Each day, you and I are walking the path of suffering with Christ. By his Spirit, we are shaped and sheltered. And we have the heavenly perspective that points to eternal fellowship with the God who knows us and loves us. Our telos shapes our trials, but our Savior seals our future.

Is Christian suffering an obstacle or a path? If it’s an obstacle, we spend our lives trying to avoid it. And once we experience it, we try to rush through it. We want it out of our lives as fast as possible. It only gets in the way of what we think really matters. But if suffering is a path, then we walk it with purpose. We trust someone else knows the way and will lead us wherever we need to go. So, is Christian suffering an obstacle or a path?

We cannot answer that question without assuming a purpose for human life, which the biblical writers called our telos, our end—the destination towards which we are moving. Telos tells us why we are here and what we should do. Whether it’s finding pleasure or gaining fame or loving our family, we all assume a reason and direction for living. And that determines our approach to suffering. Our telos shapes our trials.

Let’s look at the telos of the Christian life in order to understand suffering as a path to becoming like Christ.

The Point of Life: To Glorify and Enjoy God

What is the goal of the Christian life? What is our telos? Why are we here? The Westminster Larger Catechism calls this “the chief end of man.” It asks, “What is the chief and highest end of man? Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever” (WLC, Q.1). That is a beautifully simple answer. Why are we here? To glorify and enjoy God. But it leads to more questions, doesn’t it?

First, how do we glorify God? To glorify is to worship, to give someone (or something) admiration or praise. Everyone worships. The question is not whether you worship; it’s what you worship. Worship is the expression of worth, and we express worth with everything we do, both in our bodies and our minds. The Apostle Paul calls us each a temple—a place of worship. He asks the Corinthians, “Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body” (1 Cor. 6:20). The whole human body is used to glorify God, to worship him. Later in the same epistle, Paul says, “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God” (1 Cor. 10:31; emphasis added). Paul even says that he worships God with his mind (1 Cor. 14:15). As humans made in the image of God and remade in the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18), we have the ability to worship God in everything. As humans made in the image of God and remade in the image of Christ (2 Cor. 3:18), we have the ability to worship God in everything.

Now, consider this. Because God is the most glorious, and Jesus Christ is “the image of the invisible God” (Col. 1:15), the more we glorify God, the more we come to resemble him. The more we worship God—the more we express his worth, the more we praise him, the more we admire him—the more we are restored to resemble him. As Greg Beale once wrote, “What we revere [worship] we resemble, for restoration or for ruin.” So, glorifying God means embracing God-likeness in ten thousand ways. Paul says we specifically resemble God’s Son. He says that those whom the Father “foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Rom. 8:29). Our glorious destiny is to be conformed to the Son of God. That’s how we glorify the most glorious being! And why do we do this? So that we might enjoy fellowship with the Trinity and to call Jesus our brother! That is what we call communion with God. And according to Geerhardus Vos, that’s what it means to be made in God’s image. He writes, “That man bears God’s image . . . means above all that he is disposed for communion with God, that all the capacities of his soul can act in a way that corresponds to their destiny only if they rest in God” (Reformed Dogmatics, 231). We are made for communion. And in a sinful world, we have that communion through Jesus Christ, to whom we are being shaped.

There are lots of implications here, all of which deal with becoming like Christ in every area of life: in our successes, in our failures, in our pleasures, and in our pain. For example, I once heard a student praise the work of my favorite theologian, Vern Poythress. “I loved this book!” she said. “Thank you so much for writing it!” Dr. Poythress smiled bashfully and said, “Well, praise the Lord.” He deflected the praise he was given and sent it Godward, where it belongs. Praise the Lord. That was a clear picture to me of what it looks like to become like Christ in our successes. When we do something well, do we praise God or accept the credit?

In what follows, I will focus on becoming like Christ in our pain. Pain takes many forms: grief, anxiety, doubt, cancer, disease, broken relationships. But in all of our pain, we ask two basic questions: Why is this happening? And how can I get through it? Christians, however, can ask a better question: “How can I be shaped to Jesus Christ through this experience?” We ask this because we know that is God’s purpose for us: Christ-conformity. That is our telos. For example, I have dealt with a lot of grief over losing my father to cancer when I was eighteen. It took me many years to stop asking the why question and to start asking the how question. When I asked the how question and read the Bible, God began to show me that part of conforming to Christ is embracing God’s Fatherhood. We can never lose our true Father—not to cancer or a car accident or even to our own doubt. He is steadfast. He cannot be threatened.

We’ve asked how we glorify God, but how do we enjoy him? To enjoy is to find pleasure, satisfaction, and contentment in something or someone. And the Bible tells us that true joy cannot be found in any earthly thing; it can only be found in a divine person. Joy is found not in having something but by living in someone. By abiding in Jesus Christ—living in him as if he were the vine from which we receive every ounce of vitality (John 15:5)—we find our greatest joy. Listen to what Jesus says to his disciples, and note especially how joy is bound up with glory and love:

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full (John 15:7–11).

Full joy. That’s what Jesus offers us in himself. This is different from “happiness.” For Jesus, joy is rooted in his love for the Father. His joy lives in a relationship. Our joy thus lives in a relationship. And because that relationship doesn’t end, our joy can’t ultimately leave. We can be blinded to it, of course. We can feel joyless, but that doesn’t mean the joy is gone. The joy has already been given; it’s never taken away from us. Happiness, in contrast, comes and goes. It flickers like a candlelight.

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