I planned to do a ‘Recent Reading’ post on C.S. Lewis’ Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, but have decided that I have gained too much from this book to collect my thoughts as a summary. Instead, I plan to write a few posts dealing with important issues tackled by the book. There are certain ideas in the book that I find deeply problematic, such as Lewis’ idea of purgatory. But there is gold to be found as well. In this post, I deal with some gold in the form of Lewis’ ideas about the relation of the suffering of the Christian to the suffering of Christ and vice versa.

First, let me cite some of the relevant section of the book. The context of the ‘letter’ is that Lewis is writing to a friend who has just suffered a tragic loss:

Some people feel guilty about their anxieties and regard them as a defect of faith. I don’t agree at all. They are afflictions, not sins. Like all afflictions, they are, if we can so take them, our share in the Passion of Christ. For the beginning of the Passion – the first move, so to speak – is in Gethsemane. In Gethsemane a very strange and significant thing seems to have happened (from Letter 8).

We know that in Gethsemane our Lord faced severe anxiety at the thought of the wrath of God, which, he was to experience, and which, indeed, it appears, he was already beginning to face in some sense:

• Matthew 26:38 Then he said to them, “My soul is very sorrowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.”

Jesus’ soul is περίλυπος. Friberg defines the word as ‘afflicted beyond measure, deeply grieved, very sad.’ The idea is that he is overwhelmed, or that his soul is surrounded (peri = around) by sadness (lupos = sadness). In a different context, the words of Charlotte Elliot’s hymn, Just as I am, Without one Plea come to mind: ‘Just as I am, though tossed about
With many a conflict, many a doubt, fightings and fears within, without… ‘This was Christ’s position at Gethsemane, plagued within and without with grief and anxiety at the thought of the impending wrath of God.

He contemplates a way of escape from the wrath of God, and so he prays,

• “My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (26:39).

Lewis notes that Jesus had biblical precedent to pray such a prayer:

He just conceivably might…be spared the supreme horror. There was precedent. Isaac had been spared: he too at the last possible moment, he also against all apparent probability. It was not quite impossible.

Isaac had gone up the hill with the wood on his back. He had been bound. He was helpless. Yet he was spared. A voice rang out from heaven. A ram was caught in the thicket and took his place. The Lord saw to it, the Lord provided a replacement. But now, there was no one to take the place of Christ. He was the only sacrifice sufficient. He was the greater Isaac, and the true ram caught in the thicket. No voice would ring out from heaven for him. Instead, he experiences just the opposite. Lewis summarizes Christ’s passion:

…First, the prayer of anguish; not granted. Then he turns to his friends. They are asleep…Then he faces the Church [i.e. the Jewish Church]; the very Church that he brought into existence. It condemns Him….But there seems to be another chance. There is the State; in this case, the Roman state…It claims to be just…Yes, but only as far as is consistent with political expediency…But even now all is not lost. There is still an appeal to the People – the poor and simple whom He had blessed, whom He had healed and fed and taught…But they have become over-night…a murderous rabble shouting for His blood. There is, then, nothing left but God. And to God, God’s [i.e. Christ’s] last words are, ‘why hast thou forsaken me?’

All along Lewis is applying Christ’s suffering to the human condition in general. He summarizes it this way:

You see how characteristic, how representative it all is. The human situation writ large.

Sadness, loss, grief, anxiety, pain, affliction, suffering, betrayal, abandonment, and the experience of the wrath of God are the touchstones of humanity. To experience them is to be human, and Christ, the true Man, experienced them all – for us. When we suffer, Lewis writes to his fictional friend,

I think it is only in a shared darkness that you and I can really meet at present; shared with one another, and what matters most, with our Master. We are not on an untrodden path. Rather, on the main road.

