Dr. Gerald M. Bilkes

One of the great hallmarks of the apostolic church was the grace God gave them to suffer well. The blood of unflinching martyrs was one of the most powerful factors in the growth of the church. And as many others faced imprisonment and other forms of persecution, the observation of spectators was “these people suffer well.” The steadfastness of the prophets, apostles, martyrs, and saints is a call to follow the Lord in adversity, persecution, or whatever affliction the Lord has in store for us.

For many in our world today, however, the idea that there would be a cost to following the Lord is unacceptable. The “health and wealth” gospel has made many suppose that being a Christian will invariably translate into earthly and material comforts. While we decry this perversion of the gospel, the general prosperity and plenty of our societies has subtly taken hold of many of us. We tend to think of Christian suffering as an exception rather than the rule.

To the extent that we believe this, however, it ironically only hurts us. We move away from truth of which Paul reminded the new converts in Asia Minor, namely, that it is “through much tribulation” that we shall “enter into the kingdom of God” (Acts 14:22). But worse than that, we are liable to become offended “when tribulation or persecution ariseth” (Matt. 13:21).

“Welcome to the Strife”

These were the words with which those making confession of faith used to be greeted by those who had been fighting for many years and decades. The greeting has a tone of realism, matched only by the idealism it contains as well. After all, it is strife; but nevertheless, welcome to it.

Many of us who have lived through the last thirty or forty years have witnessed a transition to an arguably post-Christian culture. In fact, our Western societies have become increasingly anti-Christian. Instead of causing alarm or panic, this reality should turn our homes and churches into schools where we study the Scriptures to see how it is that we might rightly prepare for what God has in store for us. We may be surprised to find there people who not only endured in the face of tribulation but, as was the case with Paul, who even desired “the fellowship of [Christ’s] sufferings” (Phil. 3:10).

There is no doubt that, if it had been His pleasure to do so, God could have spared every believer every trial and tribulation from the moment of his or her first acting of faith. But it is not a question of His ability. Instead, the proper question is, what is His aim? God’s good aim is to make His children conformable to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29). The goal is not our comfort, but our conformity to Christ.And in order to work that, He sends the right amount of trials for each of His children at exactly the right time. We often don’t understand why He does what He does; but we need to believe what He says.

Armed for the Fiery Trial

In the process of arming his readers for future usefulness (see 1 Peter 4:1), Peter says, “Think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you” (4:12). The Greek literally means: “Let the fiery trial not be a stranger to you.”¹ If you have suffered anything major in your life, you know that trials can feel so terribly strange. Something has gone horribly wrong, you think. Yet Peter so prepares the church that they won’t be tempted to think that they are unexpected, foreign, or inappropriate for someone following Christ.

Peter uses the term “fiery trial” to help explain the difficulties Christians will encounter. The term suggests the picture of a furnace, a place for refining ore. A refiner would heat the fire in a kiln, put the ore on a lever into the smelting chamber, and then watch and wait until the ore was molten and the dross or impurities separated from the metal. Peter is likely referring to persecution that would have heated up tremendously during his day. These newly converted men and women, young people, and children were at risk of being imprisoned, slandered, maligned, discriminated against, marginalized, and even killed. This kind of persecution has been present since the beginning and still puts Christians in the furnace in many parts of the world (John 15:18; Heb. 11:32–38).

Scripture speaks of other trials as well, which can be no less severe. James speaks of temptation as a fiery trial. He writes, “Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him” (James 1:12). Then there is the affliction that comes in every daily life. It can range from mild to severe, temporary or permanent, obvious or hidden. It can be physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual. It can be brought on by or lead to illness or disability. It includes grief and sorrows. It affects family and work and church. It can involve spiritual afflictions such as desertions and perplexing providences. These are no less severe trials than suffering in a prison for the name of Christ.

By His Fatherly Hand

If believers are ever going to see trials as not strange, they must, first of all, look behind trials and trace them to their source, namely, God. The Heidelberg Catechism says so beautifully that “all things come, not by chance, but by His fatherly hand” (Q. 27). If the psalmist can say, “It is good for me that I have been afflicted” (Ps. 119:71), surely these afflictions must have come from God or they would not have profited him. In fact, the psalmist says exactly that four verses further: “In faithfulness thou hast afflicted me” (Ps. 119:75).

The well-known Puritan John Flavel echoes the same truth: “It is the great support and solace of the saints in all the distresses that befall them here, that there is a wise Spirit sitting in all the wheels of motion, and governing the most eccentric creatures and their most pernicious designs to blessed and happy issues.”²

If we see suffering coming to us capriciously, randomly, or from some source other than God, we will shrink from it. Thomas Brooks says, “The design of God in all the afflictions that befall [His people] is only to try them; it is not to wrong nor ruin them, as ignorant men are apt to think.”³ Elsewhere he writes:

There is no sickness so little God but hath a finger in it, though it be but the acting of the little finger. And as the scribe is more eyed, and more properly said to write, than the pen; and as every workman is more eyed, and more properly said to effect his work, than the tools which he uses as his instruments: the Lord, who is the chief agent and mover in all actions, and who has the greatest hand in all our afflictions, is far more to be eyed and owned than any inferior or subordinate causes whatever.⁴

If we learn to live eyeing the ultimate source of our trials, they will not be strange to us.

