Take This Cup: How God Transforms Suffering into Glory and Joy

By Charles Erlandson

Suffering is one of the few universals in life and something with which everyone who is reading this has struggled. I have written this book that you might believe that your suffering has a meaning and that God is good.
I have written this book that you might rejoice in your suffering because all Christian suffering unites us to Jesus Christ and, therefore, leads to glory and joy.
I make this audacious, and even offensive, claim because it is the good news of Jesus Christ proclaimed in a different way. It is the good news that God takes what men and devils mean for evil and transforms it into our glory and joy, through his Son.
Read this book if you want to know how and where God promises his people glory and joy through their suffering. Read it, and take the cup of suffering with your Lord. If you do, he promises you, he will unite himself to you through your suffering.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Release date: Apr 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781725262041

Charles Erlandson

Charles Erlandson is a priest in the Reformed Episcopal Church and serves as the assistant rector at Good Shepherd Reformed Episcopal Church in Tyler, Texas, where he resides with his wife and children. He is a professor of church history and the director of communications at Cranmer Theological House in Dallas. His previous works include Orthodox Anglican Identity: The Quest for Unity in a Diverse Religious Tradition; Love Me, Love My Wife: Ten Reasons Christians Must Join a Local Church; and Take This Cup: How God Transforms Suffering into Glory and Joy.

Book preview

The Second Cup, Part I

Christ Took the Cup

Far from being a sign of God’s nonexistence, apathy, or impotence, human suffering is transformed by Christ into a sign of God’s presence, love, and power.

Chapter 1

God’s Goodness and the Existence of Evil

Let us begin, as always, with God. I will begin with the simplest and boldest of assertions, one that was frequently taken for granted in the past but is frequently assumed to be false today: God is good (Matt 19:17).

This is not just to say that God is generically good or that whatever he decrees is good, regardless of what he does. God is inherently good, and since God’s existence and essence are one (who he is, is what he does), God always does good things. God is simple in this way. Because God is good, he created the world good, proclaiming after each day of the creation that what he had created was good.

What do we mean by good? I will assume that something is good if it brings glory to God and blesses (or does good to) man and creation.

God is good, and he loves the world. The Holy Trinity is an eternal fellowship of divine love between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Just as God is good, God is love and, therefore, always does loving things. In fact, a good definition of love is to seek the good and blessing of another—the very thing that God always does.

The act of creation, then, is an act of love because to call good things into existence is to do them good and bless them. In this way, the creation reveals the glory of God by his love.

It is more difficult to define evil and suffering. But we must define them before we can fully comprehend and accept the truth that God has sent his Son to triumph over evil and suffering and transform them into blessing and joy. Our implicit understanding of evil and suffering may sometimes limit our ability to comprehend suffering.

One of Saint Augustine’s many brilliant insights was to understand that evil is not a thing in and of itself but is a perversion or deprivation of some good.¹ It is a parasite on good and does not exist by itself. Man suffers when he experiences any evil: in fact, suffering and evil are closely related throughout the Old Testament. More particularly, we can say that suffering is the lack of some good thing of which someone has been deprived.

Suffering, therefore, is universally present in men, and this suffering takes many forms. It’s not limited to the physical and emotional suffering we most commonly think of: we suffer any time we are deprived of the good for which God has created us.

This is the definition of evil and suffering I’ll be assuming throughout Take This Cup: We suffer any time we experience evil, which is the deprivation of the good for which God created us.

These evil causes of suffering may be either moral evil or natural evil.

Moral evil is suffering caused by men acting in morally wrong ways

Natural evil is suffering caused by events not caused by man, such as earthquakes, tornadoes, etc.

The truth is that moral evil is not only more prevalent than men will admit but also infects much more of the world than men discern. How often have we failed to recognize our part in someone else’s suffering or failed to take responsibility for our participation in moral evil?!

Many people have honest questions about human suffering. Many also assume that suffering is a proof that God doesn’t exist or is not good or powerful enough to do something about human suffering. But God does exist, he is loving and good, and he has powerfully done something about human suffering.

And what he has done is to send his Son into the world to take on human nature, suffer for us, and redeem this suffering. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life" (John 3:16).

When sin, evil, and suffering entered into the world, God did not sit idly by and watch his children suffer. In the fullness of time, God the Father decisively entered into human suffering and showed his Fatherly love by sending his Son to take on human nature and its suffering, redeem human nature, and restore it to union with him.

In assuming human nature to redeem it, God revealed his essential goodness. God is, indeed, very good—so good that his nature is always to take evil and transform it into good. As Joseph told his brothers, whose evil had caused him so much suffering: "But as for you, you meant evil against me; but God meant it for good, to bring it about as it is this day, to save many people alive" (Gen 50:20).

