Suffering

In 1987 Norman Grubb gave a talk on "Suffering" that deserves a wider audience. The transcript is included here:

"Do we square to what the Bible says about suffering? Because the Bible says that suffering is a necessary quality. You can't have glory without suffering . . . the Scriptures are full of it. The great victory chapter is, of course, Romans 8. Full of it! The moment he [Paul] speaks about our inheritance (Romans 8) he says [in verse] 17, 'If children, then heirs, heirs of God, joint heirs with Christ, if so be that we suffer with Him.' One condition that we suffer with Him that we may be glorified. The two are bound together, operate . . . 'If so be that you suffer, then glory.' . . . We call it the 'victory chapter.' It's the groaning chapter . . . So unless you're groaning you're not there. This chapter says that the creature . . . the whole creation groaneth. Not only they but ourselves also. The Bible says so . . . This is not the approaching chapter. This is the arriving chapter. We've arrived and [are] groaning here on earth. And then he says the Spirit groans with us, too. The Spirit groans with 'groanings that cannot be uttered.' Likewise, the Spirit helps our infirmities for we don't know what we ought to pray for. That's interesting. 'Groanings that cannot be uttered.'

"This is the victory chapter in the Bible, isn't it, chapter 8? . . . What's it end by saying? The last verses of this chapter it says, 'For Thy sake we are being killed all the day long.' Not alive all day long, killed all day long. Read it. I say you better be Bible readers. Read it. See what it says yourself. Verse 36: 'As it is written, "For Thy sake we are killed all day long. We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter."' That's not about marble palaces, is it? 'Accounted as sheep for the slaughter.'

"That's Romans!

"Look at Corinthians. The mighty Paul sharing and confessing. 2 Corinthians is quite a confessing letter. He says . . . 'For we had the sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God who raises something.' The mighty Paul is confessing himself. There's something in it. It's a little bit of Satan, isn't it? The sentence of death day and night. Don't stay there with that suffering stuff. What's the answer? 'The sentence of death in ourselves that we should not trust in ourselves but in God which raiseth the dead and will deliver us from death and did deliver' and so on.

"Chapter 4. He says that there's a continual dying. Not only a dying 2,000 years ago but dying in the Lord Jesus continually. Continual. Chapter 4. He says, verse 7, 'We have this treasure in earthen vessels that the excellency of the power may be of God not of us. We are troubled on every side but not distressed.' Troubled means that you feel it. You're not distressed [but] you feel it . . . You're perplexed. Oh! We get mixed up a bit, then! This is Paul. But not in despair . . . So there is trouble, there is perplexity, there's persecution. He's very open about that. Cast down! But not cast out . . . This is the mighty Paul. If you do better than Paul you do pretty well. I don't think I can surpass that one.

"See what I mean? 'Always bearing about the dying of the Lord Jesus. Not His death, His present dying. That's in me. The dying of the Lord Jesus. I'm bearing about the dying. There's something in me which is dying, always, always, always. So that's a strong word, isn't it? Continual dying, continual glory. Continual dying, continual suffering because life only comes out of death. Death may be manifested in our body . . . My body shows it . . . physically operative. It shines out of us. Yet the basis of it is a dying. It says a rising. Strong stuff!

"Verse 11: 'For we are always being delivered unto death that the life of Jesus may be made manifest.' Then he does call it in verse 17 a 'light affliction.' Some lightness! 'Our light affliction for a moment.' Some moment! 'Works for us.' Works! One builds the other up, doesn't it? They're connected. The suffering works out the glory. They're connected. It works for us 'a far more exceeding eternal weight of glory.' Light suffering. So we call it light. It doesn't feel light right here at the start but glory.

"In the chapter he has a whole list of them. We're out. We're sorrowers. We're fearers. Inner fears. . . .

"The whole chapter 6. There's stripes, there's imprisonment. All of these prove us as ministers of Christ. How? By their patience, affliction, besettings, stripes, imprisonment, labors, searchings, fastings. Wow! That's mounting glory.

