “This movement from plea to praise is one of the most startling in all of Old Testament literature.”[17] For example, Psalm 13 ends, “But I trust in your unfailing love; my heart rejoices in your salvation. I will sing the Lord’s praise, for he has been good to me” (v. 6).

What causes the transition to worship? This is not clear in the Psalms. The psalms of lament are silent regarding why or how this shift to praise occurs. Has God already acted? Perhaps. My own sense is that something else happens here, a shift that is internal rather than external, that is based on a psychological and spiritual shift, rather than a change in circumstances. Based on my experiences interviewing many people who suffer, I think that the transition occurs because of the surrender to God that the earlier parts of lament facilitate. Even when God has not yet acted, the ritualized movement through the lament can lead the sufferer to this place of worship. As we pray through the Psalms—as we call out to God, pour out our hearts and petitions to him, and allow ourselves to be reminded of who God is—our desires, affections, and perspectives are reshaped. Eugene Peterson says that this is the lesson of the Psalms, “that all true prayer pursued far enough will become praise. . . . It does not always get there quickly. It does not always get there easily. . . . But the end is always praise.”[18]

It is clear that suffering itself does not necessarily lead to worship. We all know people who have faced suffering and have emerged bitter and alienated from God. So what is it about engaging with our suffering in lament before God that can lead to the kind of intimacy with God expressed in praise and worship? I think it boils down to this one thing: surrender. In our everyday lives we may acknowledge who we are in relationship to God. We may even intentionally cultivate attitudes of humility before God. But like Job, we are never entirely stripped of our claim on autonomy, self-determination, and control of our own lives until we hit the wall of our own utter helplessness in the face of what we most desperately want. And if we are wise, that will lead us to acknowledge what has been true all along: we are finite, created for a dependent relationship with a loving, omnipotent, omniscient God. When we are made to face this truth, we can then enter into that relationship in the form of surrender.

But there is more to say here. Our finitude and helplessness in the face of God’s omnipotence and omniscience could lead to a kind of loveless capitulation, the kind of surrender that an invading army demands from a conquered population. That is not what is in mind here. My collaborator Jason McMartin defines surrender as “the loving, active, and inward yielding to and acceptance of the will of God.” We can surrender to God in love because we respond to God’s love. When we surrender our suffering to God, this doesn’t mean that the suffering is our will, but simply that we are yielding our will to God’s will as exemplified by Jesus (“not as I will, but as you will,” Matt 26:39).

Surrender is sometimes confused with passivity or with giving up. But surrender is active; it involves ongoing, active cooperation. It actively responds to circumstances through acceptance and yielding to God’s will, rather than passively abdicating to unchangeable events. If Jesus’s death was the ultimate act of surrender, it is also clear that Jesus was an active participant. He said, “For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. This charge I have received from my Father” (John 10:17–18, ESV). McMartin argues that the mode of surrender is not just relevant to coping with suffering but is at the core of how humans were designed to relate to God. This gives a glimpse into why suffering is such a powerful means to intimacy with God: it takes us to where surrender is the only viable option.

What is it that allows the psalmist to surrender as a gesture of love and trust, rather than as an act of passive capitulation? For David, who wrote many of the psalms of lament, there was the experience of God’s love. He referenced his experiences of God’s lovingkindness frequently in the psalms he wrote, such as in the expression of confidence in Psalm 23:6, “Surely your goodness and love will follow me all the days of my life.” We have it even easier than David. While David looked forward to the fulfillment of God’s promises in the Messiah, we have already received the gift of Jesus’s coming. And in Jesus we have the man of sorrows, the suffering servant, who entered into our suffering in the incarnation and took it upon himself on the cross. When we surrender, we have the concrete evidence of God’s love for us. Our surrender is not to a tyrant but to a loving God who became flesh and took upon himself our sins and sorrows. And it is surrender to a God who powerfully raised Jesus from the dead. If the two fundamental questions of complaint are “God, where are you?” and “God, if you love me, then why?,” then the Sunday school answer, “Jesus,” really is the right answer. With respect to “where,” Jesus, God with us, is right there in our suffering. Phenomenologically, the more we identify with Christ in his suffering, the more he is there with us. The more we identify with Christ in his resurrection, the more we have hope. With respect to “why,” while we may never have the intellectual answer, from the perspective we take when we identify with Christ, a perspective that comes from the foot of the cross, we can have confidence that, though not seen, God is at work. The cross is ultimately what allows the transition from complaint to worship.

So surrender has two faces: the acknowledgment of one’s own finitude—one’s own powerlessness, helplessness, lack of control, and lack of knowledge—on the one hand and correspondingly one’s awareness of God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and, above all, loving presence on the other. In fact, I think the primary reason that suffering has the potential to lead us to growth, the reason that the Christian tradition throughout the ages has seen suffering as a road to growth, is precisely because it brings us to the end of ourselves. It does the hard work of stripping us of the illusion that we are in control of our life, that we deserve only good things, that the world is just.

