A few posts back, Gordo reminded me of the texts that speak of the believer (well, the apostle) sharing in Christ's sufferings. I was pointing out that suffering persecutions was only to be expected as a condition of life as a believer in Christ - but that these sufferings were not our own but rather his. I cited 1 Peter 4:12.
But 1 Peter 4 continues:
But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed.
The nature of the martyr's sufferings are that they are, wondrously, a participation in Christ's.
The verse Grodo was alluding to is Col 1:24:
I am now rejoicing in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am completing what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.
It's is a very interesting passage all up, coming as it does after a declaration of the cosmic scope and sufficiency of Christ's sufferings on the cross.
What could possibly have been lacking in Christ's afflictions? Can we allow Paul a hyperbole here - an ironic overstatement? i.e. 'I am supplying what is lacking in Christ's sufferings (not really meaning that something was, but I am suffering in participation with the sufferings of Christ etc)'. Is that his point? Or is that there needed to be an ecclesiogical working out of Christ's suffering in some manner?
13 comments:
Hey Michael son of Pichael,
My default position on Paul is that he ever writes hyperbole. Never, not once, ever, even a glimmer's worth. So there would need to be a reason to change my mind on Col 1:24.
I'm also reminded of Jesus' words to Saul when he says, "Why are you persecuting me?" and "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting." (Acts 9:4,5). To which the obvious answer from Saul, had he not suddenly been blinded by the truth, was "I'm not persecuting you, just Christians!"
-Grodo.
oops, one of those 'evers' should of been a 'never'.
G
yes, you'd be deaf to hyperbole.
Hows about irony? Does Paul ever use irony? Or sarcasm? In fact: does he EVER use a rhetorical device?
What about Jesus? Hyperbole free zone?
Brother, you missed my irony.
Nonetheless, we're looking for meat on the irony plate, here. Where in the immediate context of Col 1:24 does Paul use it?
And yes, you know that I know that he uses it.
Well, actually, I wasn't seeking to be disagreeable: I was just trying to make sense of what Paul means here given what we assume about the complete sufficiency of Christ's sufferings. In what sense does he mean that Christ's sufferings 'lacked' something? I thought the participation passages in his writings and in Peter could help. Also, given he has just explained how Christ's blood atones for THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE it then seems a little wierd to drop in 'and by the way, something was lacking' if he doesn't mean it in a qualified sense. In fact the question is not 'does he qualify what he means here' but 'how IS it to be qualified?'
It is the word 'lacking' that is interesting.
Yes, it is. That's uber-context indeed.
Anyway, let's stay with Paul at his pre-ironic best. It was lacking after Jesus declared 'It is finished'. It will not be lacking once he returns. So the thing that was lacking occurs or is instantiated in the intervening years, and the 'it' is the "thlipsis" (tribulation, testing) of Col 1:24.
Jesus had died on the cross in Jerusalem, but he had not been martyred in Rome. Is this the thing?
well, yes, I like it. The work of the cross still needed to be worked out. It was a work of the Spirit after all...
And it is going in the thesis. You can have some of the royalties...
Was JEsus being ironic then when he said 'it is finished?' :-)
I take it Paul is pretty jolly ironic with the Corinthians...
What I want to know is, when I said my thesis was finished, was I being ironic.
Well it was finished in a way... 'finished' can mean so many things.
John Piper has a sermon on this issue, found at http://www.desiringgod.org/ResourceLibrary/Sermons/ByDate/1992/806_Called_to_Suffer_and_Rejoice_To_Finish_the_Aim_of_Christs_Afflictions/
He argues from context, and from a very similar phrase in Philippians 2:30, that:
"Christ has prepared a love offering for the world by suffering and dying for sinners. It is full and lacking in nothing—except one thing, a personal presentation by Christ himself to the nations of the world and the people of your workplace. God's answer to this lack is to call the people of Christ (people like Paul) to present the afflictions of Christ to the world—to carry them from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth.
...
What this means, I think, is that God intends for the afflictions of Christ to be presented to the world through the afflictions of his people. God really means for the body of Christ, the church, to experience some of the suffering he experienced so that when we offer the Christ of the cross to people, they see the Christ of the cross in us. We are to make the afflictions of Christ real for people by the afflictions we experience in offering him to them, and living the life of love he lived."
If true - this gives suffering a rather grand purpose!
A thought: it ties in with the disciples saying that they can drink the cup that Jesus must drink, and Jesus saying, 'yes you will drink it...'
Grodo - sounds like a name for a treasonous hobit.
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