"I know in 2 Timothy, in his last letter, Paul is executed. He tells Timothy again, 'It's a faithful saying' (2 Timothy 2:11) 'If we be dead with Him we shall live with Him. If we suffer with Him we shall reign.' If you want glory you'll have suffering . . . If you don't suffer with Him, no glory and if we suffer we shall also reign with Him.

"And then, the pattern: It becomes God to be perfected by sufferings . . . It becomes God, it suits God. That's a strong thing, isn't it? It suits God. It fits God, for whom are all things, by whom are all things, to make the Captain of our salvation perfected through sufferings. Number one Person: the Captain, the Leader. That's in Hebrews 2 where He's made like unto us.

"(. . . unless I can find it in my Bible I'm not safe in the end, you know. The Bible's got to be interpreted by the Spirit but I've got to have it in my Bible first . . . So that's something that we've got to keep reminding ourselves of. . . .)

"Verse 9, we see Jesus made a little lower than the angels that He might taste death for every man for it became Him [God] . . . It becomes Him, it suits Him. This is fitting for God. What's fitting? To whom are all things, by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory to make the Leader of them perfected through sufferings.

"It calls temptation suffering . . . Last verse of chapter 2: 'He Himself having suffered being tempted.' The word temptation and trial are the same thing in the Bible. Some see temptation as an inner pull, the trial is outer impact. We're tempted from inner pulls, trials hit us in our side. Same thing, same word in the original. He suffered being tempted so there's suffering in being tempted. Tried, tried. There's suffering in it.

"Then in the great description, the amazing description of perfect Pioneer of our salvation . . . it says in the first chapter, 'Who in the days of His flesh' (verse 7) 'when He offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears' (this is Jesus) 'to Him who was able to save Him from death was heard also in that He feared.' . . . He wasn't saved from having death. He was saved from the terror of death. He went through death to resurrection. He wasn't saved from the outer death. No death, no resurrection. So His salvation was not being saved from the cross because if there hadn't been a cross there wouldn't be a resurrection. So resurrection comes out of the death, out of the suffering comes the glory.

"It goes on to say in the next verse (Hebrews 5:8) 'Though He was a son He learned obedience through the things which He suffered.' . . . We talked about yesterday that when you learn a thing you get it. If you want to become a doctor you've got to become a be-er, a got-er. You learn obedience. You learn it . . . We believe that He's the Doer so the only doing that we're doing is the believing and then we doing it is really He doing it. . . .

"Being made perfect. So we're perfected through sufferings . . . Suffering is settling in something. Being made perfect He then became the Author of their salvation the same way. To them that obey Him.

"Believing is obeying. We're so gearing [sic] to believing obeying is working. Obeying is 'the obedience of faith.'

". . . See, what is suffering? Suffering is what I don't like. That's all. Suffering is what I don't like. Quite plain. Maybe spirit suffering or soul/ emotional suffering or body suffering. I don't like it. It presses me to find the remedy. That's the secret. It presses me to find the remedy.

"That's why the great Kierkegaard said life is inside you, subjectivity is truth. Objectivity is outside you. You escape by saying, 'Oh, it's outside here somewhere.' Real life is inside. His great word, 'existentialism,' you live in existence inside you. How do I handle that? How do I make that suffering operative? You live from inside you . . . Life is not objective. Objective is operating by, 'Oh, yeah, it's here. I'll handle it.' Subjectivity is: 'What's that mean to me? Why is that like that?' I must find my answer inside me. And that's dialectic . . . I don't like it. Ah! I've got to find the remedy for the life that's inside me. . . .

"Not a final day tomorrow but a final day in the storm. That's subjective. Objective says, 'Oh, it'll be fine tomorrow.' Subjective says, 'It isn't a fine day; it's a bad day. I've got to find out how it's a fine day.' . . . That's inside you. That's subjective living; that's existential living. Existence is inside you. Existence is inside you. 'I'll handle that. How does that work in me honestly? Not just saying, "Oh, it'll be nice tomorrow."'

