Our Identity: The Suffering of Christ

We lose sight of who we are when we lose sight of Christ Himself.  So much spiritual turmoil can disappear from our lives if we view everything through the lens of the gospel.  Jesus is our identity, but we can let anything define us—even our suffering. 

I discovered this about myself this past week.  Like David, in Psalm 13, we all have moments when we cry, “How long, O Lord?”  Our suffering seems so unbearable or so prolonged that we often wonder if God has left us.  The ardency of Scripture reading seems to have disappeared.  Prayer seems to be lifeless.  God’s presence seems to be lost and His voice seems to be unheard.  Coldness set in.    

The dark cloud of spiritual desertion draws near when we suffer from physical affliction, divorce, our wayward children, relational strife, financial stress, unemployment, or when we indulge in our lusts.  To make things worse, the accuser whispers lies we tend to believe in order to obstruct the gospel from our view and to obscure our righteous standing before our Father. 

Often our suffering is so intense that we forget who we are and gradually let our sufferings define us.  What frees us in such despairing moments is when we look at our sufferings in light of the sufferings of Christ in our place.  Our suffering does not define us; Jesus’ suffering defines us. 

This is the point that Jack Miller (and wife, Rose Marie) make in a letter written to a man whose wife had left him.  Like this man, we need to realize that our suffering is designed by God in order to point us to Christ so that we may experience the power and grace of the gospel.  When we see God’s power and taste His grace, we learn that His joy has greater intensity than the deepest pain we will ever experience.  Jack writes:

“We do mean to urge you not to take your identity from your suffering and having been made a victim, even a mutilated one.  That is what has happened to you, but that is not your identity.  Your identity is defined in Ephesians as being in Christ.  You are first of all forever defined by your being in union with your most faithful friend, even the Son of God, who saw you perishing in your sin and blindness and then gave His precious life for you.  He sees all of us as betrayers of His love, grace, and laws.  And yet He found it in His great loving heart to die for the treasonous, faithless ones.  For me and for you. 

“Do remember your identity […] See yourself as a new person.  Hurt and wounded, yes, but not controlled by that hurt, but controlled by your Savior in whom you live and move and have your being.  I don’t have any great counseling formulas, only Jesus.  Only Jesus, Gary.  Only Jesus.  Remember Jesus and see yourself, your wife, your family, and all the rest of us from that standpoint.  See Anne through Jesus’ eyes as you pray for her.  See how desperately needy she is […]

“Only believe, only believe, says Jesus […]” (289).

—C. John Miller, The Heart of a Servant Leader: Letters from Jack Miller