Participating in the Sin-Suffering Way of Jesus

Eugene Peterson, The Jesus Way

The servant [in Isaiah 52:13—53:12] serves God. That goes without saying. But the distinctive thing that comes into focus . . . is that the servant serves God by serving the sinner, by taking the sinner’s place, taking the consequences of sin, doing for the sinner what he or she is helpless to do for himself, herself.

This is the gospel way to deal with what is wrong with the world, deal with this multifaceted sin-cancer that is mutilating and disabling us. . . . [W]hether the wrong is intentional or inadvertent, the servant neither avoids it in revulsion nor attacks it by force of words or arms. Instead, the servant embraces, accepts, suffers in the sense of submitting to the conditions and accepting the consequences (177).

[W]hile the suffering and death of Jesus is definitive and complete, there is more—and the more has to do with our participation in what Jesus accomplishes in his suffering and death. . . . The overall pervading concern of the text is that every follower of the gospel shall embrace the identity of servant in the very terms in which the Prophet of Exile presents it . . . . Much as we try to get out of it or find a way around it, there is simply no following Jesus that does not involve suffering and rejection and death. No exceptions (178).

The uniqueness that is Jesus does not exclude us from participation in his servant ways. We can—we must—participate in Jesus’ work the way Jesus did it and does it and only in the way Jesus did and does it, obedient and joyful servants as we follow our servant Savior who “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45) (179).

Sin is not redeemed by scrubbing it out of existence but by taking it in as a sacrifice that makes “many to be accounted righteous.” This is obviously what Jesus did. We, of course, are not Jesus; we cannot do this in and of ourselves. But we can participate in what Jesus does with the sins of the world, the sins in the church, the sins in our family, as he takes and suffers them. We can enter the way of Jesus’ cross and becomes participants in Jesus’ reconciliation of the world. Salvation is not escape from what is wrong but a deep, reconciling embrace of all that is wrong.

This is a radical shift from condemning sin and sinners—an ugly business at best. We no longer stand around as amused or disapproving spectators of the sins or troubles of others but become fellow sufferers and participants in the sacrificial life of Jesus (184).

Aaron Orendorff

Dealing with the sins of others is messy work. The points of contact where another person’s sin overlaps with our own disheveled lives often feel like war-zones. It makes little difference whether we’re the one’s actually being sinned against or if we’re simply “collateral damage.” Pain is still pain. Dealing with sin—in whatever form—defiles and deconstructs. The wages of sin is death (inescapably).

In those moments, what we want (or rather I should say: what I want, what I desperately want) is to simply do away with it, to condemn it—sin and sinner alike—to escape it, to “scrub it out” and wash my hands of the whole affair. It’s always easier to just avoid the business of other people’s sin, to check-out, to distance ourselves from the mess, create a fortress and hunker down.

The way of the gospel, however, will not allow this. The way of the gospel calls us not to condemn sin but to bear it. To enter in, with eyes wide-open to the pain and dirt of their trouble. The gospel calls us to give our lives away—our emotions, financial security, reputations, health—as an act of saying, “I believe in Jesus. I believe in his way. I will suffer your sin, not reject it; I will suffer it with you as he suffered for me.”

The degree to which we suffer the sins of others is the degree to which we have understood how Jesus suffered for ours.