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The gospel is God’s good news of salvation offered to the world. And from its first announcement in Genesis 3, persecution and resulting suffering have long been intertwined with the proclamation of that message. Persecution and suffering are integral to God’s plans and purposes in sharing and spreading the gospel.
Throughout the Bible, we can see this connection: Joseph, Moses, Job, David, Esther, Peter, Paul, Jesus, and others – all of them persevered through persecution and suffering to accomplish God’s purposes.
Glenn Penner, drawing from Isaiah, highlights how persecution and suffering the means used by God to restore His creation:
The prophet Isaiah focuses on a dimension of the concept of suffering, introduced in Genesis 3:14 . . . : to accomplish the purposes of God. Isaiah’s prophecy revealed suffering as being a method used by God of accomplishing His purposes for the world. In fact, it is revealed to be God’s primary way of accomplishing His will of restoring His creation. The solution to the problem of suffering, pain, and death is found, paradoxically, in [Jesus’] suffering, pain, and self-sacrifice to the point of death. (Penner, 2004), at p.76.
The Bible likewise illustrates God’s purposes in using persecution and suffering as His means of demonstrating His redeeming work in believers’ lives. The book of Job (possibly one of the oldest books in the Bible) describes a “divine wager” between God and Satan. The “wager” is to determine whether Job will serve God only for God’s blessings – whether he will abandon and curse God if God withdraws His favor. To carry out the wager, Satan is permitted to bring untold suffering on God’s servant. But God wins the wager when we hear Job say (in his agony): “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him . . . .” (13:15).
In Job, Satan’s claim – that God’s people serve and love Him only because of His blessings to them – is refuted by the powerful testimony of Job’s faithfulness in suffering. Concurrently, God uses supernatural persecution and severe suffering to further build Job’s faith. In this context, persecution and suffering serve as both a tool for achieving God’s purposes in the life of a believer, and as testament to God’s redeeming work in the believer’s life.
The idea of persecution – integrally linked to God’s purposes of “good news” proclamation and sanctifying transformation – is carried all the way through the Bible. It appears in some of the earliest accounts (like Job’s) and unfolds to a climax in the Revelation – where, as Glenn Penner observes, “[o]ne of the key themes in Revelation is the reference to the followers of Jesus as giving ‘testimony’ (marturia). This testimony, in Revelation, always involves suffering and death: ‘the testimony of Jesus’ (1:9; 12:17; 19:10; 20:4); ‘their testimony’ (6:9; 11:7; 12:11).”
New Testament scholar L.W. Hurtado put it this way:
“This use of the Greek terms for ‘witness’ and ‘testimony’ in Revelation anticipates (and probably helped to shape) the subsequent special Christian use of the terms for ‘martyrs’ and ‘martyrdom.’” Behind it all is the knowledge that it is the “faithful witness” Jesus (1:5) who “exemplifies the steadfastness to the word of God in the face of death that followers of Jesus are to exhibit.”
Romanian Pastor Josef Ton, who was jailed for his faith, noted:
The key message of the Book of Revelation is that the only methods God uses to bring the nations to Himself is through the testimony of Jesus Christ . . . . Instead, God had determined to save the world by the foolishness of the cross of Christ and by the foolishness of the crosses of His children whom He has chosen and called for this very purpose. He will be consistent in using this unique method until He achieves His final goal. God will thus bring the nations to Himself by the sacrifice of His Son followed by the sacrifices of His other sons.
. . . .
To the early disciples, the cross meant two things:
1. Crucifixion was a terrifying, disgusting, unspeakably horrifying, and shameful way to die . . . . . To be called to take up the cross required a readiness to face that sort of fate for the sake of Christ.
2. Crucifixion was administered solely as a state punishment. . . . So the call is beyond that of just suffering; it implied a preparation for severe social consequences, condemned as a subversive or criminal of the worst kind.
“Christ’s cross was for propitiation. Our cross is for propagation.”
The call to take up the cross meant being ready to face severe social consequences and even death for the sake of Christ. But this suffering was specifically meant to serve God’s purposes: just as Jesus’ suffering and sacrifice on the cross made things right between God and us, believers’ suffering and sacrifice can be used to spread God’s love and bring others closer to Him.
God’s purposes in using persecution and suffering are as powerful as they are paradoxical. The earliest Christians’ obedient acceptance of persecution and suffering was used by God to change the world. That power is still at work today through the lives of Christians suffering for their faith. When we embrace God’s purposes in persecution and rely on Him for sustenance in our suffering, we become vessels through which the message of Jesus Christ is spread. And we echo the legacy of those early believers, whose similar obedience was used to transform their own lives, and the lives of those around them.
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