“Yet for us there is but one God, the Father, from whom all things came and for whom we live; and there is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom all things came and through whom we live.”
1 Corinthians 8:6
Yesterday we saw how appreciating God’s reasons behind suffering can lead to Christian maturity. God uses hardships to improve our character, remove sinful habits, make us heaven-hearted, and instill compassion toward others, to name a few.
But answers and reasons, no matter how good and true they are, cannot be the coup de grace. Purified faith should never be an end in itself — it should culminate in God. Stronger character is made muscular not for its own sake, but God’s. A livelier hope is more spirited because its focus is not on “things getting better,” but on God. To forget this is to tarnish faith, weaken character, and deflate hope. As the Phillips’ paraphrase puts 2 Peter 1:8, “If you have these qualities existing and growing in you then it means that knowing our Lord Jesus Christ has not made your lives either complacent or unproductive.” It really is all about Jesus. Simply Jesus. As today’s verse says, “There is but one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom we live.”
We must never distance the Bible’s reasons from God. The problem of suffering is not about some thing, but Someone. It follows that the answers and reasons must not be some thing, but Someone. The Bible never bids us to keep our eyes on suffering, or even suffering’s benefits. Only on God, the One who wrote the book on suffering. Consider the good and valued benefits for the hardship in your life. Can you say with the apostle Paul, “I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him” (Philippians 3:8-9)?
Lord Jesus, keep my focus off not only my hardships, but even whatever benefits might come of those hardships. May my focus always and only be on You. Especially today.