My research collaborator, Jamie Aten, tells of his experience of being diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer at the age of thirty-five, in his book, A Walking Disaster.[19] One day, months into his chemotherapy, he dragged himself outside in the winter snow to take out the trash, all the while struggling with God about his cancer in an attempt to understand and control God. After making his way slowly back inside, exhausted by the small household chore, he found himself dropping to his knees beside his bed. His struggling with God gave way to another prayer: “If I’m not okay, please take care of my wife and my daughters.”[20] In that prayer, he acknowledged that he didn’t know what God’s will was and that he couldn’t manipulate God to do his bidding, but in that moment he felt a deep sense that he could trust God, regardless of the outcome. The result was a deep sense of peace and a quiet confidence in God’s goodness and reliability: a spiritual surrender. Jamie emphasized that there was nothing passive about this surrender and that deciding to trust God was a willful act of obedience. Jamie’s experience echoes that of the psalmist, moving from a crying out to God with his suffering to surrender and trust in God.

Suffering And Flourishing

So as we have seen, lament is a powerful way of engaging with God in finding meaning in suffering. It is a process that is grounded in the evidence of God’s love and the presence of God offered in Jesus. I’d like to suggest here that there is a further and surprising way in which the Christian story transforms lament. Our Christian faith suggests that we can not just endure but rejoice in our suffering. Our lament can end in thanksgiving for the suffering itself. Let me be careful to clarify that this is not a masochistic kind of getting pleasure out of the pain of suffering, nor does it imply passivity in trying to alleviate suffering. Instead, the rejoicing is tied closely with God’s redemptive use of the suffering in our lives. For example, Peter says, “Rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ” (1 Peter 4:13). Elsewhere Paul actually talks about suffering as a privilege. In Philippians 1:29, Paul says, “It has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him.” Peter Hicks says of this verse,

The NIV’s “It has been granted to you . . . to suffer” is hardly adequate; other translations make a better attempt at bringing out the meaning by saying that we have been granted or given “the privilege” of suffering (NEB, Phillips, GNB, NLT), but even that misses the key link with grace. Suffering is more than something granted, more even than a privilege. It is a “grace,” as much an expression of God’s outpoured love and goodness as forgiveness itself. . . . So to savour its full meaning we need to translate Philippians 1:29, “It has been graciously given to you . . . to suffer”, or “in grace the privilege has been granted to you . . . to suffer.” The gift of suffering is no unwelcome imposition; it is as much an expression of God’s love and goodness as any other of his gifts of grace.[21]

Some may argue that this applies only to suffering that is explicitly tied to some kind of persecution. Let me suggest that in the broader context of Paul’s writings, no clear distinction is made between suffering simply as part of the human condition and suffering because of persecution. For example in Romans 8:17 Paul refers to suffering with Christ (“we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him,” ESV). But Douglas Moo points out that later in that same chapter (vv. 23–27), following the same flow of thought, Paul implies that suffering also occurs simply because of being human, involving sufferings of the body and suffering that results from living in the world.[22] Again, not all suffering can be rejoiced in. But when we are suffering in a way that cooperates with Christ’s redeeming work in our lives, accomplished by his suffering—when our suffering helps achieve our glorification and the intimacy with God that our transformation allows—we can rejoice.

Christ’s suffering has the potential to transform our suffering to the degree that we can actually receive it, with rejoicing, as a gift. Why? Only because of its link with Christ. Because of Christ, our suffering can be made holy, filled with meaning and purpose. Suffering is a gift we can receive with gratitude because it moves us toward the goal of knowing Christ, depending on Christ, identification with Christ, and participation in his glory. Paul expresses this passionately in Philippians 3:10, “I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.”

In wrapping up today, I would like to recommend to you the practice of lament. There is value in simply praying through existing psalms of lament, as the ancient Israelites did regularly as part of their worship. The Psalms can powerfully help us to put words to our own experiences. But they do much more than that. Words do not simply reflect experience; they also shape experience. When we engage with biblical lament, the shape of lament causes our experiences to be molded by encountering the reality of God and his character. It allows our experiences to be transformed, and it allows for new meanings to be created.

This profound engagement with suffering is countercultural. In contemporary America, suffering has been reduced to something that must be avoided at all costs, limiting us in engaging with the suffering of others and even with our own suffering. The suffering of others makes us uncomfortable, and consequently we often attempt to help those who suffer by distracting them or pointing out the potential benefits of their situation. The psalms of lament, which were often prayed in community, encourage us instead to stand with others through their suffering. The way out of suffering is through it, not around it, and the psalms of lament offer us a road map down this hard road to glory.[23]

