Let the Nations Be Glad!

by John Piper

  The other thing that amazes me is the sheer fact that Wesley went to the prison and asked to be locked up all night with condemned criminals who had nothing more to lose if they killed another person. Wesley had no supervisor telling him that this was his job. He was not a professional prison minister. It would have been comfortable and pleasant to spend the evening at home conversing with friends. Then why did he go?

  God put it in his heart to go. And Wesley yielded. There are hundreds of strange and radical things God is calling his people to do in the cause of world missions. Not everyone will hear the same call. Yours will be unique. It may be something you never dreamed of doing. It may be something you have only dreamed of doing. But I urge you to listen to the leading of the Spirit to see where “outside the camp” he may be taking you “to bear the reproach he endured.”

  “I Will Show Him How Much He Must Suffer”

  Afflictions are our vocation, whether we are missionaries or not. But this is especially the calling of those appointed to reach the unreached peoples of the world. Paul is the prototype of such missionaries. When the Lord sent Ananias to Paul in Damascus, he sent him with the armor of this “thought” mentioned in 1 Peter 4:1. Only it was intensified for Paul. The Lord said, “Go, for he is a chosen instrument of mine to carry my name before the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel. For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name” (Acts 9:15–16). Then God kept on pressing this “thought” on Paul: “The Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and afflictions await me” (Acts 20:23).

  Suffering was part of Paul’s calling. It became so much a part of his identity and ministry that he took it as a badge of his apostolic authenticity. It was like part of his visa papers to prove his right to do what God had called him to do.

  As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love, by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

  2 Corinthians 6:4–10

  The extraordinary suffering of the apostle Paul staggers the mind. The litany of 2 Corinthians 11:23–28 is overwhelming, especially if we think of the pain of each part and the multiplied pain upon pain as the parts mount up. It is a rare glimpse into the cumulative pain and sorrow of Paul’s missionary life:

  . . . with far greater labors, far more imprisonments, with countless beatings, and often near death. Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches.

  Lest we pass over this too quickly, without having the breath knocked out of us, consider what it meant to receive “forty lashes less one.” It meant that he was stripped and tied to some kind of stake so that he could not run or fall. Then a person trained in flogging would take a whip, maybe with or without shards in the leather, and lash Paul’s back thirty-nine times. Halfway through, or earlier perhaps, the skin would begin to break and tear. By the end, parts of Paul’s back would be like jelly. The lacerations would not be clean, as with a razor blade. The skin would be torn and shredded, so that healing would be slow and perhaps complicated by infection. They knew nothing of sterilization in those days and had no antiseptics. It would take perhaps months before his garments could hang on his back without pain.

  Now, with that in view, consider that this happened a second time on the same back, opening all the scars. It healed more slowly the second time. Then consider that some months later it happened a third time. Imagine what his back must have looked like. Then it happened again. And finally it happened a fifth time. And this was just one of Paul’s sufferings.

  Does God Allow or Appoint the Suffering of His Messengers?

  Why does God allow this? No, that is not quite the right question. We have to ask, Why does God appoint this? These things are part of God’s plan for his people just as the suffering and death of Jesus were part of God’s plan for salvation (Isa. 53:10; Acts 4:27–28). It is true that Satan can be the more immediate agent of suffering, but even he may do nothing without God’s permission.8

  Paul describes suffering as a gift of God: “It has been granted to you that for the sake of Christ you should not only believe in him but also suffer for his sake” (Phil. 1:29). Twice Peter spoke of suffering as being God’s will:

  “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil. . . . Let those who suffer according to God’s will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good” (1 Peter 3:17; 4:19).9

  James placed all of life, including the seemingly accidental hindrances to our plans, under the sovereign will of God: “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit. . . .’ Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:13, 15). Flat tires, car accidents, road construction—whatever can keep you from doing your plan—are the will of God. If God wills, you will live and do this or that.

  The writer to the Hebrews puts all our suffering under the banner of God’s loving discipline. It is not an accident that he permits; it is a plan for our holiness.

  In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And have you forgotten the exhortation that addresses you as sons? “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.”

  Hebrews 12:4–6

  The suffering that missionaries meet is not something unforeseen by the Lord. He saw it clearly, embraced it for himself, and sent his disciples into the same danger. “Behold, I am sending you out as sheep in the midst of wolves” (Matt. 10:16). “I will send them prophets and apostles, some of whom they will kill and persecute” (Luke 11:49). As Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 3:3, we are “destined” or “appointed” for these things.

