Embracing His Fellowship

Posted on Aug 10, 2015 Topic : Weekly Devotionals

I want to be like Christ. But honestly, I want to be like the Christ who turned the water into wine, not the Christ who thirsted on a cross. I want to be the clothed Christ, not the One whose garment was stripped off and gambled away. I want to be the Christ who fed the five thousand, not the One who hungered for forty days in the wilderness. I want to be the free Christ, walking through wheat fields with his disciples, not the imprisoned Christ, who was deserted by them.

I want to be the good Samaritan, not the man who fell among thieves.

But if the man had not fallen among thieves and been beaten, stripped, and left for dead, the good in the Samaritan never would have emerged.

If we want to be like Christ, we have to embrace both sides of his life. What else could the Bible mean when it talks about “the fellowship of his sufferings”? How could we enter that fellowship apart from suffering? How could we truly know the man of sorrows who was acquainted with grief if we had not ourselves known grief and sorrow?

That is how Christ grows in us. It is also the way many people come to Christ. For some people, it is the only way. And perhaps that explains, at least partially, why bad things sometimes happen to good people.

For the sake of those around them. That they might come to Christ. That Christ might come to them, to live in them.

So that once again a Savior can be born into the world.