Take Up Your Cross and Follow Me - Part II

Picking up on the theme of suffering in life, John Calvin writes about how Jesus himself had to suffer.

For those whom the Lord has chosen and condescended to welcome into fellowship with Him should prepare themselves for a life that is hard, laborious, troubled, and full of many and various kinds of evil. For it's the will of their heavenly Father to test them in this way so that He might prove them by trials. Having begun this way with Christ, His only-begotten Son, He continues similarly with all His children.

For although Christ is the Son, beloved before all others - the one in whom the Father's soul delights - we nevertheless see how little ease and comfort Christ experienced (Matt. 3:7; 17:5)....Scripture gives the reason for this: It was necessary that Christ "learned obedience through what he suffered" (Heb. 5:8). Why, then, would we exempt ourselves from the same situation to which Christ our head was subjected - particularly since He was subjected to suffering for our sake to provide for us a pattern of patience in Himself? On this account the Apostle Paul teaches that all God's children are appointed to this end - to be made like Christ:

For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers - Rom. 8:29

From this also we receive remarkable consolation, that in the midst of dark and difficult circumstances, which we consider hostile and evil, we share in Christ's suffering.