"This is the life. And suffering falls in me if I'm real to find my answer inside. And then outside in my body. You bear the dying inside you and find out how to die and rise inside you then comes out outwardly in your body. You show it. It's spontaneous, spontaneous.

"So he says something here. The glory comes out of suffering. To be a perfect person I have to be made a perfect sufferer. 'Learned obedience and was willing to be made perfect.' Being made perfect through sufferings. So I'm not perfected unless I handle sufferings. Not made perfect through victory or through glory: through suffering! The Bible says so. Number one Person, Jesus, perfected through sufferings. The glory comes out of the sufferings.

"How is that done? Because suffering forces me to be what I don't like. I don't like it. Suffering is: I don't like it . . . How do I like me? Now I don't find [it] outside. I'm becoming something. How can a turn a nasty me into a nice me? I've got to get my answer! That's why Kierkegaard . . . is a great teacher. The outer is subjectivity. Subjectivity is subject: inside you. Objectivity is outside here. Subjectivity is in me. I tell you must find your answer in you. And it starts with conflict. I don't find my answer. I don't like it. How can I say that I do like what I don't like? Inside me! See, that's the secret of the cross.

"That's why Kierkegaard said, 'How can you handle your sins? How can you handle your sinner-hood? How can you handle your sins?' By a leap of faith inside you that takes them away . . . Where's God? Where's this resurrection stuff? You've leapt. The absurdity of faith: 'I believe He did it. I believe He resurrected. I believe that the Holy Spirit has been given to me.' I dissolved my sin problem by Jesus coming inside me. Oh, He took them away. Revelation. New birth, new birth. Oh, He took them away. He is an inside solution. You couldn't be changed unless you were miserable inside. But it had to be inside. And the whole world tries to escape their sin by objectivity. Oh this terrible word is a 'mistake.' Call adultery a mistake. It's a horrible word: a 'girlfriend.' It's a bad lie. 'Girlfriend' is usually fornication and adultery. We never say so. Our patron word 'Girlfriend,' which is fornication and adultery but we never say so. Only the Bible says so. Oh, we say it isn't a mistake, it's a sin. Oh, the word escapes. Objectivity says, 'Girlfriend.'

". . . Subjectivity is truth. I must face it and find the honest answer. How can I find the answer inside me when I'm a nasty person? I must find I'm a nice person by a leap of faith. I discover the nasty person was Satan in me and Jesus Christ put him out and Jesus is in me so I'm a nice person. I find it inside me. Now my body shows it. Harmony. I'm a Jesus person because I was a Satan person and in faith he was put out by Jesus and I believe with a leap of faith (I can't prove it). That's why Kierkegaard says we walk on 60,000 fathoms of water. Life is built on doubt, doubt and suffering. Kierkegaard says you always suffer. Faith is built on doubt. You can't prove it.

". . . The battle of faith. Can't prove it . . . Shall I do this? You can't prove it. You can't prove you're saved. You've got a Book but who says the Book's true anyhow? You can't prove anything. You've got the meat inside you. And of course you get the inside Person but you can't prove Him. The Holy Spirit . . . You can't prove that. Your faith. The foolishness of faith. The wisdom of God which is wiser than men . . . But somehow you know it . . . This is inner suffering resolved. And all life is resolving inner suffering. But I have to face it because there's always suffering. There's always suffering.

". . . So you see suffering is that I'm being pulled into something that I don't like. Oh, I'm supposed to like everything . . . I don't like it. I'm supposed to like everything. Jesus took three hours to get His inner self right. 'I don't like "cross." Well, I better like it for I've come to do it! Not My will but Thine be done. The cup which my Father hath given Me, shall I not drink it?' But it took Him three hours to get over that one.

"So we're pulled by suffering. And it may be suffering by imagination (by what you think may come or what has come or might come). It's not the point. It may come on the feeling level. Of course that's the soul level. My imagination fears. We're full of feelings. We love each other or are meant to. We need to learn a few things about our own selves these days. We're meant to anyhow.

