How the Suffering of Christ Relates to the Suffering of

Counselees

The Descent into Glory

What is suffering?

Strong negative emotion or psychological or physical pain, which itself can cause further suffering

From mass atrocities, like the Rwanda genocide…

Horrible suffering happens in the world

To secret, repeated sexual and physical abuse of a single child

Horrible suffering happens in the world

The big problem for theists:

Why would God allow such suffering to happen?

Addressing the “problem of suffering” is often involved in Christian counseling

1. Many counselees have suffered a great deal, raising questions about God’s attitudes towards them

2. What does God feel and understand about human suffering?

3. How might suffering be related to human wellbeing?

What does the Bible teach about the reason for personal suffering?

2. Personal sin generally leads to suffering (Pr 1:18)

1. All human beings will suffer (Gen 3:15)

3. But not all suffering is due to personal sin (Job)

4. Suffering brings about wisdom and spiritual maturity (Job, Ro 5:1-3; Ja 1:3-5)

But just knowing these things doesn’t necessarily help us through suffering

Why?

Our suffering affects our hearts

Adults who have suffered a lot may feel singled out or that even God is against them

Children who have suffered a lot will store those negative emotions in their memories and will be prone to re-experience them throughout their lives

What should Christians who have suffered a lot conclude?

What are some therapeutic goals for Christians who have suffered a lot?

What is God up to with all that suffering?

What does God have to do with suffering?

The Bible portrays him as the sovereign ruler of the universe, and all things that happen, even suffering, within his divine control (Eph 1:11; Dan 4:35)So he allows suffering. Consider the book of Job.

But because he is good, he only allows it for good reasons (Gen 50:20). Satan wills it for evil.

But if he ultimately allows it, many have concluded our only solace is to just to “accept his will,” and struggle with how he can understand and be empathic about our suffering.

What if God also suffers?

Historically, Christians have rejected the idea that God suffers, because it implies that God changes

But is that true?

God’s anger against sin is not interpreted that way

Both truths are taught in Scripture

Some have wondered if Greek thought led to this interpretation

Is there a way to affirm that God never changes and that he suffers?

What if God also suffers?

“The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The Lord was sorry that he made man on the earth, and he was grieved in his heart.” (Gen 6:5-6)

Consider his experience with the children of Abraham

They gave him far more grief than joyWhy did he choose them, knowing what would

happen?To manifest his glory

How does God manifest his glory in the face of such chronic disappointments?

Demonstrating virtues like patience and forgiveness

But intrinsic to this demonstration is his suffering

Patience and forgiveness can only be practiced in the context of pain

What if God also suffers?

What does Jesus Christ communicate about the suffering of God?

What if God also suffers?

He is the Word of the Father (Jn 1:1)He is the radiance of God’s glory and

the exact representation of his nature (Heb 1:3)His suffering therefore communicates something about the suffering of God

Jesus suffered during his life and at his death

Christ wept with those who wept (Jn 11:35)

He was a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief (Is 53:3)

“My soul is very sorrowful, even unto death” (Mt 26:38)

Christ cried out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mt 27:46)

What if God also suffers?

We know that the primary reason Christ suffered on the cross was to pay the penalty for our sins (Mt 20:38; Gal 3:13)

What if God also suffers?

However, what if a secondary reason was to reveal to us that he is a God who suffers

In addition to paying for our sins, he also demonstrated divine solidarity in our suffering

At the same time, we ought not to think that Christ’s suffering tells us everything about God’s relation to suffering.

Much about his divine nature was concealed in his becoming human

The infinite God is both the omniscient, sovereign ruler of all, who never changes (Mal 3:6), who is also perfectly empathic and compassionate about all the suffering in the world

What if God also suffers?

God is excellent (he combines paradoxical virtues; J. Edwards)

How does Christ’s suffering help in therapy?

1. Cognitive: Knowing that one’s Creator/Redeemer/Lover has experienced suffering personally means he knows what we’re going through (Heb 2:17-18)

2. Cognitive: Knowing that God suffers makes it easier to believe that he suffers when we suffer: “In all their affliction, [God] was afflicted” (Is 63:9)

3. Cognitive, could be relational: When counselees feel they were abandoned by God or godforsaken, Christ understands what that is like, and he took away the godforsakenness

How does Christ’s suffering help in therapy?

4. Cognitive: Because of their union with Christ, believers are co-sufferers with Christ (Ro 8:17), suggestingChrist is with them in their suffering; they are

not aloneTheir suffering is divinely significantTheir suffering is linked to the suffering

of God5. Cognitive: By their suffering, believers are

“filling up that which is lacking in the sufferings of Christ” (Col 1:24) We are collaborators in God’s suffering agenda

How does Christ’s suffering help in therapy?

6. God wants to glorify us in our suffering in the same way he glorified Christ in his suffering (Jn 17:5)

7. Relational: We are to lament, like Christ lamented: We are to take our suffering to God: “Pour out your hearts like water before the Lord” (Lam 2:19)

8. Narrative: Our story is being woven into God’s story

How does Christ’s suffering help in therapy?

Some of the suffering of believers is due to their sin

But even here, since Christ suffered for their sin, believers can still go to Christ in faith and repentance and find cleansing and forgiveness (1Jn 1:9)

How do we make use of Christ’s suffering in therapy?

All this discussion is therapeutic. Lovingly helping people to work through their suffering in the light of God and Christ is Christian therapy

We need to point all sufferers to the cross. We especially need to point extreme sufferers to

the cross, and hear Jesus say, “I understand. I’m with you. Trust me. I want us to be joined together in your suffering.”

By pointing counselees to Christ, we help them look outside themselves and their personal experience. This can give them some transcendent objectivity and promotes mentalization or defusion.

Help people to experience an emotion shift regarding the negative emotion or psychological pain they are experiencing. How? 1. Direct the counselee to bring the negative emotion or pain into their present consciousness (our death)

2. Encourage the counselee to bring to mind, perhaps through imagery, Christ’s suffering on the cross, mindful of one of the truths we considered (union with the death of Christ)

3. Have the counselee mix them together, so that the emotion or pain is modified in a positive direction (union with Christ’s resurrection)

How do we make use of Christ’s suffering in therapy?

So why does God allow Christians to suffer?

1. To undermine our sin: our narcissism and willed loneliness2. To draw us into his glory and the communion of his love

3. To build into us more of his glorious virtues

4. To conform us into the image of the Son of God, the man of sorrows, to manifest his glory

www.Christianpsych.org

Recommended resources

Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love

Henry Law’s The Gospel in the Pentateuch

Klass Schilder’s Triology: Christ’s Suffering, Christ on Trial, Christ Crucified

John Stott’s The Cross of Christ

C. J. Mahaney’s The Cross-Centered Life