Completing Christ's Sufferings

“Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh, I’m filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church.” (Colossians 1:24)

This has to be one of the weirdest verses in the New Testament. Is this really Saint Paul, “filling up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions” – the same Paul who elsewhere speaks so passionately of the completeness of Christ’s sacrifice?

“The death he died, he died to sin once for all” (Romans 6:10).Why is Paul now suggesting that maybe Christ didn’t quite suffer enough? How much suffering is enough? Isn’t any undeserved suffering too much?A lot of scholars think this can’t be the real Paul. If it is him, it’s one of his last letters, written from prison. Perhaps the stress of prison life was getting to him?

The real kicker here is that the greater part of this letter to the Colossians is taken up with a cosmic vision of the awesome majesty of Christ, who is referred to as “the visible image of our invisible God” and “the firstborn of creation” (Colossians 1:15).

“He himself is before all things and in him all things hold together.” (Colossians 1:16)

How is it that then He “in whom the fulness of God was pleased to dwell” (Colossians 1:19) could have failed to complete His mission, leaving it to His followers to somehow mop up the remaining quota of suffering?

You’ll forgive me for the way I’m framing my frustrations here, and I may have been overly influenced by biblical scholar, Walter Wink, who railed against what he called, “The Myth of Redemptive Violence”, arguing that any glorification of pain as salvific only reinforces systems of oppression.

I agree that there is great danger in trying to sanctify violence in any way – suggesting, for example, that the current suffering of the people of Gaza, while regrettable, is all very necessary if our Messiah is going to return. No! There’s no way of sanitizing murder through any religious rationalisation. At the same time, of course, it is fundamental to the teachings of the New Testament that the sufferings of Jesus, the Christ, change things between us and God and, while it’s not obvious exactly how that works, perhaps it should not surprise us that we who are connected to Christ in this world should somehow be drawn into that mystery.

There is a difference between suffering that is redemptive and suffering that’s romanticised. Paul never said suffering is good, but he did believe it could be used for good when joined to Christ’s mission, when endured for the sake of others, and when transformed by love. That’s less the myth of redemptive suffering than the mystery of it.

Tom Wright, Anglican bishop and Pauline scholar, argues that Paul’s sufferings are not about completing Christ’s atonement but about completing the mission of the Church.

Christ suffered to redeem the world. Paul suffered to proclaim Christ’s redemption. His afflictions were not salvific but apostolic. Suffering was the price of mission, and so it’s not just inevitable in the spiritual life but integral to it, not because God delights in pain but because love costs, and Christ’s followers, if faithful, have to bear that cost.

I’ve had a hard week. It hasn’t been as hard for me as for our brothers and sister in Gaza, of course, nor as hard as that of any number of other people in my neighbourhood. Even so, it’s been hard, and it helps me to be reminded that suffering is organic to who we are as followers of Jesus.

It’s not an add-on. It’s not a glitch. It’s a part of our DNA. From the martyrs of Rome to the missionaries of Myanmar, we move forward through suffering. Suffering is not good, but God is good, and God will meet us in our suffering.

Paul’s words in Colossians 1:24 are not so much a puzzle to be solved as a truth to be lived. When we suffer for the sake of others – enduring injustice, rejection and pain in the name of love – we’re not just imitating Christ but participating in Christ, which surely is redemptive in some mysterious way (apologies, Walter Wink).

I leave the final word to my great mentor, Soren Kierkegaard: “On the way where a person follows Christ, the height of suffering is the height of glory.”

References & Further Reading

Wright, N.T. Paul and the Faithfulness of God. Fortress Press, 2013.
Wright, N.T. The Prison Letters: Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and Philemon. SPCK, 2002.
Witherington III, Ben. The Letters to Philemon, the Colossians, and the Ephesians. Eerdmans, 2007.
Pope John Paul II. Salvifici Doloris (On the Christian Meaning of Human Suffering), Apostolic Letter, 1984.
Moltmann, Jürgen. The Crucified God. SCM Press, 1974.

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Our Sunday Eucharist

We had another wonderful Sunday Eucharist last weekend. Thank you again, Diane Bates and Jakob Pyeatt, for joining me on the panel. As per usual, the two most popular shorts from last Sunday are pasted below. See all the shorts on our Sunday Eucharist Instagram page or watch the entire broadcast on our YouTube channel.

This Sunday I’m looking forward to welcoming another old friend of mine to the panel – the Reverand John Queripel.

John and I met in the early 1980’s at Sydney University. My most prominent memory of John in those days is of him playing his guitar and singing a song he wrote: “Jesus turned the water into beer”. John went on to do some amazing work with the Uniting Church but is now officially in retirement. Karyn Hemming will be joining John and myself, and I think we’ll make a great team.

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I’m afraid I’m a day late posting the newsletter this week, so you’ll forgive me if I wrap up quickly. I think I spent way too much time this week reflecting on the Colossians passage. I suppose it’s part of my attempt to make sense of what is going on around us. Why are so many people suffering at the moment? The rich are getting richer while the weak are being destroyed. Why hasn’t God stepped in yet?

Doctors in Gaza are saying that babies are being born without brains and without limbs! These deformities are assumed to be the result of toxic weapons, starvation, and the collapse of healthcare system. I’d give you a link to a relevant TikTok video I watched but … once you’ve seen it, you can’t unsee it.

In my beloved Syria, the Al Qaeda government continues its project of ethnic cleansing, this time focusing on the Druze community in Sweida. Check out my friend, Syrian Girl’s, X feed if you’re up to seeing images of people being forced to jump to their deaths from their own balconies. Meanwhile, Israel plays the white knight, further destroying Syrian infrastructure while claiming to support the Druze!

Meanwhile, in the west, the US President seems desperate to suppress the Epstein client list. We can only guess which individuals and which governments he is trying to protect. Certainly though, if it can somehow be brought to light, the shake-up could be enormous. As Chris Hedges rightly points out, the American people may put up with being lied to about pretexts for war with Iraq, Libya and Syria, but they won’t put up with having their ruling elite involved in paedophilia.

What would Saint Paul say about all this? I look again at our reading today. Paul says to me, “well … Christ has more sufferings to complete”. I don’t understand. I don’t pretend to understand. What I am clear about though is that Christ too is suffering, and that through Him we are all connected. To quote Saint Paul again:

“If one member suffers, all suffer together; if one member is honored, all rejoice together.” (1 Corinthians 12:26)

We pray that the time of rejoicing together will come soon.

Your brother in the Good Fight