The Secret to Life

There is a common misconception about becoming a Christian. People believe that once you pray the Sinner's Prayer, life from that point on will be serene. Preachers make it seem that because Christ carried the cross, died on it, and rose from the dead, that we as Christians will not have to suffer for He has suffered in our place. From a salvic stand point this is correct, Jesus Christ, "He himself bore our sins" in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." (1 Peter 2:24). Our Lord and Savior has "finish it" we do not have to earn salvation via peneance and good works. However, if we are going to truly be disciples and follow Jesus we are promised suffering and the same way, the Via Del Rosa (Way of Suffering). For Jesus said, "You will be hated by everyone because of me, but the one who stands firm to the end will be saved," (Matthew 10:22) and "The apostles left the high council rejoicing that God had counted them worthy to suffer disgrace for the name of Jesus." (Acts 5:41, NLT).


It comes as a shock to many saints as they walk the "narrow path" (Matthew 7:14) that they will undergo great suffering. The Apostle Paul said, "From now on, let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus," (Galatians 6;17) and the Apostle Peter said, "But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed." (1 Peter 4:13). It is astonishing, that the more a person grows closer ot Christ, the more they suffer and are thankful for suffering. How does this radical shift happen? Most people want ot avoid suffering, but as Christians we are called to suffer, "Whoever would become my disciple, deny yourselves, pick up your cross, and follow me." (Matthew 16:24). This verse rattles many who were content to live comfortably. Amazingly suffering grows faith. The Church expands the more believers suffer and are persecuted. Look at the churches in Asia and Iran today, the more put in prision and persecuted, the more proselytes (converts). Why is this? Because suffering is the axis of being servant Christ. Jesus who is God, Savior, and Lord teaches us the secret to life by his own example, suffering is normal and should be sought. We have been taught to want since childhood comfort, and happiness. The American Dream has a clause, "The pursuit of happiness," but really we should be pursuing suffering, preparing for it, and not shirking from it. In an adaptation of the brilliant theologian C.S. Lewis' life, Lewis said, "Why love, if losing hurts so much? I have no answers anymore: only the life I have lived. Twice in that life I've been given the choice: as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety, the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal." (Shadowlands 1993) Lewis is echoing the Apostle Paul who said, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me." (1 Corinthians 12:11). The secret to life is to embrace suffering or else you are not living life. To quote C.S. Lewis once more, "“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself” (The Problem of Pain).

Seeking suffering is not sadism, I am not talking about self mutilation, self abasment with whips or manufacturing sufferings. Suffering is taking the risks for your Faith and letting youself be persecuted for Christ's sake, for He said, "If you deny me before men, I will deny you before my Father in heaven, but if you confess me before men, I will confess you before the my Father in heaven." (Matthew 10:33-34). Sufferings may come in form of skin disease, sibling rivalry, and other situations. Sufferting is a fact of life, you do not need to seek it out. It will find you, and you must embrace it, for Jesus says, "take up your cross," He asks us to cope with the loss in Him. The Crucifixion is the site of our salvation eternally, but also earthly. Jesus is showing us what to do, rather than resist people like the Romans, bigots in Pharisees (Church), or anyone, Jesus submitted himself to Suffering of His Passion. Granted, our life may not actually have actual crucifixion, and weight of world's sin was on Christ, but there is a principle to be found there. Jesus carried His cross to calavary and let the Romans put nails in his hands and feet.

Suffering is going to be with us as long as we sojourners in this world. We will suffer natural things like lose of loved ones, loss of health for a time, and suffer more. We will suffer for sake of our Savior and the Gospel, persecution will come our way. We will suffer because we seek it, wanting to face our crucifixion and so be continual bapitized in Christ's death (Romans 6:3-4). The Apostle Paul put it this way, "May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world," (Galatians 6:14) and "I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." (Galatians 2:20).So embrace the secret to life as revealed by God in the flesh which is suffering not serenity or perhaps serenity in suffering. Suffering is what we must seek, cope with, and even as the apostles did, "rejoice in suffering for the sake of His Name." 

In the end the Secret to Life is Jesus Christ. He is the answer, for He saved us, and He shows us how to be perfected by sharing in His sufferings. Amen.

Addendum Quotes:

“Try to exclude the possibility of suffering which the order of nature and the existence of free-wills involve, and you find that you have excluded life itself”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain   

“If tribulation is a necessary element in redemption, we must anticipate that it will never cease till God sees the world to be either redeemed or no further redeemable.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain   
I would add that if the world is no futher redeemable, it means Jesus Christ is coming back to collect what remains of the remnant of His people and judge the rest.

“I have been trying to make the reader believe that we actually are, at present, creatures whose character must be, in some respects, a horror to God, as it is, when we really see it, a horror to ourselves. This I believe to be a fact: and I notice that the holier a man is, the more fully he is aware of that fact.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain   

“Love, in its own nature, demands the perfecting of the beloved.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain