# 14 - Suffering: the Ugly Side of Faith (1 of 3)

Suffering by Association

2) help others do the works of faith

 

photo credit to: Dean Williams 2012

Most Christians suffer in our spirit, our souls, and/or our physical bodies. Yet, we are luckier than the world because we can access all the tools of faith—like prayer, laying on of hands, and working of miracles—to receive healing for ourselves. Even so “suffering”—defined in the Greek as pathēma (path’-ay-mah) hardship or pain—does not end. Why is that?

For Christians of faith, our sufferings are connected to three Persons. The first is to the Holy Spirit operating within the churches:

·  For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…and have all been made to drink into one Spirit…And if one member suffers (pathō, path’-o) all the members suffer (sumpaschō, soom-pas’-kho) with it… (1 Cor.12:13, 26).

·  For by one Spirit we were all baptized into one body…and have all been made to drink into one Spirit…And if one member experiences a painful sensation, all the members experience pain jointly or of the same kind with it…

In our suffering, the one Spirit allows others in the body of Christ to suffer (sumpaschō) experience united pain with us! Thus, the Spirit guarantees that in the body of Christ, we do not suffer alone.

In addition, when Christians pray the prayer of faith (James 5:13-16), a few of us may even experience the bodily (sōmatikŏs) symptoms of those we’re praying for.

Suffering by association benefits our spirit as we begin to learn what it truly means to be “one body” by one Spirit.

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Scripture quotations from New King James Version (NKJV);

Greek definitions from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Riverside Book and Bible House, Iowa Falls, Iowa 50126); and

W. E. Vine’s Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words (Fleming H. Revell Company, Old Tappan, New Jersey, 1981).