Notes

1. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NIV.
2. J. Todd Billings, Rejoicing in Lament: Wrestling with Incurable Cancer and Life in Christ (Grand Rapids: Brazos, 2015).
3. Glenn Pemberton, Hurting with God: Learning to Lament with the Psalms (Abilene, TX: Abilene Christian University Press, 2012), 32.
4. Pemberton, 65. For the sake of brevity, I will not address Pemberton’s fourth component, “motivation.” For more information on the psychological aspect of this component, see M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, “Suffering in God’s Presence: The Role of Lament in Transformation,” Journal of Spiritual Formation and Soul Care 9.2 (2018): 219–32.
5. Walter Brueggemann, “The Costly Loss of Lament,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 11.36 (1986): 57–71.
6. Brueggemann, 61.
7. Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 12.
8. See Romans 8:15 and Galatians 4:6.
9. Pemberton, Hurting with God, 31.
10. Michael Card, A Sacred Sorrow: Reaching Out to God in the Lost Language of Lament (Colorado Springs, CO: NavPress, 2005), 17.
11. Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi, “The Foundations of Posttraumatic Growth: An Expanded Framework,” in Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice, ed. Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi (New York: Psychology Press, 2009), 3–23.
12. Jeanne M. Slattery and Crystal L. Park, “Meaning Making and Spiritually Oriented Interventions,” in Spiritually Oriented Interventions for Counseling and Psychotherapy, ed. Jamie D. Aten, Mark R. McMinn, and Everett L. Worthington (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2011), 15–40.
13. Nicholas Wolterstorff, “If God Is Good and Sovereign, Why Lament?,” Calvin Theological Journal 36.1 (2001): 44.
14. David B. Feldman and C. R. Snyder, “Hope and the Meaningful Life: Theoretical and Empirical Associations between Goal-Directed Thinking and Life Meaning,” Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology 24.3 (2005): 401–21.
15. Ilhan Yalçın and Asude Malkoç, “The Relationship between Meaning in Life and Subjective Well-Being: Forgiveness and Hope as Mediators,” Journal of Happiness Studies 16.4 (2014): 915–29.
16. Robert G. Kunzendorf and Franz Buker, “Does Existential Meaning Require Hope, or Is Interest Enough?,” Imagination, Cognition and Personality 27.3 (2008): 233–43.
17. Walter Brueggemann, The Message of the Psalms: A Theological Commentary, Augsburg Old Testament Studies (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1984), 56.
18. Eugene H. Peterson, Answering God: The Psalms as Tools for Prayer (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 122.
19. Jamie Aten, A Walking Disaster: What Surviving Katrina and Cancer Taught Me about Faith and Resilience (West Conshohocken, PA: Templeton, 2020), Kindle.
20. Aten, chap. 12.
21. Peter Hicks, The Message of Evil and Suffering: Light into Darkness, The Bible Speaks Today (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 166.
22. Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996), 511. Also note that a similar tie-in to Jesus’s sufferings and the suffering involved in being human can be found in 2 Corinthians 4:8–14.
23. This four-part lecture series was made possible through the support of grant #61467, Christian Meaning-Making, Suffering and the Flourishing Life, from the John Templeton Foundation. The opinions expressed in this publication are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation. I am indebted to my grant team members: Crystal Park, Jason McMartin, Kelly Kapic, Eric Silverman, Jamie Aten, and Laura Shannonhouse. I am also grateful for feedback on earlier drafts of the articles from Kelly Kapic, Charlie Trimm, Jason McMartin, and Ken Berding.

A Trinitarian Theology Of Suffering

By M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall

[M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall is Professor of Psychology at Rosemead School of Psychology, Biola University, La Mirada, California.]

[This is the third article in the four-part series “Suffering and the Christian Life: The Hard Road to Glory,” delivered as the W. H. Griffith Thomas lectures at Dallas Theological Seminary, February 2–5, 2021.]

When I tell people I study meaning-making in suffering, people sometimes suggest that what Christians do might more accurately be called “meaning-finding.” It is a good point. We inhabit a world that is infused with meaning by virtue of being made intentionally by a God who also has loving purposes for this world and for our lives. It is a wonderful gift to be able to step into the meaningful story of God’s redemptive purposes and to not be burdened by the need to create meaning for ourselves. On the other hand, meaning-finding may also not accurately capture what Christians actually do when they are faced with suffering.

In the course of my research, my collaborators and I have conducted almost a hundred interviews with Christians on their experiences of facing cancer diagnoses. We have heard an astonishing variety of ways they make meaning of their suffering. Some of those ways are almost certainly theologically problematic. One middle-aged man with advanced prostate cancer was convinced that he was being unfairly punished by God, that he had been given a death sentence even though he saw himself as “not a bad guy, not some criminal.” Though his Christian friends tried to reassure him that this was not the case, he persisted in this belief. Another older man conceptualized his prostate cancer as a test of faith, in which he had to prove his faith by claiming God’s healing. God is, of course, the great healer, and James 1:2–3 suggests that the trials one experiences can be a kind of test to reveal one’s inner character. But this man’s approach involved reading through and claiming a list of healing verses every day. This claiming functioned as a sort of magic ritual and, unfortunately, also represented a rather rigid and brittle form of coping, effective only as long as the cancer did not return. We also heard a range of cancer narratives that were more orthodox in their approach, which I will review later. But even these more orthodox accounts, with few exceptions, largely struck me as falling short of the depth of meaning found in biblical passages on suffering. What accounts for this situation? Put simply, our contemporary churches do not offer people the cultural resources to construct rich meaning narratives. As I noted on Tuesday, our theology of suffering is often generically theistic rather than specifically Christian, triumphalistic rather than providing guidance for going through suffering, and focused on defending God rather than focused on people’s needs.

