Can faithful living exempt me from suffering?
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By John Piper
About Suffering
Part of the series Ask Pastor John
The following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Can faithful living exempt me from suffering?
No.
God's grace through Christ on the cross has obtained for us a pass on eternal suffering. And if we get a pass on any suffering in this life, he has done that for us as well. But our faithfulness is a response to that kind of provision for us; and if we have to walk through suffering because of being faithful then we know that he has bought for us everlasting peace and joy.
So, no. We can't live our way out of suffering.
In fact, the people that I've known who have been the best people have often suffered most. We know that is true for the Apostle Paul and for Jesus Christ. The two best people in the Bible—the Apostle Paul and Jesus—suffered most. So there is no correlation between my virtue or my faithfulness and my freedom from suffering.
Do you think the effect that suffering has on us is lessened the more we view this world as not our home?
It's good to be careful about that, because even people who love heaven and love Christ suffer much. But I still want to agree with you and say that, if we didn't feel like we were losing the most important thing when we got a terminal illness, we could bear it much better.
The Apostle Paul, when he knew that he was going to be dying, said, "For me to live is Christ and to die is gain" (Philippians 1:21). And if dying is gain then we will have tremendous help in losing the retirement, or marriage, or grandchildren, or standing in the community that we thought we were going to have, or some church we thought we were going to pastor, which is all gone now as we're ready to die with this cancer.
But if death is gain—if we gain Christ, if we've cultivated a relationship to Christ where he is all and in all—then O how much pain will be spared us psychologically.
