42. Suffering with Christ
42
Suffering with Christ1
…the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings…
—Philippians 3:10
Madam, subscribe to the Almighty’s will; put your hand to the pen, and let the cross of your Lord Jesus have your submissive and resolute amen. If you ask and try whose this cross is, I dare say that it is not all your own. The best half of it is Christ’s. Then your cross is no bastard, but is lawfully begotten; it sprang not out of the dust (Job 5:6). If Christ and you are halvers2 of this suffering and He says, “Half mine,” what should ail you? And I am sure that I am here right upon the style of the Word of God: “the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” (Phil. 3:10); “that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ” (Col. 1:24); “the reproach of Christ” (Heb. 11:26). It would be to shift3 the comforts of God to say, “Christ never had such a cross as mine. He never had a dead child, and so this is not His cross; neither can He, in that meaning, be the owner of this cross.” But I hope that Christ, when He married you, married you and all the crosses and woe4 hearts that follow you.
And the word makes no exception: “In all their affliction he was afflicted” (Isa. 63:9, emphasis added). Then Christ bore the first stroke of this cross; it rebounded off Him upon you, and you get it secondhand. You and He are halvers in it. And I shall believe, for my part, that He desires to distill heaven out of this loss and all others the like; for wisdom devised it, and love laid it on, and Christ owns it as His own and puts your shoulder beneath only a piece of it. Take it with joy as no bastard cross, but as a visitation of God, well-born; and spend the rest of your appointed time, till your change come, in the work of believing. And let faith, that never yet lied to you, speak for God’s part of it, “He will not, He does not, make you a sea or a whale-fish, so that He can keep you in ward”5 (Job 7:12). It may be that you do not think many of the children of God are in such a hard case as yourself. But what would you think of some who would exchange afflictions and give you to the boot?6 But I know that yours must be your own alone, and Christ’s together.
1. Letters, no. 287, 565–66.
2. halvers: partners, each owning a half
3. shift: evade
4. woe: sorrowful
5. ward: a place of confinement
6. boot: an instrument of torture that would crush the bones of the victim’s lower leg and foot