Meaning-Making As A Cultural Project

People do not make meaning in a vacuum. They draw on resources that are available to them. Dan McAdams is a prominent psychologist who is most famous for his work on narratives as a way of understanding people. He argued that we provide our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose by constructing self-defining life stories, which are similar to, though much broader than, the meaning-making narratives that we studied in our cancer patients.[1] He noted that narratives are “psychosocial constructions that are jointly authored by the individual whose life is being told and the culture within which the individual lives, from which he or she gathers the narrative resources and frameworks that shape storytelling itself.”[2] In other words, our views of suffering are internalized from our religious context, our religious culture. We hear ideas in sermons, Bible studies, Christian books, and conversations with other believers that shape the general ways we think about suffering. Then we encounter specific hardships in our own lives, the particularities of each specific kind of suffering, and we appraise that suffering. We understand it in a specific way. We try to make it fit with the way we understand suffering in general, though sometimes we struggle to fit the specific pieces in with our beliefs. For example, if I believe in a loving God who works all things for the good of those who love him, and I get cancer, I may generally believe that God can bring good out of the situation, but I may struggle quite a bit to understand how potentially leaving my teenage sons without a mother or my husband without a wife is loving. My cancer narrative consequently is a construction in which I attempt to fit the realities of my situation within the belief system I have learned from my evangelical subculture.

We clearly saw the imprint of cultural contexts on the cancer stories of our participants. We sampled from three Christian traditions: people from an evangelical megachurch that was predominantly middle class and White; women from historically Black congregations; and Catholics. Their stories, while all reflecting Christian themes, differed from each other in some interesting ways, in their emphases and in their structures. In other words, they were shaped by the meanings that were available to them in their particular contexts. For example, our Black participants had a well-defined narrative structure for their stories, which they referred to as “testimony.” Catholics demonstrated more active surrender to God, perhaps facilitated by practices focusing on Christ’s suffering. Evangelicals used the language of God’s purpose throughout their narratives. While all Christian, their narratives differed in systematic ways that can be tied to the resources available to them in their specific religious communities.

One other psychological study similarly found differences between religious traditions in their views of suffering. In a sample of chaplains from Judeo-Christian backgrounds working with veterans, the researchers found differences between religious traditions. Evangelicals were higher in views that emphasized God’s control over suffering, the role of free will in causing suffering, suffering as an occasion for divine encounter, and suffering as intended to bring about personal growth.[3] Black Protestants, like the evangelicals, were higher than other groups in beliefs that emphasized God’s control over suffering; mainline Protestants were higher in beliefs that emphasized God’s suffering along with people; Jews had higher scores on the views of suffering as random and lower scores on beliefs that saw God as suffering along with people.

The point I am making here is simply that the meaning-making narratives that people construct are only as good as the narrative material that is made available to them. If our engagement with suffering in the context of our churches is simplistic and shallow, the meanings people in our churches are able to construct will likely also be simplistic and shallow. If we offer resources that are triumphalistic, the narratives will tend to be triumphalistic. If they are robust and Christocentric, then the narratives are more likely to be robust and Christocentric.

And of course the robustness of our theology of suffering will influence the outcomes of our suffering. If the theology is flimsy, it will be unable to bear the weight of our suffering and could result in a loss or weakening of faith, negative mental health outcomes, and even potentially negative physical health outcomes. If it is robust, it can provide guidance, comfort, improved mental and physical outcomes, and perhaps even more importantly some outcomes of supreme importance such as increased intimacy with God.

Psychological Research On Christian Meanings Of Suffering

The consequences of our views of suffering are documented in the psychological literature. There is, at this point, a very small psychological literature that specifically looks at the content of meanings of suffering and their consequences for physical and mental health. An early study found that in caregivers of terminally ill patients from a variety of religious backgrounds, seeing the situation as God’s will was positively correlated with purpose in life. In contrast, seeing it as related to an apathetic or unfair God was positively correlated with depression and anxiety and negatively correlated with purpose in life.[4]

In one of the most sophisticated studies to date on views of suffering, Gall and Bilodeau studied spiritual causal attributions in a sample of women with breast cancer over the course of treatment.[5] They asked women to rate how strongly they attributed their current situation to God’s will or purpose, to God’s love, or to God’s anger or punishment. They found that seeing their cancer as being related to God’s will or God’s love was related to well-being, seeing the cancer as a challenge rather than a threat, and more positive coping, while the inverse pattern was found with seeing the cancer as an indication of God’s anger or punishment. An attribution to God’s anger was related to greater emotional distress from pre-diagnosis to two years postsurgery, suggesting that seeing the cancer as a result of God’s anger or punishment may result in a downward mental health spiral.

In addition to affecting physical and mental health, views of suffering influence other religious variables. In a study that examined views of suffering in college students undergoing a spiritual struggle, Wilt and colleagues assessed views of suffering, then assessed the same participants on multiple religiosity variables a year later.[6] They found that views that God shares in one’s suffering and has benevolent purposes for suffering were associated with increased commitment to and involvement in religion, while views of suffering endorsing the view that God has limited knowledge, power, or benevolence resulted in the opposite pattern of changes.

