Caveat: These are preliminary thoughts. Interaction is appreciated.

God works in mysterious ways. I have found it astonishing over the past few months the ways in which the Lord takes the most difficult and trying circumstances to shape us into the image of the Son. At one level this should come as no surprise. The nature of being a disciple of Christ is to take on a cruciform identity. One can only be made like Christ by being held up to scorn and mockery. Yet what I have begun to see is that if we will not deliver ourselves up to such ignominy, God will place us on the cross himself. My tendency is to have idealistic visions of self-sacrifice wherein I meekly lay my life down for the sake of the Kingdom.

But the reality I experience is more like a lamb led to the slaughter; not that I am meek and mild in the face of pain and hardship, but rather that, like a lamb, I am ignorant of what is to come. On first blush this may make God seem like a tyrant. He leads me as an ignoramus to the place of torture. But what such a perspective ignores is that the place of death is the place of communion with God. It is in being cut up and burnt upon the altar that my life goes up as a sweet aroma to God. Not that he takes pleasure in my pain, but that in being cut up and burnt on his altar I become something different and new. Just as Jesus could only experience resurrection, ascension and enthronement as he was delivered up on the cross, so I can only become like him (by baby steps) as I take, or am given, cruciform shape and suffer. Therefore I find that, in a mysterious way it is God’s grace that places me in the place of hardship and trial, in the place of the cross. No doubt my cross is different in that it often is the place of suffering for wrongs I have done, yet in Christ I am clean and so there is a sense in which I suffer as a holy innocent, as a saint. That is to say, I suffer not as one condemned, doing my just penance, but as one absolved yet taking the form of a sinner. In such manner the already and the not yet come ever closer to perfect congruity.

This brings up a similar point. Calvinists often argue, in defence of the doctrine of Limited or Definite Atonement, that if Christ died for the sins of every person, and if some people go to hell, then Christ failed and furthermore there is a double punishment at work. In other words, Christ paid the penalty in full for some people who still must pay the penalty themselves. While I have some hesitancy about the particulars of the formulation of this position I am largely sympathetic to it. However, I believe that the logic must extend beyond redemption/salvation. If Christ paid the penalty for all of my sins, as a believer, on the cross, why must I experience what can only be regarded as penalties for sin? Why must I die? Why must I suffer the consequences of gluttony, lust, or failure to obey the civil authorities? The answer that I find compelling is that these ‘penalties’, far from being divine retribution, are an expression of union with Christ, which has its end in conformity to Christ. Insofar as I experience the pains resulting from my own sin, and even more so from those of others, I share with Christ in the pain of taking upon myself the sufferings not due me. Now, in a very real sense they are due me, insofar as they are pains resulting from my own sin; however, as I am trying to make clear, they are not due me insofar as Christ has taken upon himself the full weight of my sin. Therefore, it would be better for the Christian to view the painful consequences of sin experienced not so much as God’s retributive punishments but as his distributive sanctification. In other words, when you experience the negative consequences of your own sin or that of others you ought not view it as God’s getting back at you but as God’s progressive outworking in time of your union with Christ.

Now this may lead you to the conclusion that you are not particularly interested in being united to Christ (although few of us would say so out loud), but then we must remember that it is only through Golgotha that we enter Zion. Union with Christ is full union. It includes a certain amount of pain. But pain is endurable when you know the verdict. And it is only as we learn to accept the negative consequences of our own sin as sanctification and progressive realization of union with Christ that we are able to mature to the place wherein we can begin to shoulder the consequences of the sinful behavior of others as an easy burden and a light yoke in light of the vindication and glorification that is to come.

Finally, a clarification. What I am advocating is not a works based religion. I do not want to be heard as saying that if you just slog through you’ll get yours in the end. What I am saying is that at times slogging through is a given. At times your options are slogging through or suicide. But my point is that in the midst of slogging through it is helpful to know that what you are slogging through is meaningful. Even if you are slogging through the mess you have created by your own sin, the slogging through that you are doing is God’s means of bringing your union with Christ further into the already. There is no resurrection apart from crucifixion. We are united to Christ fully. But just as Christ was glorified we may experience our own crosses with full hope of glorification