  Six Reasons God Appoints Suffering for His Servants

  So our question is Why? Why did God appoint for Paul to suffer so much as the prototype of the frontier missionary? God is sovereign. As every child knows, he could toss Satan into the pit today if he wanted to, and all his terrorizing of the church would be over. But God wills that the mission of the church advance through storm and suffering. What are the reasons? I will mention six.

  1. Suffering Deepens Faith and Holiness

  As we have just seen in Hebrews 12, God disciplines his children through suffering. His aim is deeper faith and deeper holiness. “He disciplines us for our good, that we may share his holiness” (v. 10). Jesus experienced the same thing. “Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered” (Heb. 5:8). This does not mean that Jesus grew from disobedience to obedience. The same writer says Jesus never sinned (Heb. 4:15). Rather, the process through which he grew in deeper and deeper obedience was the process of suffering. For us there is the need not only to have our obedience tested and proven but also to be purified of all remnants of self-reliance and entanglement with the world. Paul described this experience in his own li
fe like this:

  For we do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.

  2 Corinthians 1:8–9

  Paul does not concede his suffering to the hand of Satan but says that God ordained it for the increase of his faith. God knocked the props of life out from under Paul’s heart so that he would have no choice but to fall on God and receive his hope from the promise of the resurrection. This is the first purpose of missionary suffering: to wean us from the world and set our hope fully in God alone (cf. Rom. 5:3–4). Since the freedom to love flows from this kind of radical hope (Col. 1:4–5), suffering is a primary means of building compassion into the lives of God’s servants.

  Thousands of missionaries throughout the centuries have found that the sufferings of life have been the school of Christ where lessons of faith were taught that could not be learned anywhere else. For example, John G. Paton, who was born in 1824 in Scotland, was a missionary to the New Hebrides (today’s Vanuatu) in the South Seas from 1858 almost until his death in 1907. He lost his wife four months after he landed on the island of Tanna at the age of thirty-four. Two weeks later his newborn son died. He buried them alone with his own hands. “But for Jesus, and the fellowship he vouchsafed to me there, I must have gone mad and died beside the lonely grave!”10 He stayed on the island for a harrowing four years of dangers. Finally, an uprising was mounted against him, and he believed it was right to try to escape. He sought help from the one person he could trust on the island, his friend Nowar. His escape was an unforgettable discovery of grace that left a lifelong spiritual mark. Nowar told Paton to flee the village and hide in a tree that Nowar’s son would show him and to stay there till the moon rose.

  Being entirely at the mercy of such doubtful and vacillating friends, I, though perplexed, felt it best to obey. I climbed into the tree and was left there alone in the bush. The hours I spent there live all before me as if it were but of yesterday. I heard the frequent discharging of muskets, and the yells of the Savages. Yet I sat there among the branches, as safe in the arms of Jesus. Never, in all my sorrows, did my Lord draw nearer to me, and speak more soothingly in my soul, than when the moonlight flickered among these chestnut leaves, and the night air played on my throbbing brow, as I told all my heart to Jesus. Alone, yet not alone! If it be to glorify my God, I will not grudge to spend many nights alone in such a tree, to feel again my Savior’s spiritual presence, to enjoy His consoling fellowship. If thus thrown back upon your own soul, alone, all alone, in the midnight, in the bush, in the very embrace of death itself, have you a Friend that will not fail you then?11

  2. Suffering Makes Your Cup Increase

  By enduring suffering with patience, the reward of our experience of God’s glory in heaven increases. This is part of Paul’s meaning in 2 Corinthians 4:17–18:

  For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.

  Paul’s affliction is “preparing” or “effecting” or “bringing about” a weight of glory beyond all comparison. We must take seriously Paul’s words here. He is not merely saying that he has a great hope in heaven that enables him to endure suffering. That is true. But he also says that the suffering has an effect on the weight of glory. There seems to be a connection between the suffering endured and the degree of glory enjoyed. Of course the glory outstrips the suffering infinitely, as Paul says in Romans 8:18: “I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” Nevertheless, the weight of that glory, or the experience of that glory, seems to be more or less dependent in part on the affliction we have endured with patient faith.

