Life Through Death

2 Corinthians 4: 10We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.

The second letter to the Corinthians has a very solemn tone. Paul is obviously grieved by the suffering that the Corinthian Church is going through. It seems as though the Church is being persecuted for the faith which Paul, in part, was responsible for. So what does Paul have to say to a Church in the midst of their suffering?

The peculiar verse above stuck out to me a number of weeks ago. I believe it is meant to be an encouragement to those in Corinth, but how? An underlying theme in Paul’s message is to hold fast to Christ and it is encouraging to those who suffer for Christ sake to know that Christ too suffered for the sake of us. In essence doing what is right, following Christ, can induce suffering of some sort but as Christians there is hope in this suffering or “death”. It is through suffering and death that Jesus comes to life in the resurrection. It is because Jesus is faithful to God and God’s mission that He suffers. So although we may share in Christ’s death we do so in the light of working for the truth of the gospel and with the knowledge of the life it will produce now and for eternity.

I have talked about this before but suffering takes on a different face in our context in Canada. We aren’t physically, socially or outwardly persecuted for being Christians in the same way that the Christians in Corinth would have been. However, I still think there is something very pertinent about the idea of carrying Christ’s death around in our bodies. Although Christ suffered physically He was also killed because of who He was. Who He was and what He did led to his death. So when we share in his death or sufferings, I believe, we also share in his heart. Becoming like Christ or sharing the heart of Christ requires an amount of humility, humbleness and awareness; awareness to the suffering that is present in the world and aware of the ways that sin and human beings are destroying each other and themselves. It is said that Jesus was a man of many sorrows and to me that comes from the deep awareness of the reality of the world in which we find ourselves. So although we may not carry the death of Christ in our bodies in the same way that Paul or the Corinthians did I think we are admonished to carry the death of Christ in our bodies through our attitudes and the way we approach the world and understand ourselves and each other and ultimately through our understanding of the suffering in which God lives with for our sake.