On September 18, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. did the unthinkable.
King did what every pastor dreads, as he preached the eulogy for four teenage girls whose lives were violently taken from them. Just three days prior, white supremacists bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama as those Christians gathered together for worship. When the dust had all settled, four young girls were dead. Gone.
What do you say in a moment like that? How do you comfort family and friends as they grieve the untimely and unjust loss of a child? How do we face suffering when it doesn’t make any sense? King did it by returning to a common refrain of his ministry – unmerited suffering is redemptive.
In the midst of all the tears, King told the crowd that, “God still has a way of wringing good out of evil. History has proven over and over again that unmerited suffering is redemptive. The innocent blood of these little girls may well be the redemptive force that will bring light to this dark city.” King understood suffering because he understood the Bible. Suffering cannot thwart God’s mission to restore goodness to this world. In fact, God can use even that suffering to achieve his benevolent purposes.
Unmerited suffering is redemptive. The power here is, once again, King isn’t doing anything novel. He’s simply summarizing the gospel. The story of Jesus is the story of redemption through unmerited suffering. Jesus is the perfect human being, never once sinning in anything he thought, said, or did. Yet the Bible tells us he was crucified. Jesus Christ suffered slander, abandonment, mockery, and violence – none of which was deserved.
But the gospel’s not a record of senseless suffering; it’s the proclamation of redemption. Through the undeserved suffering of Jesus, God was doing something astounding. He was redeeming his people from their sins. God was restoring what sin had stolen. The unmerited suffering of Jesus was redemptive.
King believed that when we suffer undeservedly, we join with Jesus. Here King is thinking like Peter (1 Pet. 4:12-14). As we suffer like Jesus, we can rest assured that we will be glorified with him. Your suffering is not senseless. It’s not in vain. It’s redemptive. God will use it for good, even if we don’t fully understand it on this side of glory (Rom. 8:28).
If you’re reading this post, you know what it’s like to suffer. You suffer in day to day ways – a slanderous co-worker, that glance dripping of prejudice, the stress of schedules and deadlines you just can’t keep. You suffer in big ways – serious and chronic illness, conflict at home, the death of a loved one. Simply by living on this planet for more than a year, you’ve earned an advanced degree in suffering. So I want to remind you, like King reminded those grieving families in Birmingham, that unmerited suffering is redemptive. God’s working each bump in the road for your good and the road ends in glory. Don’t despair. Instead, hope in the risen Christ who suffered like you so you can be glorified like him.
In Him,
Tom