In the remainder of our time I’d like to turn to a more careful examination of orthodox Christian beliefs for understanding suffering. I’d like to suggest to you that biblical messages about the meaning of suffering can be understood at varying levels of specificity and that the thicker our understanding of the biblical message, the more adequate our theology of suffering will be for confronting and growing through suffering.

Theistic Views Of Suffering

In its most bare-bone articulation, the Christian message is that God can redeem suffering. God works all things together for good. This is obviously a true message drawn directly from Romans 8:28, but it is usually not fleshed out by all of the wonderful content surrounding that particular verse in chapter 8. Often this form of meaning-making is accompanied by a search for “good things,” specific purposes that have been achieved because of the cancer: a reconciled relationship, the opportunity to witness, etc. A common benefit that is articulated is that it allows the sufferer to help others in similar situations, echoing the point made in 2 Corinthians 1:4: “[God] comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.”[7] However, a problem with this framing of the Christian meaning of suffering is that, as noted earlier, it rarely takes the context of the verse into account in determining how to understand the “good,” and consequently it leaves the interpretation of “good” up in the air. Sometimes misguided attempts to identify precisely the good that is resulting can lead to a trivialization of suffering.

A more specific version is that God works all things together for good by changing us for the better. Again, this is obviously a true statement. There are several passages in Scripture that suggest that character growth can come from suffering. Christian Scripture connects suffering with the development of specific virtues such as obedience (Heb 5:8), empathy, compassion (Heb 2:18), perseverance (Jas 1:2–4), and hope (Rom 5:3–5). However, while true, this more specific version is also inadequate. Specifically, the problem is that this characterization of the purpose of suffering is incomplete and consequently suggests that the means are the end. The virtues themselves are not the end goal. Sanctification is not a self-improvement project. Growth in character is never intended as a goal in itself but rather as a way of equipping us for the greater purpose of intimacy with God, as I outlined on Tuesday. The point of justification and sanctification is not merely character growth; the point is the establishment and deepening of a relationship of loving intimacy with God for God’s glory.

These views are not wrong; in fact, as I have noted, there is ample biblical support for them. However, they do have some limitations. By themselves these two ways of framing the meaning of suffering are broadly theistic rather than Christian. They reference God the Father but do not draw on a Trinitarian understanding of suffering. Further, they focus only on the good outcomes of suffering, de-emphasizing the process of suffering itself and thus running the risk of being triumphalistic in minimizing suffering. In the next section I will attempt to outline the contours of a richer, more detailed view of suffering that is present in Scripture.

A Trinitarian View Of Suffering

I’d now like to propose the contours of a more complete Christian view of suffering, although I do this with some trepidation as a psychologist speaking to a group comprised largely of theologians! Michael Gorman begins his book Cruciformity by quoting Paul’s statement, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2, ESV).[8] Gorman goes on to argue that the distinguishing feature of Christianity is, quite literally according to Paul, Jesus Christ crucified. If that is the case, then the absence of Jesus Christ crucified in most of the suffering narratives we heard is a cause for concern. I propose that the most complete Christian view of suffering is that God works all things together for good by conforming us to the image of his Son with the help of the Spirit to achieve intimacy with God. This meaning structure can be found throughout Scripture but perhaps most clearly in Romans 8:18–37. This passage is packed with insights about the meaning and purpose of suffering. Time limitations preclude us from going into all the details, so let me just note for you how essentially Trinitarian it is. In the well-known verse Romans 8:28, God the Father is the one who “works for the good of those who love him” in all things, including the suffering that is the context for this verse. When we are immersed in our suffering, the Spirit “helps us in our weakness” and intercedes for us with wordless groans, shaping our responses to suffering in accordance with the will of God when we don’t know what to pray for (vv. 26–27). Christ comes in with respect to purpose. When God the Father works for good, he does it in those who have been called according to his purpose, which is defined in the very next verse as conformity to the image of his Son and in the verse after that, glorification. And the passage ends by infusing all of these actions with love. God does what he does so that in the midst of all kinds of suffering nothing “will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (v. 39). Intimacy with our Triune God is the ultimate end, as I noted on Tuesday.

The heart of the meaning of suffering then is conformity to the image of the Son, a concept that is connected to the concept of identification with Christ. Suffering allows us to identify with Christ in his suffering. But what does this phrase mean? Certainly there is a long Christian tradition of seeing suffering as an opportunity to enter into the sufferings of Christ. In fact, various Christian traditions offer practices intended to assist in this process, such as the Catholic devotional practice of the Stations of the Cross, which uses fourteen images depicting Christ’s crucifixion day as opportunities for reflection and prayer. Psychological research seems to demonstrate that this emphasis in the Catholic church makes a difference in the suffering experiences of practitioners. Two qualitative psychological studies to date have addressed the theme of identification with Christ in his sufferings. In a study of fifty-two older Mexican Americans, the majority of the sample felt that suffering was a necessary part of life.[9] The primary reason they gave was that Jesus suffered when he was crucified. In their suffering they felt “they [were] emulating Jesus . . . by taking on pain and suffering, just as He did.” In another study six British, older Roman Catholic women in remission from cancer were interviewed.[10] The authors found that Christ’s life, death, and resurrection served as a metaphorical framework for understanding their own suffering. The women frequently referenced the suffering, death, and resurrection of Christ as they told their own stories. In discussing these findings, the authors noted, “For Catholics it is seen as an honor and privilege to participate in suffering, as to suffer is to become actively involved in Christ’s Passion; it is because He suffered and died that believers are able to share in the Glory.”[11] We evangelicals don’t have these kinds of reminders of Christ’s suffering, perhaps because of the triumphalism I discussed on Tuesday. Consequently, our interviews with two groups of conservative Protestant Christians revealed relatively few references to Christ’s suffering. I think this is a theological emphasis we need to reclaim.

