John Stott on Suffering for Evangelism
In theory we know very well the paradoxical principle that suffering is the path to glory, death the way to life, and weakness the secret of power. It was for Jesus, and it still is for his followers today. But we are reluctant to apply the principle to mission as the Bible does.
In the shadowy image of Isaiah’s suffering servant, suffering was to be the condition of his success in bringing light and justice to the nations. As Douglas Webster has written, “Mission sooner or later leads into passion. In biblical categories … the servant must suffer…. Every form of mission leads to some form of cross. The very shape of mission is cruciform. We can understand mission only in terms of the cross.”‘
This biblical vision of suffering service has been largely eclipsed in our day by the unbiblical “prosperity gospel” (which guarantees personal success) and by triumphalist notions of mission (which employ military metaphors that do not comfortably fit the humble image of the suffering servant). By contrast, Paul dared to write to the Corinthians: “so then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you” (2 Cor 4:12). The cross lies at the very heart of mission. For the crosscultural missionary it may mean costly individual and family sacrifices, the renunciation of economic security and professional promotion, solidarity with the poor and needy, repenting of the pride and prejudice of supposed cultural superiority, and the modesty (and sometimes frustration) of serving under national leadership. Each of these can be a kind of death, but it is a death which brings life to others.
- John Stott from the Cross of Christ, pg 283
