Today I am in pain and I must ask God to teach me what it means. The most painful thing about pain is its alienation, just as a sore thumb feels alienated from the body. That is why Jesus, at the deepest point of His suffering on the cross, cried out about being “forsaken” (Matthew 27:46).
There are levels of suffering just as there are levels of glory. The ordinary man suffers simply because he is a son of Adam. He suffers internally, he bears the pain in his body because he is alive. No other person need be involved. The next level of suffering is substitutional—pain borne for others, like a mother burdened with the care of her child, or a soldier injured in war. This kind of pain exists because others exist. The third kind of pain includes the second one, but goes beyond it. It is adopted pain. This was the kind Jesus suffered for us.
Jesus never became sick internally; He took what belonged to others and made it His own. It was inevitable that Jesus, in becoming man and with our redemption in mind, should have a direct confrontation with pain. It is also noteworthy that Jesus did not adopt our pains to remove them but to purify them. That is why His followers still suffer, still go through the fire, in what is called “the fellowship of His sufferings” (Philippians 3:10). In sharing our sufferings with Jesus, we also share in what He did with suffering—turn it into a steppingstone to glory.
I must never deny pain, for that would be a denial of the cross of Christ. Nor must I fight pain, for that would be an improper use of it. Jesus adopted it and conquered it and so must I. But I can never conquer it alone. I can do it only through Christ, who gives me the right to enjoy what He so gloriously accomplished.
“For momentary, light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison” (2 Corinthians 4:17).
Daily with the King 