Suffering

Was Paul pursuing deep and lasting joy when he chose suffering—so much suffering that his life would have been utterly foolish and pitiable if there were no resurrection from the dead? The question virtually answers itself. If it is the resurrection alone that makes Paul’s painful life choices not pitiable but praiseworthy (and possible!), then it is precisely his hope and quest for that resurrection that sustains and empowers his suffering. This is, in fact, exactly what he says: he counts all ordinary human privileges as loss “that I may know [Christ] and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead” (Phil. 3:10–11). His aim is to so live—and suffer—that he is assured of resurrection from the dead.

This is the essence of Christian Hedonism. In the pursuit of joy through suffering, we magnify the all-satisfying worth of the source of our joy. God himself shines as the brightness at the end of our tunnel of pain. If we do not communicate that he is the goal and the ground of our joy in suffering, then the very meaning of our suffering will be lost.

The meaning is this: God is gain. God is gain. God is gain. The chief end of man is to glorify God. And it is truer in suffering than anywhere else that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

My prayer, therefore, is that the Holy Spirit would pour out on his people around the world a passion for the supremacy of God in all things. And I pray that he would make it plain that the pursuit of joy in God, whatever the pain, is a powerful testimony to God’s supreme and all-satisfying worth. And so may it come to pass, as we “fill up what is lacking in Christ’s afflictions,” that all the peoples of the world will see the love of Christ and magnify his grace in the gladness of faith.

For more content like this, read John Piper's Desiring God from Crossway.