Jeff Ling

What a witness is this to the power and readiness of Christ to save! And this is the testimony of the Holy Spirit to the blessed Son of God. But He does more than this. He brings home the record with power to the soul. He writes the testimony on the heart. He converts the believing soul itself into a witness that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.”

And what a gospel is this for a poor sinner! It speaks of pardon–of acceptance–of peace–of full redemption here, and unspeakable glory hereafter. It proclaims a Savior to the lost; a Redeemer to the captive; a Surety to the insolvent; a Physician to the sick; a Friend to the needy; an Advocate to the criminal;–all that a self-ruined, sin-accused, law-condemned, justice-threatened, broken-hearted sinner needs, this “glorious gospel of the blessed God” provides.

It reveals to the self-ruined sinner One in whom is his help, Hosea 13:9. To the sin-accused, One who can take away all sin, 1 John 1:7. To the law-condemned, One who saves from all condemnation, Romans 8:1. To the justice-threatened, One who is a hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest, Isaiah 32:2. To the broken-hearted, One who binds up and heals, Isaiah 61:1. That One is–Jesus. O name ever dear, ever sweet, ever precious, ever fragrant, ever healing to the “poor in spirit”!

What a witness, then, is this which the Eternal Spirit bears for Jesus! He assures the believer that all he can possibly need is treasured up in Christ–that he has no cross but Christ can bear it–no sorrow but Christ can alleviate it–no corruption but Christ can subdue it–no guilt but Christ can remove it–no sin but Christ can pardon it–no need but Christ can supply it. Lift up your heads, you poor, you needy, you disconsolate! Lift up your heads and rejoice that Christ is all to you–all you need in this valley of tears–all you need in the deepest sorrow–all you need under the heaviest affliction–all you need in sickness–all you will need in the hour of death and in the day of judgment.

Yes, and Christ is in all too. He is in all you salvation–He is in all your mercies–He is in all your trials–He is in all your consolations, and in all your afflictions. What more can you want? What more do you desire? A Father who loves you as the apple of His eye–a full Savior to whom to go, moment by moment–and a blessed indwelling, sanctifying, comforting Spirit, to reveal all to you, and to give you Himself, as the “pledge of your inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession.” “Happy is that people that is in such a case: yes, happy is that people whose God is the Lord.”

“But the anointing which you have received of him abides in you, and you need not that any man teach you: but as the same anointing takes you of all things, and is truth, and is no lie, and even as it has taught you, you shall abide in him.” 1 John 2:27

“The Lord’s anointed” is the expressive and appropriate designation of all the Lord’s people. This anointing it is that marks them as a “chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people.” It is the Lord’s peculiar mark upon those who distinguishes and designates them as His own.

All who are strangers to this anointing are strangers to the grace of God and the calling of the Holy Spirit. There may be much spiritual light in the judgment, and even an open profession of religion before the world, added to which there shall be something of Jehu’s “zeal for the Lord;” and yet that anointing of the Holy Spirit be still lacking, apart from which all intellectual illumination, and outward profession, and party zeal, pass for nothing with a heart searching God.

As the proper signification of the endeared name, Christ, is anointed, so the true signification of the honored appellation, Christian, points us to the anointing, of which all who have union with Christ personally share. I believe the remark to be as solemn as it is true, that eternity will only fully unfold the amount of evil that has sprung from calling those Christians who call themselves Christians, without any valid title to the high, holy, and distinguished appellation.

How imperfectly are men in general aware of the deep, the significant, the spiritual import of the term! They think not, they know not, that a Christian is one who partakes, in His renewing, sanctifying grace, of that same Divine Holy Spirit with which Christ was anointed of the Father for His great work.

The effects of this anointing are what might be expected from a cause so glorious. It beautifies the soul. It is that anointing spoken of by the Psalmist: “And oil to make his face to shine.” Therefore it is called the “beauties of holiness.” How does a man’s face shine- how is his countenance lighted up- when the joy of the Lord is his strength, when the spirit of adoption is in his soul, when the love of God is shed abroad in his heart! It gladdens too. Therefore it is called the “oil of joy” and “the oil of gladness.”

It causes the heart to sing in its deep sorrows, imparts the “garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness,” and fills the soul with the glory of that “kingdom which consists not in foods and in drinks, but in righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”

Another effect springing from this anointing is the deep teaching it imparts- “You have an anointing from the Holy One, and you know all things.” Such are some of the effects of this holy anointing. It beautifies, gladdens, and teaches.