Since I am not a theologian, I have asked my theologian friends to point me to resources to supplement my own attempt to find out more about what it means to identify with Christ in his suffering. What I have discovered is that very little seems to have been written about the meaning of this phrase. Furthermore, what has been written, with few exceptions, tends to focus on the metaphysical aspect of identifying with Christ rather than the more experiential or phenomenological mode that would be most relevant to people who suffer. Both Luke Timothy Johnson and Michael Gorman comment on this omission, noting that inattention to religious experience is a significant blind spot in New Testament scholarship in general.[12]

With respect to the metaphysical mode, the language of identification indicates what theologians might call a “positional” standing: we have died to sin and will be resurrected to glorification/Christlikeness. Paul frequently referred to his own suffering as a form of death or dying. In this way he appeared to conceive of his suffering as uniting him with Christ’s death.[13] Paul writes several times about being crucified with Christ (e.g., Gal 2:19; 6:14; Rom 6:6–7). As we participate in Christ’s death, we are freed from our “old self” with its sinful desires: “For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin” (Rom 6:6–7).

Gorman emphasizes that the pattern of identification with Christ does not stop with suffering but also includes resurrection.[14] For example, Romans 8:17 speaks of our future status of glorification as the end result of being in Christ but qualifies this by saying, “If in fact we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him” (NRSV)—a hint that Paul is speaking of something more than just a change in our positional standing. In chapter 6:3–11 there is an extended description of baptism as a participation in Christ’s death and resurrection. It can be helpful when we suffer to know that our positional standing has changed, that we have died and been resurrected with Christ, which gives us hope in our eventual resurrection and glorification. But I think there is much more to be learned from this idea of identifying with Christ in his suffering. In addition to just being something we know, it can be something that we experience. This is, of course, Paul’s whole emphasis, as he regularly in his writings grounds our phenomenological experience in our positional standing before God.

This phenomenological or experiential emphasis on identification with Christ in his suffering is of primary relevance for meaning-making. In Philippians 3:10–11 Paul expresses his desire to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (NRSV). What is Paul referring to in his desire to “know Christ” in this way? The passages referenced above give some indication of this. In Romans 6 and in 1 Peter 3 there is a connection between identification with Christ’s sufferings as experientially as well as metaphysically freeing believers from sin. In other words, suffering has the potential to transform believers in conformity to Christ. This conformity to Christ is in fact a move toward the end state of glorification. It is no coincidence that the most frequently cited verse in the context of suffering, Romans 8:28 (“we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him”), is immediately followed in verse 29 by God’s intent to conform believers to the image of God’s Son.

It should be noted that from this theological perspective suffering in itself is not transformative; it is suffering “in Christ” that has this power. It is when suffering is imbued with meaning that it has the potential to be transformative. The mechanism of this transformation is not spelled out at length in these passages. The biblical passages suggest three interconnected pathways for transformation: (a) the “power” referred to in Philippians 3 acts in us through suffering to achieve transformation; (b) when believers follow Christ’s example in how Christ faced suffering, the result is transformation into Christlikeness; and (c) there is a relational dimension of increasing intimacy with Christ through suffering as he suffered that allows us to more fully “know Christ,” including “the fellowship of his sufferings” (KJV), as Paul expresses in Philippians 3:10—this intimacy results in transformation.

The Power Of God

Philippians 3 speaks of the power of God that accomplished Christ’s resurrection and that accomplishes transformation in our own lives. Often this power is linked in the New Testament to the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. This is one of the places where the involvement of the Holy Spirit in a biblical theology of suffering comes into play.[15] I have little to say about this aspect except to acknowledge it, since it has to do primarily with God’s actions rather than with anything we might do. The next two, however, have important meaning-making implications, as they involve our experiential participation.

