“And the peace of God, which passeth all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” (Phil. 4:7)
As a whole, what has the majority of your life been, moments of peace with occasional pain, or pain as your nearly constant companion, with only the momentary blessings of peace interspersed?
“They shall bear thee up in their hands, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” (Psalm 91:12)
Our Lord knew both continuously. I cannot verify this of course, but I do not believe our Savior suffered any physical pain whatsoever in His life until that night in the garden when they came to take Him, then He knew all pain, for the entirety of all the sins of every person ever born were placed upon Him.
But He experienced more grief and sorrow over more than three decades than any man ever could if he lived a thousand lifetimes.
“He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.” (Isaiah 53:3)
To look out upon the crowds of people that followed Him and know, for He is God, without a shadow of a doubt the few faces that would spend eternity with Him in the Kingdom of His Father and yours, realizing that most would not, but that they would, by their own free will and design, stand before Him at the Great White Throne of Judgment and He would say to them, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels:” (Matt. 25:41)
Every face He saw, throughout His entire life.
He knew great grief and sorrow that we cannot imagine.
Every face.
“For I came down from heaven, not to do mine own will, but the will of him that sent me.” (John 6:38)
And His Father’s will was the way of grief and sorrow, of pain and suffering.
And you my friends, with these truths in mind now, can you honestly answer the question, what has your life been, mostly peace, or mostly pain?
Two verses for you to contemplate then. “Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” (1st John 3:2)
And,
“That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death;” (Phil. 3:10)
Perhaps a third would be in order as well.
“If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us:” (2nd Tim. 2:12)
Suffering with our Lord is not a bad cold, it is a thorn in your side, it isn’t the daily, expected burdens of this life, it is standing for the glory of God when your flesh tells you to run, it isn’t being sorry for your sins, it is a broken and contrite heart.
It is denying ourselves, it is dying to self, it is counting all thing lost as gaining Christ, it is suffering for His glory with a peace that passes all understanding at the same time.
It is the fulfilment of Philippians 1:21, “For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.”
Our Lord was not just acquainted with grief and sorrow, they were a constant companion to Him, and my friends, that did not just start the night He was born of the flesh in Bethlehem, but the day Adam disobeyed to this moment, right now, today.
You know these emotions, you have experienced them personally, every time a loved one has told you that they will not accept the love of the Almighty, every time you have witnessed of the mercy and loving kindness of your Redeemer to someone, and they have either politely rejected or mocked you for offering what you know as truth. You know if they do not repent and call upon His name for the salvation of their soul they will face eternal pain, with not one single moment of peace forever.
The pain, the wrath of God, we will never experience, our Savior did that for us, why would you not, with the knowledge of these truths, not seek to be in the fellowship of His suffering here?
There is a peace that passes all understanding in it.
“Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” (Matt. 11:29)
“For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” (Romans 8:18)
Can you in all honesty answer the question now?
