In Christ, God suffered that we might be freed from suffering. He who was not capable of suffering suffered that we who were capable of suffering might become impassible. Here is one of the great benefits of the incarnation. The impassible Christ takes passable human flesh and suffers death for us. The Bible is replete with the testimony of the sufferings of Christ, beginning in Gn 3:15 where the Messiah is said to have His heal bruised by the deceiver. But all this is promised and done that we humans might be freed from suffering and the fear of death. This is why heaven, in that lovely childlike description, is the place where there are no more tears (Rev 21:4). Suffering has all been left behind in Christ.

When we take up the suffering of Christ in our own lives then we are freed from our own suffering. Christ's suffering is a freeing suffering, one in which we participate by faith; vicariously. He suffered once for all (Heb 10:10; 1Pt 3:18). We hand over our suffering to Him and He hands His suffering over to us. His suffering is complete, and thus we are living in the benefit of it, not in its commission. His suffering has been placed upon us as a gift.

Today the church commemorates Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph was a reluctant disciple, who kept his relationship with Jesus a secret until His death. Only when Jesus was dead did Joseph "out himself" by going to Pontius Pilate requesting permission to entomb the body of the Christ. Joseph is like many of us, we are late or reluctant confessors of Christ. Yet Joseph could not be deterred from this strange gesture acting out in faith when the game appeared to be up. Jesus is dead and apparently the hope of His disciples with Him. Why confess at that end? Perhaps Joseph simply decided that he had to treat the body of this Man who was so badly treated by others with reverence at the end. Maybe he had just had enough. I think there is more to it than that. I believe that Joseph saw with a decisive finality that everything that Jesus preached had come to its proper conclusion in the suffering and death of this suffering Servant. He who suffered so demanded proper treatment in death.

Joseph became wrapped up in the life of Jesus by becoming a faithful pieta in the tableaux below the cross. Picture it. He struggled to remove the spikes first from His feet and then he supported the lifeless body while others, perhaps servants, wrenched the vicious nails from his blessed hands. The body of the Lord slumped over his shoulder as he descended the crude ladder leaning against the cross. The blood, now congealed, stained this rich man's robe. What had once promised defilement in the old law (Num 9:6-7), now brought life through the suffering of this Man. Defilement over. Below the cross the weight of this body lay in the lap of Joseph; its filth making clean the once reluctant confessor. In grief, he rocks the striped and beaten body of the Christ. All Joseph's reluctance is blooded away in the suffering of Christ. Ours too. We share in His suffering through His blood.