Servanthood: Submissive, Suffering, Sacrificing & Strengthened (Pt. 2)

Have you ever suffered? I am not looking for anything rare or severe. Have you in your personal experience suffered? It may have been on or in your body. Maybe it was emotionally, financially, relationally, mentally, spiritually…the human experience is so vast it really is impossible to make an exhaustive list, yet I hope you see what I mean: Have you suffered in any way?

These experiences to some degree have been the reality of every human life for various lengths of time throughout the ages. For both the follower of Christ and the rebel against Christ these things have been experienced. We live in a world in which there is pain and decisions to be made. Yet, these are especially found in the life of The Servant and his followers in very particular ways.

Remember the previous text from Mark 9

“If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.”

Mark 9:35

This is the second of Jesus’ key teachings on what life looks like as a disciple. And this is quite logical because one of the central statements in all of the book comes in Mark 10

“For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”

Mark 10:45

This is a life goal of the Captain of our faith, therefore, it is to be a pattern of life: to serve.

In part one we explored what it looked like for Jesus to be The Servant who submitted to his Father. Then we looked at how we follow his example and live in such a way among the brethren.

Here we will dive into how service to Christ and others entails suffering.

Servanthood: Suffering

Generally suffering is the result of something that is outside of our control. Yet even in that comes the point where we decide how we will live and go on amid that suffering. For the follower of Jesus this is not a choice: will I suffer or will I not. The Bible in both testaments constantly gives us narratives that show the normality of God’s people suffering, but what is more are the plain teachings of Jesus, the prophets, and apostles telling us that we will suffer as God’s people. This is par for the course. What is interesting to notice about suffering as it ties to our context in Mark is to reflect back when Jesus started teaching these key parts of discipleship.

“If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.”

Mark 8:34

When Jesus spoke these words he was at the very beginning of his journey from the northern part of Israel, north of the Sea of Galilee, on his way to the south, to Jerusalem. Why was he traveling there? He was making his final trip to go to the cross to redeem his people. It is there he would suffer as was prophesied in Isaiah 53. With that trajectory in mind consider the words of Jesus again: “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow me.” Noting the words in bold Jesus is essentially telling us: I am going to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed. If you wish to be my disciple then follow me knowing it is very likely they will kill you too. Those who hate me will also hate you because you love me and belong to me.

Here we see the close tie of Jesus’ suffering and ours. From the very first steps of discipleship Jesus is telling us that suffering is normative, not an exception. If for no other reason he whom we follow was sent to suffer so also do we who are made like him. My earlier reference to Isaiah 53 may have triggered the biblical knick-name for the Messiah Jesus: The Suffering Servant.

Let us look and see how a key part of Jesus as the Servant of the Lord was that he’d suffer; from there we will look to se how service and suffering tie together in our lives.

Suffering Servant

Between Isaiah 40&66 we learn of one known as the Servant of the Lord, along with his various roles and duties. The capstone to this is found in Isaiah 53 in which we learn of his suffering. In 1 Peter 2:21-25 it is confirmed that Isaiah spoke of Jesus as the prophesied servant who would suffer. In 1 Peter 2:21, before we read of the suffering specifically, we are told how a reason for his suffering was “leave an example.” In his example we do not find and experience-for-experience description which we should expect to undergo, yet it does show us how suffering in various ways does occur:

• Jesus left the perfections and peace of heaven and came into our undesirable unrest.
• He became a human who experienced pain for the first time.
• In his time among us he lost his cousin John the Baptist and was betrayed by his friend Judas.
• His family thought he was insane and mocked him; his home town of 20+ years rejected him.
• Then there are all the safe assumptions of various sufferings Jesus’ likely experienced in his time among humanity.

Of course the suffering we normally speak of is what occurred at the cross and leading up to his death. I do not pass over it to make light of it but to show quickly the variety of suffering he experienced and so left us an example of how to suffer.

