John Piper — You Must Suffer

February 8, 2009

John Piper – You Must Suffer from I’ll Be Honest on Vimeo.

From John Owen’s “The Glory of Christ”:

“WE MAY, in the next place, behold the glory of Christ, with respect to His office, in the actings of God toward Him after His discharge of it in this world, in His own exaltation.

These are the two heads to which all the prophecies and predictions concerning Jesus Christ under the Old Testament are referred—His sufferings and the glory that followed (I Pet. 1:11). All the prophets testified beforehand “of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory that should follow.” So when He Himself opened the Scriptures to His disciples, He gave them this as the sum of the doctrine contained in them: “Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?” (Luke 24:26). The same is frequently expressed elsewhere (Rom. 14:9; Phil. 2:5—9).

So much as we know of Christ, His sufferings and His glory, so much do we understand of the Scripture and no more.

These are the two heads of the mediation of Christ and His kingdom, and this is their order which they communicate to the Church—first sufferings, and then glory: “If we suffer, we shall also reign with him” (II Tim. 2:12). They only deceive themselves who design any other method of these things. Some would reign here in this world; and we may say, with the apostle, “Would you did reign, that we might reign with you.” But the members of the mystical Body must be conformed to the Head. In Him, sufferings went before glory; and so they must in them. The order in the kingdom of Satan and the world is contrary to this. First the good things of this life, and then eternal misery, is the method of that kingdom (Luke 16:25).

These are the two springs of the salvation of the Church, the two anointed ones that stand before the Lord of the whole earth, from which flows all the golden oil whereby the Church is dedicated to God and sanctified. [The reference here is to Zechariah 4.] This glory of Christ in His exaltation, which followed on His sufferings, is what we now inquire into.”

(HT: Recover the Gospel)

Posted in John Piper, Suffering