The second characteristic we wish to consider covers a very broad field. It is seen in one form or another on many of the pages of the New Testament. The topic is really worthy of an entire book, so we can only pray that this overview will make an appropriate impact upon the reader.

Our Lord Jesus Christ came to this earth with a heart willing to suffer in order to accomplish God’s will. He was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief" (Is. 53:3b, KJV). As His followers, we also should be willing to suffer in order to carry out God’s will in our lives. "Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who . . . emptied Himself . . . and being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross" (Phil. 2:5-8, NASB).

"Therefore, since Christ has suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves also with the same purpose, because he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so as to live the rest of the time in the flesh no longer for the lusts of men, but for the will of God" (1 Pet. 4:1-2, NASB). "For to you it has been granted for Christ’s sake, not only to believe in Him, but also to suffer for His sake" (Phil. 1:29, NASB).

A word of caution is in order here. There have been some Christians who have misunderstood the matter of suffering in the Christian life. In their attempt to "follow Christ" in suffering, they have practiced asceticism of various kinds. However, the Bible clearly warns us that self-imposed suffering and mere religious self-denial are of no value (Col. 2:20-23). We should also be cautious of focusing on Christian suffering in a morbid way.

The correct understanding of suffering in the Christian life connects our suffering with God’s will. As we shall see, we should be willing to suffer loss to our desires for the purpose of carrying out God’s will for us. This was Christ’s example in the garden of Gethsemane, where His willingness to go to the cross hinged upon God’s will. Also, our suffering circumstances should be according to God’s will in His sovereign arrangement, not something we engineer because we think such suffering will make us more "spiritual" (see 1 Pet. 3:17; 4:19).

Let’s look at one passage where Jesus taught on the matter of willingness to suffer:

Here we see that Peter was a stumbling block to Jesus, even being one with Satan. The problem was his mindset. He did not think that Christ should suffer. The expanded translation by Kenneth Wuest reads: "A stumbling block you are to Me, because you do not have a mind for the things of God but for the things of men" (v. 23). The word for mind here includes not only the mental capacity, but also the desires and the will of man’s inner being.

The basic problem here is man’s unwillingness to suffer the loss of his desires. To deny the self means to be willing to let go of what makes one’s self happy and satisfied. To then take up the cross includes not only death to the self, but also the embracing of God’s will. This is what Jesus did in the garden of Gethsemane, when He put aside His will and prayed to accept the Father’s will (the cross).

The Greek word for "life" (v. 25) in the passage above is psuche, which means soul. The same word is translated "soul" in verse 26. Although the word for "himself" in verse 24 is not psuche, it refers to the same thing in the passage. This is proven by the context and by the parallel passage in Luke 9, where Luke 9:25 speaks of forfeiting "himself", yet Matt. 16:26 speaks of forfeiting the "soul." Thus, to deny the self means to lose one’s life, or soul.

The meaning of saving, or preserving, the soul is to let it have its satisfaction, as seen in the notion of gaining the whole world, if it were possible. To lose one’s soul means to suffer the loss of what satisfies, or makes the soul, or self, happy. Only when we are willing to give up what pleases us can we then accurately determine God’s will and follow Christ. This is a voluntary suffering by the disciple of Christ.

I will never forget an experience I had as a fairly young Christian. I had taken some seminary courses and had some experience with the Lord, but I still had much to learn in this arena. I was part of a church that had a good spiritual ministry and had many real seekers of the Lord. One day I was spending time with a leading elder who had kind of taken me under his wing. We visited some young college students who had been attending our church from time to time.

After the visit he turned to me and commented about one young man. He stated plainly that this particular young man would never become a lasting member of our congregation. The reason he was so bold to predict this was that he discerned that the young man liked his life style too much to pay the price to follow Christ as hotly as we were doing. He was a Christian, true enough, but from his comments about how much he liked to dine at certain places, and how much he enjoyed certain leisure activities, the wise elder could tell that the critical element of self-denial was missing in his Christian walk. The elder’s prediction turned out to be completely accurate. That young man never joined us in our pursuing of the Lord, although some of his friends did.

Please understand that we are not talking about "rules for holy living." What is at issue is the heart’s willingness to suffer loss to the pleasures of the soul. Whether or not we actually do forego some pleasure is absolutely a matter of the leading of the Holy Spirit (God’s will). Again I want to point out that Christ’s acceptance of the suffering of the cross altogether depended upon what God’s will was. As we are willing to not please ourselves and do just what God permits, then God will make clear to us what He allows or disallows.

