There is no getting to heaven without suffering. Those (and they are many) who hope to come to heaven without pain in this life are hoping for what Christ never promised. Such a hope is based on fancy not on faith, for faith rests on divine revelation. But there are no promises that any shall have heaven without affliction. The only exceptions are elect infants dying in infancy. Of these, and of those not yet born, it might be said: ‘Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun’ (Eccles. 4:3). Those for whom Christ shed his blood, who die in the womb, pass at once into glory. All others for whom Christ died go to glory by a rougher road.

It is no kindness to pretend to those newly converted or to those whom we evangelize that the way to heaven is easy. Christ himself did not conceal from his hearers the thorns that lie before all his disciples: ‘I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves . . . Beware of men for they will deliver you up . . . The brother shall deliver up the brother to death . . . Ye shall be hated of all men for my name’s sake . . . It is enough for the disciple that he be as his master . . . Fear not them which kill the body . . .’ (Matt. 10:16–28). These words are stern and honest. Those who first heard them must have felt they were a summons to quit all earthly ease. If men want heaven on easy terms they must re-write Christ’s sermons. He gives us no prospect of a discipleship without trial or tribulation.

It would be wrong of us to read such words of Christ as if they referred only to the apostles or to biblical times. That such afflictions would be common to God’s people in all ages is clear enough from the testimony of the New Testament as a whole. ‘We must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God’ (Acts 14:22). ‘If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you’ (John 15:18). ‘Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you’ (1 Pet. 4:12). ‘These are they which came out of great tribulation’ (Rev. 7:14). It is clear that the pathway to everlasting glory is one which in all ages and for all pilgrims has some experience of tribulation, of fiery trial and of this world’s cruel hatred.

If such texts as the above had not been written we would stumble and be offended at the way God’s people have been treated in this world. The history of Christ’s church in some ages has been a veritable martyrology. It was often so in the Roman Empire before Constantine. It was often so in the Middle Ages. It was so at the Reformation and in Covenanting times. It is probably so still in Sudan, North Korea, parts of Indonesia and in some other areas of the world at this very hour. For all the centuries

of Christian influence and missionary work, of Bible printing and distribution, of democratic governments and humanitarian enterprises, this world is still very much a scene of suffering to those who love Jesus Christ. The world is still the world and it will be the world ever until Christ comes to burn it in fire.

It is tempting to the Christian to want to live a life free from cares and problems here below, but it is not realistic. Even in lands where churches are well-established and where Christianity is socially acceptable, the believer must expect to find himself repeatedly buffeted and pilloried as he lives for Christ and witnesses to him. If the afflictions and the pains are less outward and more inward they are not the less real and lively to his experience. There is a cross to be carried which cannot be seen by any eye but God’s. There is a fiery trial which must still be felt inwardly by the mind and soul. Even if it does not consume the body it may consume the heart. In our tolerant democracies where there is no martyr’s bonfire there may be situations which roast God’s people with fiery fears and stretch them on beds of nails. We are in the apostolic succession if we sometimes experience ‘fightings without’ and ‘fears within’ (2 Cor. 7:5).

A Christianity which attempts to live in cotton-wool is either compromised or, at best, cowardly. It might be just possible for a real Christian to avoid confrontation with this world by being as like it as he dare. But such a Christianity will not bring much glory to God or much reward to those who fashion themselves according to it. Where would truth be today had men not stood up in its defence at the cost of their lives? ‘For this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth’ (John 18:37). So said Christ to Pontius Pilate. ‘Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears!’ (Acts 7:51). So cried the brave martyr Stephen before the corrupt Sanhedrin. ‘Athanasius is against the world’, cried that bold hero as he defended the divinity of Christ against the Arians. ‘Here I stand!’, exclaimed Luther as he pleaded before the church dignitaries at Worms for a return to the biblical gospel. These all suffered to give us our Bible and to keep open to view the door that leads to life.

To look for a gospel that involves us in no suffering is to desire an absurdity. The gospel which we preach is threatening. It threatens the kingdom of Satan. It threatens men’s foolish love of sin. It threatens the way of life of all who are not already penitent and converted. Sinners know instinctively that the gospel requires of them nothing less than total surrender to the claims of Christ. To the worldly mind anything is better than to have to face up to a personal confrontation with an Almighty God. Anything, to the carnal mind, is a relief which does not challenge their conscience with the need to become holy. Since this is so, it cannot be otherwise for worldly men than that they must hate true Christians, who represent to them all that they would prefer not to know or to be.

To try to make Christianity painless is like trying to pretend that lions are harmless fun, or that dynamite is safe for children to play with. Pain lies at the very heart of Christianity. The whole life of Christ was painful and his death was exquisitely painful. The history of Christ’s people, both Old Testament and New, is one of pain. Which great preacher had a pain-free life? Not Paul or Peter; not James or John; not Whitefield or Wesley; not Boston or the Erskines. To expect to live the Christian life without any agony or anguish is to misunderstand the very essence of Christ’s religion. A Christ without the nails and thorns is no Christ at all.

Too much modern Christianity is preoccupied with the subject of

how to make life painless. Men seek gifts of healing, attend meetings for healing, study at classes where they can become healers. This healing-ministry emphasis is everywhere. But perhaps what we ought to be doing rather is to pray, not for the gift of healing, but for the gift of patience in suffering (Rom. 12:12). We need not so much meetings or conferences on healing as on courage to do our duty, boldness to live consistent lives, strength to put the claims of God before our own self-interest.

What a shallow thing our gospel would be if it gave painlessness to

all believers! Do we forget in our comfortable modern life that pain, suffering, hunger and death are still staring people in the face in many parts of the world every day they live? Life in this world of sin is of necessity a sad, short and painful experience for multitudes. The Christian must go through his own share of all this sorrow. Sanctified afflictions are God’s way of weaning us off the world and preparing us to leave it. Suffering teaches the Christian many lessons which he would never learn without it.

At the root of all this effort to anaesthetize the pain of Christian discipleship is almost certainly the false idea that ‘God never wants his children to feel pain’. But such a view of God is foreign to the Bible, both Old Testament and New. God is aiming, not so much at the Christian’s comfort here on earth, as at his holiness. Rest and comfort will belong to the believer eternally in a better world. They are not to be sought – at least, not to be sought first – in this present world. To put our own comfort first is to make an idol of this life. This is what the foolish do; God’s children must not do so. Paul’s earnest expectation should be ours: ‘That Christ shall be magnified . . . whether it be by life, or by death’ (Phil. 1:20).

The Christian and the Christian church are usually at their best in times of suffering. God-sent afflictions have a health-giving effect upon the believer’s soul. They clear his eye-sight so that he recognises this world as the wicked, godless place that it is. Afictions, when blessed by God, are the medicine used to purge the soul of its worldliness and its love of life’s vanities. Those who have been in the crucible have lost more of their scum. They who have been in the fire with Christ have felt the sweetness of his presence, as few others have. When we are in trouble the promises of God’s Word are more precious to us than gold. So, too, the church’s suffering times are often her golden ages.

As we write, the clouds of war loom large once again on the horizon. Whatever will happen in the Middle East is as yet known only to God. But it would not be surprising if many (and among them many Christians) will in the foreseeable future be plunged into war, with all that that means. If this threat of war evaporates – and God grant that it may! – there will to the very end be trials in this life for God’s people. Our ultimate comfort lies in this, that all Christ’s promises will outlive this short life: ‘In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world’ (John 16:33).