There are two kinds of suffering.

If we confuse them, we'll end up with more pain.

Most Christians believe that suffering well is God’s tool for spiritual maturity. They’re both right, and wrong. It depends. In the Scriptures, there are two broad categories of suffering:

1. Suffering because you’re living as Christ would

2. Suffering from sickness and disease

While the Scriptures expect that we’ll suffer as we follow Jesus, they do not expect we should suffer from sickness and disease. Jesus is regularly seen healing and eliminating disease and infirmity in the bodies of those he touches.

Why it matters

If we confuse the two types of suffering, people will suffer needlessly. Mothers will watch their sons die of Leukemia, wives will watch their aging husbands fade away with Alzheimer’s, and church members will only pray for peace and comfort because they don’t expect God to heal.

Here’s the difference:

In his classic book on healing, Francis MacNutt tells us the difference:

1. The cross that Jesus carried was the cross of persecution, the kind of suffering that comes from outside because of the wickedness of others who are evil. He suffered deeply within himself, but the source of his anguish was outside himself. Jesus wept over Jerusalem; he was reviled and mocked; he was nailed to the cross and died.
   

2. The suffering that Jesus probably did not himself endure, and which he took away from those who approached him…was that of sickness, the suffering that tears us apart from within, whether it be physical, emotional or moral.
   
   —Francis MacNutt, Healing

Be careful what you read.

By contrast, listen to another popular author’s statement on suffering:

Suffering — while not God’s ideal intention — is a necessary element in our becoming our truest, most beautiful, most heaven-ready selves.

Do you see that there is no attempt to delineate the different forms of suffering? All suffering is seen here as valuable and necessary for our growth. In view of this statement, those with cancer ought to embrace it as God’s tool for shaping character. This kind of undifferentiated thinking will lead many Christians to surrender to sickness; the very thing Jesus came to eradicate!

Disease is a kind of suffering not found in Jesus’ nature or reflected in his ministry. People may needlessly die because well-intended leaders tell us that all suffering is equally valuable for character formation. It is not! If it is not found in Jesus’ character and ministry, then it is not a cross we must carry!

While Jesus came to redeem suffering for the Gospel, he came to eliminate suffering from disease.

Recommended reading:

• Healing, by Francis MacNutt ( an intelligent, compelling case for physical healing that is now a classic)