Following the Suffering Servant

We could summarize Jesus’ call to his followers from Mark 8:34 & 9:35 as a call to be self-denying, cross-bearing servants. These are birthed and developed out of the grace of God in our lives making us into new people (or as Paul calls us: New Creation). Being that kind of a servant cannot be made by any method of coaching or self-help reading. That is made by the Spirit of God who dwells in the people of God.

One of the central parts to being a servant in God’s kingdom is the role of suffering. When we encounter suffering there is so much to gain.

1. God uses suffering to shape and mold our lives into what he desires (what is called sanctification in the Bible: being made holy).
2. Our response to suffering is one of the clearest displays of the maturity of our faith and love for God.

Suffering Shapes Us

Just as Christ suffered a variety of circumstance all culminating in the cross so as to leave us an example, so we may expect to meet various trials.

“Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds…”

James 1:2

Earlier I asked: Have you experienced suffering? It may have been on or in your body. Maybe it was emotionally, financially, relationally, mentally, spiritually…the human experience is so vast it really is impossible to make an exhaustive list, yet I hope you see what I mean: Have you suffered in any way?

God does not limit himself to making use of only some of the suffering in our lives but not others. God uses it all. No suffering is in vain but all of it shapes, sanctifies making us more as God desires until that final day when Jesus returns and we rise from our graves in the majesty of our new bodies and lives.

Consider what Paul teaches us about God’s use of all the suffering we encounter:

“And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”

Romans 8:28

“All” means all my friend. There is not a circumstance nor second of your christian life that God has not planned from eternity past to use for your benefit: the happy and the sad. It is this thought that should embolden and strengthen the follower of The Servant to stay faithful amid suffering, trials, loss, or difficulty. But also here what Paul says specifically about suffering itself, not just “all things”.

“This light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…”

2 Corinthians 4:17

Stop. Sit back and call to memory your most painful experience. What is the greatest suffering you have known. Do not compare that situation to another’s. But for you in your soul, in the reality that is your life, what is the most painful experience you have known? What Paul teaches us here is profound and necessary to get us through “affliction”. In each and every situation of pain in this life we can remember that it is”momentary”, momentary compared to the “eternal” ages we will have with our Savior. There will be an end to that “affliction”. It will not have the last word. You may be experiencing “affliction” now or you may have continual lingerings of “affliction” from the past. Paul does not make light of it but there will come a day when all those tears are wiped away (Rev. 21:4).

Yet, in the here an now it is at work “preparing” you for “an eternal weight of glory.” The affliction is light compared to the weight of the majesty of heaven. You think for a minute how crushing affliction can be. It may be emotional but you can hardly breathe. The death or loss was years ago yet a tear comes to your eye upon remembering it. That loss of physical ability continues with you always. Affliction can truly crush yet Paul calls it “light”. Why? Because by comparison, the weight, the fullness of the joys and peace, love and affection, beauty and pleasures of God’s presence makes this momentary affliction look light.

Suffering prepares us.

Two Applications:

• Response to suffering experienced: It was not a waste. God developed you. God brought you into a new place of experiencing grace. It was God’s gracious comfort which brought you through. Or maybe it has been experienced and is being experienced. The end has not come, the pain goes on. How do you respond? How do you choose to respond? Our response to suffering is just that: a choice. Peace amid suffering is found when we think about suffering from a biblical perspective. Will you allow 2 Corinthians 1 and James 1 be a determining factor in how you walk this path God has you on?
• Rethinking suffering as God’s tool: When suffering is submitted to, knowing that all is for the good of God’s Child and children, we are brought into fresh and renewed fellowship with God which would not have been known otherwise. The Son submitted and thus entered into his glory. The Messiah offered himself on the alter and then sat down at the right hand of the Father as the gates of heaven opened to The Perfect Man at his ascension. God brings us to humility and dependency and trust. When we cannot pick ourselves up; when our mind is racing, heart broken, body aching we are left with nothing but the quiet yet potent prayer: “Help.” It may be all you can utter yet it ushers in the all powerful, sustaining grace of God. On a personal note I share this song with you that ministered to me almost a year ago as I walked through a dark time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6fA35Ved-Y