". . . Or it can be physical. It doesn't matter. So suffering is . . . in me to something that I don't like. It's meant to to put me into the process of faith. Faith is 'I've got to resolve it inside.' It's an inside problem. 'I don't like that!' Whatever form it takes.

"I had one last night when Lanyon was attacking me and said I should get back to faith. I like attackers!

"What should I do with that? Jesus started there. We must start there. That's why I'm so sorry that we don't put Lanyon [sic]. Don't live by what you see. We need Lanyon. He isn't always right on everything but he's right on that! Don't be effected by this house burn now. See through the burned down house to the new house. But it must start by being hurt by a burned down house. We must be real. So we have to suffer. We don't like this and we don't like this and we don't like this. But you cannot resolve it by saying, 'Oh, it'll pass over.' That's what the world does. 'Oh, it's a mistake.' It isn't a mistake it's an adultery. It isn't a mistake it's an alcoholic, a drunkard, murder or something. Cut the word 'mistake' out! It shows how hypocritical we are when we talk about . . . as a mistake. They aren't mistakes, they're . . . You should have done better, you should have said so. They aren't mistakes, they're real.

"Mistakes are babyhood objectivity. You don't need the objective out here you need the subjective in here. The subjective is, 'What does it mean to me? How will I solve that? What's happened? Why have I got a mess? How can I turn the mess into a solution?' Inside me!

". . . Kierkegaard's great word, 'existentialism,' we turn that into heresy. Schaeffer and silly men like that attack the great Kierkegaard. Kierkegaard and Boehme are the two greatest men. Jacob Boehme the mystic and Kierkegaard the philosopher are two of the greatest men. After them I learned something.

"Subjectitivity is existence. You're a subject. You exist. You're a subject, not an object. Subjectivity is you, you, you. It's not out here. Find the answer in you. 'Why don't I like that? Why?' The answer is within me. Because the answer is the absurdity of faith. It's the inner Person who came once. They say He came. They say He died and they say He rose again and I believe it. If I don't believe that then I'm of most men most miserable. And I'm believing this Person and by the leap of faith is the solution, the solution, the solution. And he's God's devil. Jesus found Calvary as God's devil. 'The cup My Father has given Me.' He said it at the supper table: 'The prince of this world cometh and has nothing in Me.' It wasn't 'on' Me, it wasn't 'on' Me. 'Nothing in Me.' He got it there, He got it there. But then learning it He had to face it out. 'The prince of this world cometh,' My day has come. Mind you, Jesus lived under the sentence of death. We baby people call some of this things the sentence of death. The Guardian's [sic] on us. Baby stuff!

"Jesus lived from His first miracle when on the Sabbath day He . . . They said from that day, 'We're going to kill this Man.' And that's what they did! 'My day hasn't come. They won't get Me yet but . . . ' He didn't just get threatened later on. He always was threatened.

"Why, one of my dear missionaries had a great fuss with recently. Some burglar came into her house and she was bragging about she commiserated her bravery . . . It was a terrible thing to be threatened by a burglar. Be raped and glorify God. One of our greatest women in WEC [Helen Roseveare] was raped and she glorified God and told everybody and has blessed thousands since. She went back to the people who raped her to win them for Christ.

"See, objectivity escapes. The resolves inside you. Now we've all done that. We wouldn't be here if we hadn't. We've resolved our sins. The resolving's inside you by a Jesus you couldn't prove. The Spirit had to tell you He really did do this. Therefore, the thing is done and your sins aren't there and your other self was and I'm your peace. Resolved.

