Suffering: Case Text (Part I)

Introduction

Case Text: The Last Beatitude

Disdain and distancing from suffering is nothing new or unique to today. Herman Ridderbos writes of the historical dilemma involving Christ’s suffering and that “the attempt has been made to cancel the significance of all this by explaining such explicit pronouncements on the necessity of the sufferings as vaticinia ex eventu (prophecies after the events) and ascribing them to the later Christian church.” [1] He is speaking of the sufferings of Christ, but the sufferings of our Savior and the call to the Church to join in his sufferings are tightly related. Ridderbos expounds, “In opposition to such conceptions it must be maintained that the idea of the suffering and death of Christ and its necessity is one of the most essential elements of the kerygma [proclamation, preaching] of Christ in the synoptic gospels and from the outset it also determined Jesus’ actions in word and deeds.”[2] Christ teaches that his followers will suffer in the Sermon on the Mount, and the New Testament writers repeatedly echo this teaching.

Historical scholarship and interpretations abound on the Sermon on the Mount, ranging from the interim ethic of Albert Schweitzer to the Lutheran view as a Sermon of (new) Law. This is close to Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s view, but John Stott draws out that Bonhoeffer did capture the more reformed, kingdom-theology approach.[3] The set of standards found in the Beatitudes is addressed to the Church and must be the goal, with the ultimate realization that only through the resurrection power of Christ can believers strive towards that goal, and only in the future will the Church fully achieve it perfectly.[4] Ridderbos explains that these kingdom prescriptions “though still future as regards [to] its perfect consummation, it has fundamentally become a fact at the present moment.”[5]

All of the Beatitudes are descriptions of the character of the Church, yet the last Beatitude is the only one expanded and personalized. Christ is addressing his disciples, and by extension, all his followers, giving instructions in how they should set themselves apart in the world. This is how the world will see our witness, in our love for one another by living out the Beatitudes. When Christ gave the Great Commission - to go forth and be the Church[6] - this was his vision for how to be his Kingdom people. Our path of discipleship is along the road of the Beatitudes.

[1] Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom. Philadelphia. (Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Company, 1962), 159
[2] Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 159
[3] Stott, The Message of The Sermon on the Mount, 53
[4] Craig L. Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels, (Nashville. Broadman & Holman, 1997), 247
[5] Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom, 73
[6] Matthew 28:19-20; note the command to teach the disciples of all nations all that Christ had commanded them.