Christ As Example

First Peter 2:21 states, “Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps” (ESV). Among other things, identifying with Christ in his suffering means following his example. In this way Jesus’s suffering is viewed not simply as a means of salvation for Christians but also as an image or pattern to guide the believer’s life. Elsewhere, I have written at length about ways in which Jesus modelled how to face suffering.[16] Briefly, rather than allowing his suffering to alienate him from God, he brought his suffering to God in lament. “Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death” (Heb 5:7, NRSV). Tomorrow we will be examining this practice of lament in more detail. Second, in response to suffering he did not sin but instead displayed the fruit of the Spirit in his response to suffering. The biblical writers suggest that Jesus even grew in character through his experiences, learning obedience and gaining empathy and compassion for us (Heb 2:18; 5:8). Third, he practiced what we might call “perspective-taking”; he endured his suffering in light of the glory that was to come (Luke 24:26; 1 Pet 1:11), just as Paul encourages us to do. In Romans 8:18 Paul says, “I consider that the sufferings of this pres-ent time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us” (NRSV), and elsewhere, “this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all measure” (2 Cor 4:17, ESV). This is a meaning-making strategy: following Jesus’s example, we interpret our suffering in light of the glory that is to come (conformity to Christ), and which the suffering is helping to achieve.

I would like to spend some time on the change in perspective that Paul outlines here as I think it is central to identification with Christ in his suffering. In elaborating on this aspect of identifying with Christ, I will be drawing on Martin Luther’s theology of the cross. Martin Luther acknowledged the centrality of the cross in the Christian story of redemption (what I am referring to here as the metaphysical aspect), but he went further than that, also putting the cross at the center of the lived experience of Christians (the phenomenological aspect). Luther’s connection between the cross and daily life—and especially the tensions and trials of daily life—is directly related to the notion of intersubjectivity that I brought up in the context of intimacy with God on Tuesday. Luther suggests that the cross is not just the means of our atonement but is an important vantage point for viewing reality.[17] When we increasingly take the perspective of the cross, when we increase our intersubjectivity with Christ by intentionally viewing the world through the cross, we are transformed. The cross allows us a clearer vision of the world around us, of God’s place and our place in that world. It has the power to transform our vision. This notion is reflected in Paul’s declaration, “I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor 2:2, ESV).

The cross allows us to see ourselves more clearly—in our finitude and our sinfulness. The starting place for a transformed vision is a recognition of the vast distance between the unimaginable god-ness of God and the utter creatureliness of the creature. The cross constantly reminds us of this gap between who God is and who we are. It is a powerful reminder of our limited perspective on the world, of our finitude. After all, from our vantage point the cross makes no sense. From our perspective it was the unjust murder of a helpless and innocent man using an instrument of torture to cause a shameful death. What good could possibly come out of that? And yet hidden in the cross was the salvation of God in all its love, wisdom, justice, and righteousness. The cross is a constant reminder that we are severely limited in our ability to know God and God’s ways. Much of what we think about what is happening in our suffering is consequently little better than idle speculation. The cross cultivates in us an intellectual humility that acknowledges our dependence on God to see reality accurately. McGrath (thinking of Luther) explains this further: “[The] theology of the cross draws our attention to the sheer unreliability of experience as a guide to the presence and activity of God. God is active and pres-ent in the world, quite independently of whether we experience him as being so. Experience declared that God was absent from Calvary, only to have its verdict humiliatingly overturned on the third day.”[18] We can recognize our limitations and our utter dependence on God—a theme of surrender that we will return to in tomorrow’s lecture.

The cross also allows us to see our sin more clearly. One of Luther’s central tenets is that we are “simultaneously just and sinners.”[19] We can look at our sin honestly without needing to hide from it, confident in our ability to seek and find grace. We can also be clear that God is working in us and through us. We are confident that the one who started a good work in us will complete it (Phil 1:6). We see ourselves accurately, and consequently are in a position to cooperate with God’s sanctifying work in our lives through our suffering.

Finally, the cross allows us to see God more clearly. While forcing us to acknowledge our limitations, the cross also reminds us to look for God’s working in the world. As Hebrews 11:1 reminds us, faith is characterized by its ability to see past the limitations of our human senses and recognize what lies behind them—God’s plans being worked out in the world to achieve God’s purposes. In this sense it provides greater clarity than what we can achieve unaided by the cross.

Intimacy With Christ

Let’s move now to the third potential mechanism for transformation implied in the concept of identifying with Christ in his suffering: achieving intimacy with Christ. Gorman noted that Romans 8, which speaks at length of suffering, concludes that in suffering, believers are “more than conquerors through him who loved us” (v. 37). This verse is surrounded by exuberant depictions of the love of Christ for us. Just as Christ’s suffering was a demonstration of God’s love for us, so our suffering is “a continuation of the narrative of divine love.”[20] We experience Christ’s love in its intensity, as described in Romans 8, in participating in Christ’s suffering. Wilbourne makes the point that Christ is the suffering servant, “a man of sorrows . . . acquainted with grief” (see Isa 53:3, ESV).[21] To know Christ, believers must know suffering, as Christ’s sufferings were not merely something he experienced but were central to his mission and identity. In this way the shared experience of suffering and the intersubjectivity that it achieves facilitates relational intimacy, as I noted on Tuesday.[22]

This theology of the cross has profound implications for suffering. After all, we are talking about identification with the cross of Christ. Consequently, suffering is central to this way of being in the world. As with the cross, from our own human perspective suffering is random and senseless, but from the perspective of the cross, suffering is seen differently, as “profoundly reasonable.”[23] Only by identifying with Christ’s suffering through our own suffering can we gain access to a certain knowledge of God necessary for intimacy. Our own suffering takes on significance and meaning as it facilitates our identification with Christ’s suffering, allowing us easier access to that intersubjectivity which is so important to intimacy.

