41. XXXIX. The Suffering of God

XXXIX. The Suffering of God

We now approach a point on which one hardly dares to speak, and in treating which the utmost reverence and humility and reticence is needed. It is not improbable that the great revelation to Paul — “unspeakable words which it is not lawful for man to utter” . . . so splendid that “by reason of the exceeding greatness of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to buffet me, that I should not be exalted overmuch” — had reference to some such matter as this. If that be so, it is in his letter to the Ephesians that he comes nearest to making a statement on the subject. We must try to understand what he means in that letter, yet we must not rush in where it is unlawful to tread. In Section XXXVII we have almost unconsciously set foot on this subject (ἐνεβατεύσαμεν, to adopt the technical term, on which see the first section of Part 3.) when we used the words, “we are necessary to God and to Christ,” and “we are the riches of Christ,” and “our bliss is His glory”. These words arose naturally out of the attempt to re-express the teaching of Paul about “the happy lot of man,” for, as he declares, the assembly of the saints, the body of the Church, constitutes the inheritance of Christ.

Although the strong words were written almost inevitably and unconsciously, yet we cannot, on subsequent reflection, draw back from them. The happiness of man constitutes the glory of God and the inheritance of Christ; but, obversely, the misery and the failure of man make the suffering of God. The one cannot be true without the other. Sin, which is misery and failure for man, makes suffering for God: it is the impeding of His will and the frustration of His purpose.

Either all that has been said in this book is wrong, and the point of view which has been taken in it is mistaken, or the last and fullest truth lies in the assertion that a sinful creation makes a suffering Creator, and sinning man makes a suffering God. May not this offer a way towards understanding in some small degree that greatest of all mysteries, the most fundamental and yet the most incomprehensible truth in the world, the nature and work of Christ? It is incomprehensible because it is fundamental. All things rest on it. It rests on nothing deeper or simpler. It is the beginning, and it is the end. From this truth all knowledge begins, and in this truth all knowledge culminates.

Since it is the law of the universe and the Will of God that the sin of man makes the suffering of God, this is as much as to say that the penalty of man’s sin is paid by God. That is the Divine purpose and plan, existent from the beginning, deliberately intended and contemplated in the creation of the world. It is part of the nature of God. The death of Christ was looked forward to by Him “before the foundation of the world,” as the completion of His gradually unfolding purpose — “to sum up all things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things upon the earth . . . according to the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His will”. (Ephesians 1:4;Ephesians 1:10-11.) The supreme blessing which Paul in his prayer invokes for the Ephesians is that insight into the purpose and “the knowledge of God” may be granted them, so that they may understand how and why He has called them and may appreciate what His inheritance is, and how it is achieved. It is achieved through the triumphant death and resurrection of Christ, and the absolute unquestioned supremacy which Christ thereby attains in the completion of the Divine purpose. (Ephesians 2:18-21.) The body of this triumphant and glorious Christ is the Church, of which He is the head. (Ibid. 23.) The Creator without the created is nothing: man is necessary to the glory and the purpose of God: Christ without His Church, so to say, would be like a head without a body. The death of Christ pays in full the penalty of suffering which results from the sin of the creation; and man, who through the sin had died, gains life through the payment of the penalty, and is inheritor along with Christ of all that He has gained. This is not to be understood through the bare statement that one sins and another pays the forfeit on his behalf. The Divine nature is in man — only in germ indeed, but still it is there. The Divine nature suffers, and dies; but in dying it rises superior to death. It is recreated, or re-invigorated, or made triumphant in the man; and he is thus identified with the body and the life and the glory of Christ. By death he has entered into life. This is the knowledge of God.

Paul himself has through revelation become possessed of this knowledge: (Ephesians 3:3-4;Ephesians 3:9;2 Corinthians 12:3ff.) he has “understanding in the mystery of Christ — the mystery which from all ages hath been hid in God who created all things”. This knowledge gains strength through love. Love is the basis on which “the knowledge of God” is built up. The end of the development is that the man who has the love and gains the knowledge is “filled unto all the fulness of God,” i.e. the Divine germ in him grows to fill up his entire nature, and “it is no longer he that lives, but Christ liveth in him”. (Galatians 2:20.)

Each individual man must gain Christ and the knowledge of Christ for himself; and Christ lives and dies for each. Yet mankind is a society. There is the great household of the world. Christ lived and died, not merely for the individual man who can know Him and lay hold of Him, but also for mankind. He is the ideal for the individual; He is the historical Jesus for the world into which He came. In the gradual unfolding of the Will of God there are successive steps and various stages, (1) There is the individual man, the prophet and seer of the Divine purpose; (2) there is the one chosen people; (3) then finally there is the Universal Church of the entire world.

(1) The Divine Will chooses and seizes on certain individuals, the Apostles and Prophets. These keep alive the Divine spark of fire in the world. They vivify the nation among which they live, according as their nation hears them. Process depends on the energy of those great and powerful minds, and on their influence on other men around them. They are the foundation on which a developing social system is built up. (Ephesians 2:20.) They recognise and declare the purpose of God in the vicissitudes of history. They are the teachers and guides of their race.

(2) The nation which is to be great and progressive is the nation which produces a succession of such master-spirits. That was pre-eminently the case with the Hebrew race. It was the nation of the Promise, and it was the one race that gave birth to a continuous series of great spirits, which kept alive the consciousness and the reality of the Promise. The Promise presumes deserving; and it was through the spiritual life which the Prophets nourished that this one nation deserved the Promise.

(3) The Jesus of history accomplished the unity of the whole world. He was for all, not for one race. The Promise, which was prospectively and potentially universal — through the seed of Abraham shall all nations be blessed — was made actively universal, because He was before the eyes of the whole world for the whole world. For the whole world the universal Church, “the household of God”. (Ephesians 2:19.) In this household all are united, not as being all the same or all equal. Each individual has his special character, and each has his appropriate function, suited to his powers in the Church, “the temple in the Lord . . . the habitation of God in the spirit”. (Ibid., 21, 22.) This temple is the body of Christ; and the true social life is “the building up of this body, till we all attain unto the unity of the faith, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”. (Ephesians 4:13; cp. 3:19.)

Now what authority has Paul for this? What assurance have we of it? How do we know it? In the last resort it must force itself on our judgment as inevitable and certain.

Paul, as he says, has revelation to rest on. For him this was sufficient and final. What have we to rest on? It is involved in the primal axiom that God is good. We have the direct intuition into the nature of the universe and of God. We cannot demonstrate, or prove it by argument. There is nothing deeper or more fundamental from which it can be deduced. We can see through the vivifying force of faith, which is a form of revelation, or we can by sympathy with Paul — a sympathy founded on the recognition of his power and the truth that shines through him — see in some degree what Paul sees and know what Paul knows. We can feel dimly the relation in which we stand to God. We can know in a fashion the meaning of those metaphorical expressions, such as that man is made in the image of God, that man has in him a spark of the Divine fire and nature, that man can grow into likeness to God. The most illuminative, however, and yet the most difficult form in which this relation between man and God can be expressed is the teaching of the Ephesian letter, that the fulfilment of the Divine will and the completion of the Divine purpose in man is the glory of God, and the thwarting of that will and purpose through the sin of man is the suffering of God.