Acquainted with Grief

A second way for trials to not feel strange to believers is to know that God is with them in trials. He does not leave them to themselves in their trials, despite what they often think and feel. God’s presence with His people in their suffering was promised by Isaiah: “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burnt; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee” (43:2).

This is clearly illustrated in the story of Daniel’s three friends in the fiery furnace. When King Nebuchadnezzar looked into the furnace, what he saw astonished him. “‘Did we not cast in three men bound into the midst of the fire?’ ‘They answered and said to the king, True, O king. Look!’ He answered, ‘I see four men loose walking in the midst of the fire; and they are not hurt, and the fourth is like the Son of God’” (Dan. 3:25). This was nothing other than Christ, Immanuel—God with us—in the furnace with His people.

In afflictions is when God’s people often have the greatest sense of His intimate presence. They can say with Paul: “All men forsook me, but the Lord stood with me” (2 Tim. 4:16–17). Elsewhere, he boasted, “Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword….For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom. 8:31ff).

If there ever was anyone for whom trials should have been strange, it would have been the Son of God. He knew no sin and had committed no sin. Yet, if there was anyone who did not consider trials strange, it was Christ, of whom we read that He was “acquainted with grief ” (Isa. 53:3).

More importantly, Christ not only entered into His people’s affliction, but paid the price fo their sins. Samuel Rutherford consoled, “Ye know that the weightiest end of the cross of Christ that is laid upon you lieth upon your strong Saviour.”⁵ He went through the fires of Gethsemane and Golgotha to pay for their sins of His people so they would not need to. He had to go through the flame of God’s wrath so that the fires of God’s wrath would be extinguished for His people.

Satisfied in God

Believers will be helped not to see trials as strange if, thirdly, they see that God aims to have more of them through the trial. God is not only the source of the trial and the support in the trial, but the satisfaction of the Christian after he or she is tried. The psalmist said, “Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now have I kept thy word” (Ps. 119:67). More than ever, the psalmist stays closely attached to God’s Word. It’s a remarkable thing that it usually takes trials for believers to drink more deeply from the well that is God Himself. We know this when there is a deeper sense of joy in God through before. We learn to approve of the trial and especially of God, who sent it.

In his classic commentary on 1 Peter, Bishop Robert Leigthon put it well:

If the children of God consider their trials, not in their natural bitterness, but in the sweet love whence they spring, and the sweet fruits that spring from them, that we are our Lord’s gold, and that he tries us in the furnace to purify us…this may beget not only patience, but gladness even in the sufferings.⁶

Afflictions conform God’s precious people to Christ their Head. In the moment, it might seem to us as if trials produce more sin in our lives. We rebel, complain, murmur, and distrust the Lord. However, if we go back to the picture of the fiery furnace, we can put it like George Whitefield once said: “Afflictions don’t bring the dross; they reveal the dross.” Through trials, God brings our sins to the surface to expose them and separate them from us. Whitefield explained this further, “Whilst I continue on this side of eternity, I never expect to be free from trials, only to change them. For it is necessary to heal the pride of my heart that such should come.”⁷

Even if we don’t understand why God is afflicting us, we should resign ourselves to our afflictions as quickly as possible and approve of God’s way of dealing with us. Edward Payson, a godly Congregational minister in Portland, Maine, who was often greatly tried, was asked if he could see any particular reason for his heavy afflictions. He replied, “No, but I am as well satisfied as if I could see ten thousand. God’s will is the very perfection of all reasons.”⁸

Conclusion

It would be wrong to pray for trials or even wish for them. However, we should prepare for them and prepare to benefit from them. If we do not, they will feel foreign, and Peter tells us not to think of them so. He knew what it was like to think a trial strange, and it was to his own detriment (see Mark 8:32; Matt. 16:23). Before he knew it, he was right in the middle of the furnace of temptation in the hall of Caiaphas (John 18:13–27). From that experience he warns us: prepare for whatever trial it is God has in store for you.

It is said that Charles and Susannah Spurgeon had a plaque on their bedroom wall with the words of Isaiah 48:10: “I have chosen you in the furnace of affliction.” What a way to remind yourself that trials are not strange! Children of God in trials right now, consider Him who perfectly ordains your trials. He accompanies you in them whether you feel His presence or not. And He uses them to purify you and to impress more of His own image upon you. Then they won’t be strange, but strangely familiar.

Notes:

1. The Greek is xenizoo from which we get the word “xenophobia.”

2. John Flavel, The Whole Works of the Rev. Mr. John Flavel, 6 vols. (London: W. Baynes and Son, 1820), 4:342–43.

3. Thomas Brooks, Precious Remedies Against Satan’s Devices: Being, A Companion For Christians of All Denominations (Philadelphia: Jonathan Pounder, 1810), 94.

4. Thomas Brooks, The Mute Christian Under the Smarting Rod; With Sovereign Antidotes for Every Case (London: W. Nicholson, 1806), 26–27.

5. Samuel Rutherford, Letters of Samuel Rutherford (Carlisle, Penn.: Banner of Truth, 2006), 34.

6. Robert Leighton, The Whole Works of Robert Leighton (New York: J. C. Riker, 1846), 316.

7. George Whitefield, George Whitefield’s Journals (Carlisle, Penn.: Banner of Truth, 1998), 179.

8. Asa Cummings, A Memoir of the Rev. Edward Payson (Boston: Crocker and Brewster, 1830), 353.

Dr. Gerald M. Bilkes is Professor of Old and New Testament at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary and an ordained minister in the Free Reformed churches of North America.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.