bible and theology on Jesus' Suffering

The inevitability of the death of Jesus does not stem from God’s need but from humanity’s. There are only two roles to play in the tale of divine and human relationships, persecutor or persecuted. God...

Jesus did not descend from the cross. He was powerless, delivered up to his opponents. There was a false and erroneous form of Christianity that refused to accept that. As early as the second century ...

A few years ago, a vicious stomach bug swept through our community. (When you live in a religious community and one person gets sick, it’s just a matter of time before everyone else does too.) And one...

Jesus didn’t die on the cross to change God’s mind about us; Jesus died on the cross to change our minds about God!”

Justin Martyr (ca. 100–165), the most renowned apologist of the second century, dedicated his life to defending Christianity as the one true philosophy. Engaging the Greek philosophers and intellectua...

The Son of God suffered unto death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His.

[Speaking of crucifixion] It seems almost inevitable to me that Jesus should go through this kind of darkness. . . . If you think of Jesus as God disguised as a man, then this will have no meaning for...

It is only by the sharp thorn of his [Christ's] suffering that the poisonous thorn of our sin is drawn.

[Christ] gives the analogy of bitter labor and says: “A woman when she bears a child has anguish and sorrow” (John 16:21) and He applies all of this to His suffering, in which He so hard and bitterly ...

In Elie Wiesel’s Night , Eliezer is a Jewish teenager, a devoted student of the Talmud from Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupied Hungary. Increasingly repressi...

The women’s response brings readers face to face with the mystery of faith. There are no heroes among Jesus’ followers. The hostility that put Jesus on the cross has reduced them all to flight and fea...

Consider, finally, what it meant to Him to do this for us. “I go,” He says. Where is He going? He is going to the Garden of Gethsemane to sweat drops of blood. Where is He going? He is going to be arr...

I was invited to visit a friend who was very sick. He was a man about fifty-three years old who had lived a very active, useful, faithful, creative life. Actually, he was a social activist who had car...

A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human. For a God who is incapable of suffering is a being who cannot be involved. Suffering and injustice do not affect him. And because he is so completely ...

Ancient Lens What Can We Learn From the Historical Context? Old and New Testaments Meet Hebrews is a rich tapestry of intricately woven theology that spans the Old and New Testaments. With Christ...

A mother’s service is the most intimate, willing, and dependable of all services, because it is truest of all. None has been able to fulfill it properly but Christ, and he alone can.  We know that ou...

Ancient lens What’s the historical context? A Structured Complaint The Psalmist organizes his complaint against God in three sections. The first two sections dramatize the complaint (vv. 1-11 and...

In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to evade being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ; [people] have sought to procure the carrying out of God’s order by a shortc...

The blessing of God is not an immunity card against pain and suffering. Jesus said point blank, “In this world you will have trouble.

Summary The Text: 1 Peter 3:13-22 In the first chapter of this letter, Peter sets out the reason for writing. He affirms the eternal state of the believer:  Blessed be the God and Father of our Lo...

Joseph exhibited the true spirit of adoption. It is a vivid picture both of God’s adoption of us as His children in Christ, but also the call every believer has in welcoming into our homes and communi...

Ann Voskamp, in her book The Broken Way, describes what it was like to have mental illness trivialized from the pulpit, as someone who identified with similar struggles: I was eighteen, with scars a...

God so suffered for the world that he gave up his only Son to suffering.

Pastor: For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him. He was despised ...

The cross of Jesus is the world’s supreme example of anguish, suffering and injustice, but it has nothing to do with tragedy as we experience it in Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Shakespeare—trag...

God of love—Father, Son and Holy Spirit: You loved us before we ever knew You. Give us such a deep love for You, that we can see the world as You see it, feel the compassion You feel, and be a people ...

God of Grace and Power ... and our Friend, who sticks closer than a brother: You know when we stumble ... and You know when we manage to get it right. You know when we forget you, but You don’t forget...

God of Grace and Power—our Friend, who sticks closer than a brother: You know when we screw up ...and You know when we manage to get it right. You know when we forget you ... but You never forget us. ...

Do you remember the first time someone explained to you the concept of “Good Friday?” I remember my own mother explaining how it was possible that Jesus’ death was “good,” not because torture and suff...

Nevertheless, what was shameful, even odious, to the critics of Christ, was in the eyes of his followers most glorious. They had learnt that the servant was not greater than the master, and that for t...