This is the cornerstone of the thesis of this book: that God takes what men and devils mean for evil and turns it into good.

Let me emphasize that while God brings good out of evil and suffering, suffering itself is a form of evil. There is no doubt about it: suffering, in itself, is ugly, shameful, and painful. I should also stress that responding to suffering with faith and submission to God will not necessarily lessen the suffering, although its meaning will be radically transformed. Suffering will not automatically sanctify a person, including a Christian, if the suffering is not received with Christ in faith.

It is precisely because suffering is so terrible that God’s transformation of it into our good is so miraculous and such a potent sign of God, his power, and his love. Love is doing good to others; therefore, love undoes the evil of sin and suffering. But this also means that love, in undoing suffering, partakes of suffering. For love means giving up one’s own good for the good of another.

Let us look next at how Jesus has entered into human suffering and offers himself and his suffering on behalf of us.

Glory be to Jesus,

who, in bitter pains,

poured for me the life-blood

from his sacred veins!

Grace and life eternal

in that blood I find;

blest be his compassion

infinitely kind!

Blest thro’ endless ages

be the precious stream

which from endless torments

did the world redeem!

Abel’s blood for vengeance

pleaded to the skies;

but the blood of Jesus

for our pardon cries.

Oft as earth exulting

wafts its praise on high,

angel hosts rejoicing

make their glad reply.

Lift we, then, our voices,

swell the mighty flood,

louder still and louder

praise the precious blood!

(eighteenth-century Italian, translated by Edward Caswall)

1

. I’m aware both of other understandings of the nature of evil and also of objections to Augustine’s theory. However, it seems to be the most useful way of seeing evil as we attempt to understand suffering.

Chapter 2

God Showed His Love by Taking on Human Nature

God showed his Fatherly love by sending his Son to take on human nature and its suffering, that he might redeem it and restore it to union with him, a union which always leads to glory and joy.

When God chose to become man, he also chose to unite himself to all human suffering.

That is to say: Christ’s incarnation is inseparable from his crucifixion (and also that both of these are inseparable from his resurrection, ascension, and gift of the Holy Spirit). Before we meditate more deeply on the manifold sufferings of Christ, let us first pause briefly to consider his incarnation.

At the incarnation, Jesus assumed a human nature so that in him, the divine and human natures are united. The two natures of Christ are, according to the Council of Chalcedon (451), "without confusion, without change, without division, and without separation. This is what is sometimes called the hypostatic union, or union of natures." In the incarnation, the Son of God assumed human nature: He was not changed into it. As the early church father, Gregory of Nazianzus, taught: What is not assumed is not redeemed.

Jesus Christ is fully human. This means, contrary to many ancient (and modern) heresies, that he had a human body, mind, will, and soul. Jesus had:

•a body which ate, slept, was tempted and could suffer and die

•a human mind which grew with his human body and which had to grow in wisdom (Luke 2:52)

•a human will, with which he chose to the perfectly do the will of the Father

•a human spirit that descended into Hades.

It is the human nature of Christ who has been exalted to the right hand of the Father, for the divine nature of the Son has always existed in the closest possible union with the Father and the Spirit. In his humanity, Jesus Christ communicates and reveals the divinity of Christ and, therefore, the Holy Trinity.

Why did God become man?

God became man that he might reveal his love to man. The incarnation of Christ and his subsequent ministry were God’s ultimate revelation of his love for mankind.

This love of God is expressed in God’s desire to redeem mankind and restore Man to union with him. Man was the cause of man’s death, but God chose to give life through the humanity of Christ (1 Cor 15:21; see also Gal 4:4–5). God became the Second Adam to redeem man from the curse placed upon the first Adam and his heirs. As the writer of Hebrews writes: "in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people" (Heb 2:17).

God became man so that Jesus could perfectly obey the will of the Father for us. Part of the work of redemption, which includes the idea of recapitulation, is for Christ to be the perfect man, into whom we are adopted. Jesus, in his humanity, chose to obey the Father, in spite of being fully human and subject to all of the same temptations to which we are subjected. Christ’s perfect obedience is shown especially in his offering himself on the cross.

In assuming human nature to redeem it, God revealed his essential goodness. God is, indeed, very good! So good that his nature is always to take evil and transform it into good. In his first miracle at the wedding at Cana, Jesus transformed the utility of water into the joy of wine. But that miracle was tame compared to his perpetual miracle of taking evil and transforming it into good. This grandest of miracles reaches its awe-inspiring zenith in the incarnation and life of Jesus Christ, who took on fallen human nature that he might redeem it.

More unbelievable to many than even the miracle of God’s incarnation is his miracle of using suffering as a means of blessing his children immeasurably. But, of course, the miracle of the incarnation and the miracle of God transforming evil into good are, at heart, one and the same.

