Originally posted by KellyJay
He didn't have to did He? One of the things about laying down one's life for the Lord, is
that we lay down our lives for the Lord. Life can hit us with good and bad things, both can
destroy us. If we are in Christ, suffering loss or great gain shouldn't trip us up, we can do all
in Christ.
The answer to the reason for
Job's suffering is not given in the book of
Job, other than the fact that a kind of contest was going on between God and Satan in which
Job was in the middle.
But the answer to the suffering of His saints
IS given in the
New Testament book .
Second Corinthians , Paul's "autobiography" unveils to the people of God how circumstances cause us to have "no were else to go except up". We are pressed into Christ. Through adverse situations we gain Christ. God works Himself into man.
There are glimpses of this in some other books as well. But
Second Corinthians really shows how God used Paul's difficulties to saturate Paul with Christ, filling him up with Christ, permeating him with Christ, interweaving Christ into every part of his personality.
Here is a little glimpse of this.
"But we have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God and not our of us. " (2 Cor. 4:7)
The apostles were
"earthen vessels" in their humanity. But the triune God had dispensed into them divine life - Christ. He is the unfathomable eternal treasure residing in the earth vessels of the believers' beings.
Then he goes on.
"we are pressed on every side but not constricted, unable to find a way out but not utterly without a way out.
Persecuted but not abandoned;
cast down but not destroyed;
Always bearing about in the body the putting to death of Jesus that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. " (vs. 8-10)
The more they suffered by the power of Christ's resurrection the more Christ was manifested in their bodies and even their whole beings. Paul says that death worked in them but as a result divine life worked from out of them INTO the Christian churches that they served.
"For we who are alive are always being delivered unto death for Jesus sake that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh.
So then death operates in us, but life in you." (vs.11,12)
This is a very big subject. But Paul encourages us that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared to the glory to eternally shine out from us as God wroughts His Spirit through and through the believers.
" For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory to be revealed upon us. " (Rom. 8:18)
And again in
Second Corinthians 4:17.
"For our momentary lightness of affliction works out fo us, more and more surpassingly, an eternal weight of glory.
Because we do not regard the things which are seen but the things which are not seen; for the things which are seen are temporary, but they things which are not seen are eternal." (vs. 17,18)
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