2 Corinthians 4:6-12

For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.

This is a beautiful, confounding passage. The image at work is the frailty of a clay vessel concealing a priceless treasure (“the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ”). It is something eternally valuable placed inside something with an expiration date. We are dime store piggy banks holding within us the Hope Diamond. What Paul is getting at with this imagery is that when the jar is broken, as in suffering, the treasure becomes visible.

When we suffer, we show what we’re really made of.

The purpose of suffering for the believer, then, is to reveal this light of Christ, to reveal the image of Christ, and we do this first by suffering as he suffered, by being conformed to the image of the crucified Savior. But how do we do that? How can we actively engage, in the midst of our hurts and brokenness, in carrying the death of Jesus in our bodies so that the life of Jesus is visible in our bodies?

I look to the actual dying of Jesus for help. In his words from the cross, I see the means of dying and dying to myself in a cross-centered way.

1. Be Honest with God

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Jesus is here quoting Psalm 22, and as I have argued in Your Jesus is Too Safe, I don’t believe God actually forsook Jesus on the cross, as Psalm 22 is not about being forsaken by God at all, but actually about God not forsaking his children. But the opening of Psalm 22 and Jesus’ words here are certainly about feeling forsaken. And in this we find the okay to be honest with God. Many times, either out of fear of the pain of further vulnerability or out of bad theology that tells us to put on a happy face or God won’t like us, we hold back from God, thinking we may leverage his healing or his comfort or his approval by sucking it up and pretending we aren’t hurting. But the psalmists don’t do this. The prophets don’t do this. And Jesus didn’t do this. You can’t hide anything from God anyway. He sees you’re hurting. Be honest with him. He can take it. Being honest with God is the way of holding no part ourselves back, the way of laying it all on the altar for his dealing. This is precisely what Jesus did, even in his anguish. We show that Jesus was real, in more ways than one, when we agree to expose all to God.

2. Forgive

“Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”

One ironic way to embrace the power of God in the midst of hurt is to forgive those who have hurt you. Unforgiveness brews bitterness, which does not alleviate pain but exacerbates it. When we forgive our enemies and bless those who persecute us, we glorify God by acknowledging he is the sovereign Judge over all and that vengeance is his. And we highlight the treasure of Christ, who forgave all the way to death those who hate him.

3. Submit to God’s Sovereignty

“Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.”

This is the dying man’s way of saying “Not my will, but yours be done.” We may not know all the why’s of our suffering, but as Rich Mullins sang, “It would not hurt any less, even if it could be explained.” As Christians, what we can know is that God has purposed pain to remind us that the world and those of us who live in it are broken, fallen because of sin. We can know that “pain is God’s megaphone,” as C.S. Lewis reminds us, to wake up to the reality that something is wrong, that we are in need of a Fixer. And we can know, thanks to the revelation of God that is his written word, that the grand purpose of suffering for the Christian is to be conformed to the image of Christ. We can commit our spirit into the Father’s hands by ditching our pleas for fairness and trusting that God is revealing the treasure of Christ in our bodies through our bodies’ very decay. Let us look forward to the resurrection, when we will have new eternal bodies, powered by the Spirit and awash in the glory of the risen Son. Let us amen Job’s oath: “Though you slay me, yet will I trust you.” The sufferer who is able to say this makes Christ look big.

4. Center on the Gospel of Jesus Christ

“It is finished.”

The work is done. This is the great message of the good news: he has done it! (Also the final cry of Psalm 22.) We can hope in our suffering, then, that the finished work of Christ, when believed with our hearts, is a down payment on the work begun in us. The gospel tells us that we are forgiven from sin, that we stand under grace, that we have the blessed hope of Christ’s return, that we will be resurrected as he was, and that we stand to receive the inheritance of Christ’s rich presence in the new heavens and the new earth. The gospel tells us that God will be faithful to finish the work he started. So the fragility of our jars of clay is not just our winding down for the grave, but our winding up for eternity. When we center on the gospel as we suffer, we communicate as dying men to dying men that there is real hope for real people. We make Christ manifest in this witness. With Job we can declare, “Though worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh I will see God. My eyes will behold him.” And: “I know my redeemer lives and in the end he will stand upon the earth.”

If we can apply these words from the cross in our times of suffering, we can carry the cross-shaped death of Jesus in our bodies, thereby revealing that he who is the life everlasting is our true treasure.