Actually, as we grow in Christ’s life and remain in close fellowship to Him, His desires become ours. Then, it is not so much a matter of His specific leading about what He permits or disallows, as it is that the very desires of our heart undergo transformation. As we truly mature in Christ, the strong desires that used to propel us towards avenues of obtaining their satisfaction lose their power and intensity.

Let me give an illustration of what I am talking about from my experience. Fairly early in my Christian life I saw that some believers in a fellowship I attended had some nice Bible covers. I began to feel that I would like a really nice one too. As I began to consider this, and perhaps even started out to buy one, I was very bothered by the Holy Spirit. Something was not right. The more I progressed towards buying one the more I felt my fellowship with the Lord was undergoing disruption. Peace was leaving me. As I sought to understand this experience from the Lord, I realized that I had wanted a Bible cover as a "show off" item. The desire for the Bible cover had self glory as its root, and it was not a desire from the Lord. I yielded to the Lord and did not buy the Bible cover.

Please allow me to share one more experience that may be helpful. Perhaps a year or two after the experience just noted, I moved into an apartment that I was to share with two other young single Christian men. We did not have much furniture, so I went out and purchased a dining room table and some living room furniture. Then, I decided that I wanted some dishes that matched the brown furniture. As I began to move in the direction of shopping for the dishes, the Holy Spirit bothered me. I had no peace and there was a real battle within. We probably had some dishes that would do, but my soul was longing for something of particular beauty, and that longing was infringing upon my love of God. I was loving the things of this world (1 Jn. 2:15), and the Holy Spirit was signaling me that my direction was not pleasing to the Lord. I yielded to the Lord and gave up my desire to buy the dishes.

At the time that I had the two experiences above I was really seeking the Lord and desiring to please Him. If you have never had any experience like this, then it may well be because you have not been seeking the Lord with all of your heart.

Now, many years later, after having lived in a state of willingness to suffer loss to my soul’s desires in order to please Christ, I find that I do not have strong desires that get strong interruptions from the Holy Spirit like those noted above. I still get interruptions from the Lord when the self rises up, but nothing like the tussles that I had back then. Rather, I find that the desires of my soul to please itself have often been replaced, or sometimes seemingly overpowered before they can surge into strength, by a desire of the Lord. This is as it should be. We should grow from just being adjusted by the Holy Spirit into having more experience of Christ as our very life (Col. 3:4).

We must realize that our fallen soul is pleased by many things, and if we allow it to have its satisfaction unchecked by the Spirit within us, then we will not experience the overcoming life in Christ. The Lord pictured this problem in His parable of the sower, where He told us that a fruitful life can be frustrated by our desires for material things and pleasures. "And the seed which fell among the thorns, these are the ones who have heard, and as they go on their way they are choked with worries and riches and pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to maturity" (Lk. 8:14, NASB).

To be His disciple, the Lord told us we must be willing to let go of all of our possessions (as needed) in order to follow Him. "So, therefore, no one of you can by My disciple who does not give up all of his own possessions" (Lk. 14:33, NASB).

Our soul can be so wrapped up with the pleasures of family and home life that even those good things can keep us from following the Lord fully and realizing His potential for our lives (please read Matt. 10:37-39; Mark 10:29-30).

It is even very possible that we can allow our worship and service to God to be tainted in its purity by allowing our soul to have some satisfaction in the worship that really does not please God. In type, this happened to the children of Israel in Exodus 32, when they created a golden calf and worshipped it as if they were worshipping the Lord. The Israelites mixed pleasure into their worship in order to satisfy their souls’ longings: "So the next day they rose early and offered burnt offerings, and brought peace offerings, and the people sat down to eat and to drink, and rose up to play" (Ex. 32:6, NASB).

Based upon this experience, the Holy Spirit warns us in 1 Cor. 10:7 not to be idolaters. However, the verse quoted in 1 Corinthians does not mention the idol of the golden calf at all. Rather, it mentions the amusement filled activity that accompanied the idol worship, because this is what really became an idol in the hearts of the people – the desire for pleasure. "And do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and stood up to play'" (1 Cor. 10:7, NASB).

Colossians tells us that "greed . . . amounts to idolatry" (Col. 3:5c, NASB). Today, the practices of Christianity are laced with many non-biblical traditions. In many cases, these are kept because they satisfy the soul of man in some way. If someone tried to take away these traditions most Christians would object. Yet, our Lord Jesus was very strong in opposing tradition, stating that tradition nullified the word of God (Matt. 15:6). Are you willing to suffer the loss of satisfaction to your soul by giving up tradition in order to follow the word of God?