"The truth that edifies is truth to you. Kierkegaard said that. Edifies is the peace of God of course. The truth edifies. You're a saved sinner inside you, not outside. That's his thing. That's subjectivity. Oh, yes. Oh, yes. Through an absurdity of faith you can't prove. You have a Book and you can't even prove the Book. The Spirit? Who is He? Some weird Person who's something in me? I don't know. But He's real to me. And the truth edifies. I live by that. We now find the edification of Christ as us. That's our chief edification. We were Satan as us, now we're Christ as us. That's our great secret, of course. The truth that edifies . . . We'd die for it, give ourselves for it because life is passion. We're made of passion. Of course we are, we're made of fire. Everything's fire. God's fire. Because fire becomes light. Or all-consuming is the other one. So the Bible calls it fire and light. . . . Hebrews 12: 'consuming fire.' Fire consumes or something happens to it and it becomes light.

"We know this death in the helium atom business and it releases an energy which is light. What burns blesses. That's the paradox. What burns blesses . . . Electricity is light.

"Light's fire in an edifying form, a self-giving form. Fire is self-getting. Light is self-giving. And that's what God was and is: fire-light. And we become that. We're all fire. We're passion. Of course, we're passion. Thank God we're passion. It depends on where your passion goes. Lust is . . . of a word. You burn with lust. We've put bad connotations on some of those words but there they are. The word is Greek is epithemia, which is 'strong desire.'

"Now our passion goes in to give Jesus as the solution that we've got, inner solution. I've been told the whole business now: I as He.

"What's suffering, suffering? Suffering's every form of thing. Trial, suffering is 'I don't like it.' And we're always getting that. All life consists of that. You see what Paul said: 'Perplexed.' Who isn't perplexed? Who isn't perplexed? Don't run away. Accept perplexion [sic] and get the solution. Don't run away saying, 'Oh, we'll find the answer some way.' Get the answer inside you. That's Kierkegaard. Subjectivity. The answer's inside you. Find the answer to that perplexity. 'Perplexed but not in despair.' Oh, I see. It's a bit of a mess. It's God's mess. God's coming in that mess. Now I've got inner harmony. I died then. I died to being governed by negative perplexity and see it's God's perplexity. But God is using it. I don't see quite how yet but here's the answer. I'm watching inside for God's answer. My mind's back in harmony and there's revelation light coming through my body and we're kept in harmony.

"All life is that. In every form: pressure, pressure, suffering, every doubt. Don't kid ourselves. But the point of getting it is you then see it as the background to glory. We aren't fighting our sufferings. The poor world is fighting it, maybe trying to escape it by calling it a mistake or something and trying to escape it or resolve it somehow . . . All this miserable stuff. . . .

"Existentialism solves it inside of you. Find the solution inside you. Because it's inside you of course it's God's stuff . . . He's God's devil. I told you, 'The prince of this world cometh . . . hath nothing in me!' Subjectivity. Objectively, torn to bits. Inwardly, he didn't get Him. And you're an inner person. This is only passing . . . 'Light affliction.' Inside. Jesus was an existentialist: 'Satan has nothing in Me.' But it took three hours to settle it. That was said at the supper table, then He went out to the garden and sweat three hours. He said, 'I don't like this . . . Is it possible? I don't want to do this.' That's real. Of course, we see just Satan on the tempting level is good practice. Satan may get us to sin but that's only occasional. Tempting is good practice. Occasionally it goes into sin but it's only rare.

"So Jesus had to be tempted on the Satan level: 'Not my will.' This is Satan saying, 'Come on, come on. You needn't [sic] do that. Come on, come on, come on.' 'No, I should do it because God said I should do it.' The answer was inside Him through the bloody sweat . . . Three times over. Alone. Alone in the garden. Now inside Him it came out in a bloody sweat of some kind. But inside He desired it! And then when the soldiers did come and Peter cut the ear off the high priest's servant and all that Jesus said, 'Suffer that. The cup that my Father has given me . . .' Got it? It was God's cup. So I've resolved it. The enemy becomes your friend, becomes your means by which God does something. Satan was God's cup, God's cup. That's inner solution. That's perplexity. That's despair . . . Cast down but not destroyed. We are cast down. We are persecuted. And that's the suffering."