To listen to modern American television ‘preachers,’ you would think that all Jesus did was, say, walk on water, heal the sick, open the eyes of the blind, raise the dead, and perform miracle after miracle. But this is simply not true. Jesus did not come into the world to be Superman. He came to enter into our position. He came to suffer. The Apostle Paul summarizes his suffering in relation to ours in this way:

• Romans 8:16 The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, 17 and if children, then heirs – heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Paul doesn’t write this in order to discourage us. He wants us to realize that if we are heirs with Christ, then we must share with Christ – and that includes sharing in his suffering. He comes in order to suffer for you, and, now, you must be encouraged that your own suffering is for him. Do you have eyes to see that?

How can you suffer with him? Or, as the NIV puts it, how can you ‘share in his suffering’? Persecution is certainly one way we suffer with him. Self-denial is another. But these are obvious. What about anxiety, grief, and sadness? ‘Be anxious for nothing’ certainly does not mean that we must never face anxiety. Jesus himself faced it. There are certain anxieties that we should, and must, face – but not the kind that question God’s ability to care for us.

First, realize that when you suffer, you are not in strange, or bad, company. All humanity suffers physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Our Lord himself suffered supremely in all of these areas. To suffer is to be human. Thank God that Christ is your brother. You have inherited a condition of affliction from your father Adam. But your brother, Jesus Christ, has entered into this condition with you, though he did not deserve it. He suffers with you, that your suffering might be with, and for, him.

In another place, C.S. Lewis writes about the way in which man may work to God’s glory when his work is not something that is inherently glorifying to God:

Most men must glorify God by doing to His glory something which is not per se an act of glorifying but which becomes so by being offered (From his essay, Christianity and Culture, from Christian Reflections).

This is the position of the suffering Christian. Suffering is not inherently glorifying to God, yet it becomes so when it is offered up to Him. The Christian says, ‘Father, I do not know why this is happening. I do not understand it. I do not like it. But I offer myself and my pains up to you. Use them for your glory.’ Let me try to illustrate this.

In another place, the Apostle writes,

• Colossians 1:24 ¶ Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church,

Paul begins by saying that he ‘rejoices in his sufferings.’ What kind of fool would say such a thing? Is he a sadist? He also says that he is ‘making up for what is lacking in the suffering of Christ.’ Is he out of his mind? How dare anyone say that anything is lacking in Christ’s afflictions?

The fact of the matter is that only one thing is lacking in Christ’s affliction – the present tense. He suffered once:

• 1 Peter 3:18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God…

He suffered then. We suffer now. The Father used Christ’s suffering to redeem the world. He used Paul’s suffering to spread the message of Christ’s redemption to the world. What is he using yours for? He is using it for something. It is easy to turn completely inward in the midst of our pain, but God calls us to turn outward for the sake, and good, of others:

• 2 Corinthians 1:4 [God] comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Don’t waste your suffering. Your suffering now can lead others to rejoice in ‘once for all suffering’ of Christ. There is an old idea that the Lord’s supper is a ‘reenactment’ of the suffering of Christ. But the true reenactment of his suffering should take place in us, as we suffer with him, determining that our suffering will be for the glory of God and the good of others.

Lastly, let me return to Romans 8. As heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ, we share with Christ in all things. That ‘all things’ includes his suffering, but it also includes his glory. He writes,

• Romans 8:18 ¶ For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.

The pain looks big now, as we live in it, as we focus on it. But it has no comparison to what we will experience in that great Day when Christ returns for his bride. As we drink from the crystal sea, we will look back on the cup of sorrow, and it will seem like a small thing by way of comparison. As we eat from the Tree of Life, we will look back on the bread of our affliction, and it will seem like a distant dream long forgotten. As we stand before our Savior, and see the scars on his body, scars like our scars, and scars received for us, it will somehow all seem worth it. That’s the point of the Apostle.

The pain Christ endured was worth it. His pain was not pointless or wasted. And in him we have assurance of the same for ourselves – it’s worth it. Don’t waste it. Even if the pain presses to the point that it seems you have been abandoned by God – ‘My God, my God, why has thou forsaken me?’ – remember that this road has been traveled before. And it is a road that leads to glory, if we have eyes to see.

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