Partakers of His Sufferings

Oswald Chambers' insights into being united with Christ's sufferings are brought out in the chapter titled "Partakers of His Sufferings' in the book The Place of Help:

"But rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ's sufferings" (1 Pet. 4:13).

"If we are going to be used by God, He will take us through a multitude of experiences that are not meant for us at all, but meant to make us useful in His hands. There are things we go through which are unexplainable on any other line, and the nearer we get to God the more inexplicable the way seems. It is only on looking back and by getting an explanation from God's Word that we understand His dealings with us. It is part of Christian culture to know what God is after. Jesus Christ suffered 'according to the will of God'; He did not suffer in the way we suffer as individuals. In the person of Jesus Christ we have the universal presentation of the whole of the human race.

The Sufferings of the Long Trail of Faith

"But you are those who have continued with Me in My trials" (Luke 22:28).

"Jesus Christ looked upon His life as one of temptation; and He goes through the same kind of temptation in us as He went through in the days of His flesh. The essence of Christianity is that we give the Son of God a chance to live and move and have His being in us, and the meaning of all spiritual growth is that He has an increasing opportunity to manifest Himself in our mortal flesh. The temptations of Jesus are not those of a man as man, but the temptations of God as man. 'Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren' (Heb. 2:17). Jesus Christ's temptations and ours move in different spheres until we become His brethren by being born from above. 'For both He who sanctifies and those who are being sanctified are all of one, for which reason he is not ashamed to call them brethren' (Heb. 2:11). By regeneration the Son of God is formed in me and He has the same setting in my life as He had when on earth. The honor of Jesus Christ is at stake in my bodily life; am I remaining loyal to Him in the temptations which beset His life in me?

"Temptation is a shortcut to what is good, not to what is bad. Satan came to our Lord as an angel of light, and all his temptations center around this point--'You are the Son of God, then do God's work in Your own way; put men's needs first, feed them, heal their sicknesses, and they will crown You king.' Our Lord would not become king on that line; He deliberately rejected the suggested shortcut, and chose the long trail, evading none of the suffering involved (cf. John 6:15).

"'He answered and said, "It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God."' It is a long time before we are able to listen to every word of God; we listen to one word 'bread' when we are hungry, but there is more than that. The fanatic hears only the word of God that comes through the Bible. The word of God comes through the history of the world, through the Christian church, and through nature. We have to learn to live by every word of God, and it takes time. If we try to listen to all the words of God at once, we become surfeited.

The Sorrows of the Long Fear of Hope

"What, could you not watch with Me one hour?" (Matt. 26:40).

"Am I watching with Jesus in my life? Am I looking for what He is looking for, or looking for satisfaction for myself? Very few of us watch with Jesus, we have only the idea of His watching with us. He is inscrutable to us because He represents a standard of things that only one or two of us enter into. We are easily roused over things that hurt us; we are scandalized at immorality because it upsets us. There is something infinitely more vital than the horror roused by social crimes, and that is the horror of God's Son at sin. In the Garden of Gethsemane the veil is drawn aside, and it reveals the suffering that realizes the horror of sin. Are we more horror-struck by the pride of the human heart against God than we are by the miseries and crimes of human life? That is the test.

"'If You are the Son of God throw Yourself down.' In effect, 'You will win the kingship of men if You do something supernatural, use signs and wonders, bewitch men, and the world will be at Your feet.' Jesus said, 'It is written again, "You shall not tempt the LORD your God."' Are we going to tempt Him again? 'If God would only do the magical thing!' We have no right to call on God to do supernatural wonders. The temptation of the church is to go into 'show business.' When God is working the miracle of His grace in us it is always manifested in a chastened life, utterly restrained. Have I spurned the 'long trail' and taken the 'shortcut' of self-realization? 'Why should I not satisfy myself now? Why should I not do this or that? Why should I not devote myself to the cause I see?' I have no right to identify myself with a cause unless it represents that for which Jesus Christ died. If I allow Jesus Christ to realize Himself in me, I shall not find that I am delivered from temptation, but that I am loosened into it, introduced into what God calls temptation. Am I prepared for God to stamp my personal ambitions right out, prepared for Him to destroy by transfiguration my individual determinations, and bring me into fellowship with the sufferings of His Son? God's purpose is not seen on the surface; it looks as if He is permitting the breaking up of things; but Jesus Christ's hope is that the human race will be as He is Himself, perfectly at one with God. 'When the Son of Man comes, will He really find faith on the earth?'

The Strain of the Last Terror of Love

"Who is My mother?" (Matt. 12:46-50).

"Behold your mother!" (John 19:25-27).

"The greatest benefits God has conferred on human life--fatherhood, motherhood, childhood, home--become the greatest curse if Jesus Christ is not the head. A home that does not acknowledge Jesus Christ as the head will become exclusive on the line of its own affinities; related to Jesus Christ, the home becomes a center for all the benedictions of motherhood and sonhood to be expressed to everyone, 'an open house for the universe.' By His death and resurrection our Lord has the right to give eternal life to every man; by His ascension He enters heaven and keeps the door open for humanity.

"Through the travail of the nations just now the Spirit of God is working out His own purpose; no nation is exclusively God's. When the Holy Spirit enters a man, instantly he feels called to be a missionary; he has had introduced into him the very nature of God which is focused in John 3:16 'God so loved the world . . . .' The Holy Spirit sheds abroad in our hearts the love of God, a love which breaks all confines of body, soul, and spirit. The Holy Spirit severs human connections and makes connections which are universal--a complete union of men and women all over the world in a bond in which there is no snare. God's call is for the world; the question of location is a matter of the engineering of God's providence.

"Some things work suddenly and are seen; others, such as points of view which we do not see but they see us; that is, they take us into themselves; and some points of God's truth are like that. You say, 'I don't understand this' because you are part of it. We do not take God into our consciousness: God takes us into His consciousness, and that means we are taken up into His purpose, not into conscious agreement with His purpose; there is always more than we are conscious of. God's order comes to us in the haphazard. Things look as if they happen by chance, but behind all is the purpose of God, and the New Testament reveals what that purpose is. We are made partakers of Christ's sufferings; then, says Peter, rejoice, because when His glory is revealed you will be glad also with exceeding joy.

"There is no snare of pride along any of these lines because there is no aim of our own in them; there is only the aim of God."