Page 50 - General Epistles (James through Jude) Textbook

Study Section 10: Jesus’ Example through Suffering, Christians’
Response to that Example through their Sufferings, and Various
Instructions to the Church.

10.1 Connect

When sin entered the world through Adam, a lot of things changed immediately. Sin caused
huge consequences. The Bible says that the entire earth is suffering as a result. Natural
disasters, terminal diseases and the string of death wreak havoc on everything. Romans 8: 19-
22 says that creation GROANS while it waits to be renewed. Sin has brought emotional
suffering to the earth. Sin causes a heart-wrenching cocktail of sadness and anger. People we
love die and we grieve. Relationships fall apart and we grieve. We fight and struggle with sin and we
grieve. Life is filled with suffering!

Suffering is evident everywhere. But as we look back in history, we find that even God Himself is
acquainted with suffering. Jesus, God in flesh, came and endured hardships while He walked the dusty
roads of Israel. He endured hunger. He was rejected by His own people. And he underwent untold
suffering in dying the most painful death imaginable – the cross. Jesus offers us a sympathetic solution
to our suffering because He suffered. Let’s read about it…

10.2 Objectives

1. The student should be able to describe and understand that there are spiritual benefits in
suffering for doing good if he/she hangs in there up to the end of suffering.

2. The student should be able to describe, understand, and always apply principles from Jesus’
own experience of sufferings, His own motivation through suffering, and what He achieved at
the end of suffering.

3. The student should be able describe and understand that modeling one’s life which is experiencing
sufferings after Jesus’ own experience of sufferings and His triumph will always get one on the right path
while he/she is experiencing suffering.

10.3 Jesus’ Example through Suffering, Christians’ Response to that Example through their
Sufferings, and Various Instructions to the Church (1 Pet. 3:8—5:11).

Jesus’ Example from His Suffering (1 Pet. 3:8-22).

Notice that Peter begins with the phrase, “finally, all of you. . .” He addressed different groups
among his recipients on how to successfully submit to those they needed to submit too. But
this time, he is addressing issues that apply to all the five groups, namely; governments,
Masters, slaves, husbands, and wives to strive for the implementation of five qualities that are imprints
of a health assembly that is called out of a bunch in order to be permanently
given eternal life. But before it can fully realize complete benefits of that
eternal life, it is still in the fallen world and nature. As a result, it fails God in
many ways somehow intensified by intense suffering caused by its unique
values, practices, and beliefs because it ceased to belong to the world in which

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