  Jesus pointed in the same direction when he said, “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven” (Matt. 5:11–12). This would carry the greatest encouragement to rejoice if Jesus meant that the more we endure suffering in faith, the greater will be our reward. If a Christian who suffers much for Jesus and one who does not suffer much experience God’s final glory in exactly the same way and degree, it would seem strange to tell the suffering Christian to rejoice and be glad (in that very day; cf. Luke 6:23) because of the reward he would receive even if he did not suffer. The reward promised seems to be in response to the suffering and a specific recompense for it. If this is not explicit and certain here, it does seem to be implied in other passages of the New Testament. I will let Jonathan Edwards bring them out as we listen to one of the most profound reflections on this problem I have ever read. Here Edwards deals, in a breathtaking way, with the issue of how there can be degrees of happiness in a world of perfect joy.

  There are different degrees of happiness and glory in heaven. . . . The glory of the saints above will be in some proportion to their eminency in holiness and good works here [and patience through suffering is one of the foremost good works, cf. Rom. 2:7]. Christ will reward all according to their works. He that gained ten pounds was made ruler over ten cities, and he that gained five pounds over five cities (Luke 19:17–19). “He that soweth sparingly, shall reap sparingly; and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6). And the apostle Paul tells us that, as one star differs from another star in glory, so also it shall be in the resurrection of the dead (1 Cor. 15:41). Christ tells us that he who gives a cup of cold water unto a disciple in the name of a disciple, shall in no wise lose his reward. But this could not be true, if a person should have no greater reward for doing many good works than if he did but few.

  It will be no damp to the happiness of those who have lower degrees of happiness and glory, that there are others advanced in glory above them: for all shall be perfectly happy, every one shall be perfectly satisfied. Every vessel that is cast into this ocean of happiness is full, though there are some vessels far larger than others; and there shall be no such thing as envy in heaven, but perfect love shall reign through the whole society. Those who are not so high in glory as others, will not envy those that are higher, but they will have so great, and strong, and pure love to them, that they will rejoice in their superior happiness; their love to them will be such that they will rejoice that they are happier than themselves; so that instead of having a damp to their own happiness, it will add to it.

  And so, on the other hand, those that are highest in glory, as they will be the most lovely, so they will proportionally excel in divine benevolence and love to others, and will have more love to God and to the saints than those that are lower in holiness and happiness. And besides, those that will excel in glory will also excel in humility. Here in this world, those that are above others are the objects of envy, because . . . others conceive of them as being lifted up with it; but in heaven it will not be so, but those saints in heaven who excel in happiness will also [excel] in holiness, and consequently in humility. . . . The exaltation of some in heaven above the rest will be so far from diminishing the perfect happiness and joy of the rest who are inferior, that they will be the happier for it; such will be the union in their society that they will be partakers of each other’s happiness. Then will be fulfilled in its perfections that which is declared in 1 Corinthians 12:22: “If one of the members be honored all the members rejoice with it.”12

  Thus, one of the aims of God in the suffering of the saints is to enlarge their capacity to enjoy his glory both here and in the age to come. When their cup is picked up, as it were, from the “refuse of the world” (1 Cor. 4:13) and tossed into the ocean of heaven’s happiness, it will hold more happiness if they have been long weaned from
the world and made to live on God alone.

  3. Suffering Is the Price of Making Others Bold

  God uses the suffering of his missionaries to awaken others out of their slumbers of indifference and make them bold. When Paul was imprisoned in Rome, he wrote of this to the church at Philippi. “Most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment, are much more bold to speak the word without fear” (Phil. 1:14). If he must, God will use the suffering of his devoted emissaries to make a sleeping church wake up and take risks for God.

  The sufferings and dedication of young David Brainerd has had this effect on thousands. Henry Martyn recorded Brainerd’s impact on his life again and again in his Journal.

  September 11, 1805: “What a quickening example has he often been to me, especially on this account, that he was of a weak and sickly constitution!”

  May 8, 1806: “Blessed be the memory of that holy man! I feel happy that I shall have his book with me in India, and thus enjoy, in a manner, the benefit of his company and example.”

  May 12, 1806: “My soul was revived today through God’s never-ceasing compassion, so that I found the refreshing presence of God in secret duties; especially was I most abundantly encouraged by reading D. Brainerd’s account of the difficulties attending a mission to the heathen. Oh, blessed be the memory of that beloved saint! No uninspired writer ever did me so much good. I felt most sweetly joyful to labor amongst the poor natives here; and my willingness was, I think, more divested of those romantic notions, which have sometimes inflated me with false spirits.”13