Pour forth, we beseech Thee, O Lord, Thy grace into our hearts; that we, to whom the incarnation of Christ, Thy Son, was made known by the message of an angel, may by His Passion and Cross be brought to the glory of His Resurrection, through the same Christ Our Lord. Amen. (from the Angelus)

Chapter 3

Jesus Took on Human Suffering

Jesus took on not only human nature but also human suffering. It would not be too strong to say that Jesus took on human nature that he might take on human suffering, for, ever since the fall, to be human is to suffer. For God to restore man to himself, he needed to redeem man from sin and the consequences of sin, primarily suffering, of which death is only the most ferocious species.

God, therefore, is not outside of our suffering and detached from it but has chosen to inhabit it and share it and all things with us.

God didn’t magically take away the sins of the world simply by assuming human nature. The process of atonement required that God transform man by man: man, and not God, was the one in need of redemption. And so Jesus Christ, the God-man, took on not only human nature but also human suffering.

To confront and conquer the enemies of God and man—sin and evil, death and the devil—Jesus Christ truly suffered.

We often underestimate suffering, in this case, the suffering of Christ. We’ve already said that man suffers because of a certain lack of good. In this sense, Christ’s suffering began not on Good Friday with his passion but from the time of his incarnation and conception.

Christ came to redeem all mankind from every kind of evil and suffering, and, therefore, he suffered all kinds of evils. This means as well (a point much neglected) that Jesus’s sacrifice was not only the six hours on the cross or the twelve or so hours at the passion and crucifixion but his entire life. For Jesus’s entire life was a giving up of self, a denying of self, and an emptying of self for our good. Every deprivation of the good he deserved was a form of suffering to him.

This is the teaching of Saint Paul in his wondrous hymn in Philippians 2. In explaining Christ’s love and humility, Paul speaks of Jesus:

who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. (Phil

2

:

6–9

)

Everything that Jesus did as the Christ, he accomplished as the prophesied Suffering Servant: the death of Jesus was prefigured in every moment of the life of Jesus. Jesus, therefore, experienced every genus of human suffering, beginning with his conception, as he recapitulated and redeemed Adam.

Jesus Emptied Himself and Took the Form of a Man

It’s difficult to imagine how much God gave up to become man. We all know how humiliating human life is for each of us, who are by nature fallen men. But what of our perfect God, the Creator of the immensities of the universe, who managed to squeeze himself into a form the size of you or me? To take on human nature, God gave himself up, in ways we can’t entirely understand. This self-deprivation (all of Jesus’s suffering was a voluntary, self-giving suffering) of becoming man is only the first act of suffering in an entire life of self-giving suffering.

Jesus was Born in Humiliating Circumstances

The humiliation of Jesus’s birth extended, then, not only to taking on human flesh but also to being born among the beasts. He who was the Bread of Life and who was born in the city of bread was born in a feeding trough for beasts. He who is the only Clean and Holy One was born among the filth of the world. He who is man’s true home was born in a homeless condition, and even in birth, the Son of Man had no place to rest his sweet head.

Those swaddling cloths? They were his first shroud, pointing to that death which could not contain life. These humble clothes, Saint Luke says (Luke 2:12), were a sign.

Jesus First Shed His Blood at His Circumcision

He who is the New Creation on the eighth day, the day of the new creation, shed his blood for us. This was the same blood of the covenant foreshadowed in the old covenant, partaken of in the Lord’s Supper, and shed on the cross for the sins of the world.

John Keble, in his poem The Circumcision of Christ (from his famous volume The Christian Year), wrote:

The Year begins with Thee,

And Thou beginn’st with woe,

To let the world of sinners see

That blood for sin must flow.

Like sacrificial wine

Pour’d on a victim’s head

Are those few precious drops of Thine,

Now first to offering led.

Look here, and hold thy peace:

The Giver of all good

Even from the womb takes no release

From suffering, tears, and blood.

Can Anything Good Come from Nazareth?

Can anything good come from Nazareth? This was the question Nathanael asked when first hearing about Jesus, and which men have asked ever since. For we mostly assume that bigger is better and that God will come in the more visible and more powerful things of the world.

The King of kings was not only born in humiliating circumstances: He was also raised in them. His entire life was lived in the tiny nation of Israel, chosen by God precisely because she was so weak and small.

He did not grow up in the city of David, where the temple resided, nor was he raised in the more cosmopolitan and hip Judea in the south. Instead, he was raised in the obscure town of Nazareth, whose population would only have been a few hundred. So obscure is Nazareth, that although Matthew records that the Holy Family moved to Nazareth so that what was spoken by the prophets might be fulfilled (Matt 2:23), there is no direct reference to Nazareth in the Old Testament! It was probably the general humility of Christ’s life that fulfilled the Scriptures, rather than Nazareth