Luther states that “God can reveal himself only . . . in the humility and shame of the cross.”[24] We don’t experience the benefits of the cross in spite of suffering; through the cross we experience them through suffering, as suffering is used to transform us.

With respect to why suffering can produce this transformation, Gorman points to Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 1:9: “We felt that we had received the sentence of death so that we would rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead” (NRSV).[25] Hagen suggests that Paul opens the letter with an account of his own suffering precisely to illustrate the principle “that believers’ sufferings in Christ are intended to bring them to a place of utter and complete reliance upon God.”[26] Suffering forces believers to turn to God’s power when they have reached the end of what they can accomplish. In this way of thinking about identification with Christ’s suffering, believers’ suffering facilitates the working of God’s power as believers recognize their own limitations and learn to depend on God and God’s power in their lives. Again, this brings up the concept of surrender, which we will discuss in more detail tomorrow.

Summary And Conclusions

In our time together today, I suggested the necessity of providing the church with a thicker theology of suffering. I provided the contours of a Trinitarian theology of suffering with a particular focus on identifying with Christ in his suffering. The all-powerful, good God the Father will only allow suffering that can move us toward the ultimate goal of loving intimacy with him. This goal takes a Christocentric form when we choose to suffer following Christ’s example, depend on God’s Spirit, and in this way become more like Christ. During this process we are aided by the Spirit who empowers us, produces the fruit of Christlikeness in us, intercedes for us, shapes our longings, comforts us, and gives us confidence. The Triune God looks forward to the glory to come and works to bring it to pass as the Spirit works within. My hope is that you leaders in the church will take up the challenges of developing and disseminating a theology of suffering that plumbs the depths of the loving purposes of God who will not allow suffering to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Notes

1. Dan P. McAdams, The Redemptive Self: Stories Americans Live By, rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).
2. Dan P. McAdams et al., “When Bad Things Turn Good and Good Things Turn Bad: Sequences of Redemption and Contamination in Life Narrative and Their Relation to Psychosocial Adaptation in Midlife Adults and in Students,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 27.4 (2001): 484.
3. Joseph M. Currier et al., “Theodicies and Professional Quality of Life in a Nationally Representative Sample of Chaplains in the Veterans’ Health Administration,” Journal of Prevention and Intervention in the Community 45.4 (July 2017): 286–96.
4. Jacqueline R. Mickley et al., “God and the Search for Meaning among Hospice Caregivers,” The Hospice Journal 13.4 (1998): 1–18.
5. Terry Lynn Gall and Cynthia Bilodeau, “ ‘Why Me?’—Women’s Use of Spiritual Causal Attributions in Making Sense of Breast Cancer,” Psychology and Health 32.6 (2017): 709–27.
6. Joshua A. Wilt et al., “Theological Beliefs about Suffering and Interactions with the Divine,” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9.2 (2017): 137–47.
7. Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the NIV.
8. Michael J. Gorman, Cruciformity: Paul’s Narrative Spirituality of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 1.
9. Neal Krause and Elena Bastida, “Religion, Suffering, and Health among Older Mexican Americans,” Journal of Aging Studies 23.2 (2009): 114–23.
10. Fiona Clements and Fiona Tasker, “Living Through the Paschal Mystery: Surviving Cancer Narratives Told by Older Roman Catholic Women,” Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging 27.1 (2014): 48–66.
11. Clements and Tasker, 61.
12. Gorman, Cruciformity, 3; Luke Timothy Johnson, Religious Experience in Earliest Christianity: A Missing Dimension of New Testament Studies (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1998).
13. Constantine R. Campbell, Paul and Union with Christ: An Exegetical and Theological Study (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2012).
14. Gorman, Cruciformity, 312–19.
15. For an elaboration on the role of the Holy Spirit in suffering, see M. Elizabeth Lewis Hall, “Suffering as Formation: The Hard Road to Glory,” in The Holy Spirit and Christian Formation: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, ed. Diane J. Chandler (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 69–88.
16. Hall, 69–88.
17. Alister E. McGrath, Luther’s Theology of the Cross: Martin Luther’s Theological Breakthrough (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 5.
18. Alister E. McGrath, The Enigma of the Cross (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1987), 159.
19. Martin Luther, A Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Galatians, trans. Theodore Graebner (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1939), 62.
20. Gorman, Cruciformity, 329.
21. Rankin Wilbourne, Union with Christ: The Way to Know and Enjoy God (Colorado Springs, CO: David C Cook, 2016).
22. Eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (Oxford: Clarendon, 2010).
23. Rosalene Bradbury, Cross Theology: The Classical Theologia Crucis and KarlBarth’s Modern Theology of the Cross (Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2011), 59.
24. Bradbury, 60.
25. Gorman, Cruciformity, 343.
26. Jeanette Hagen, “Faith as Participation: An Exegetical Study of Some Key Pauline Texts” (master’s thesis, Durham University, 2016), 104.