If Christian leaders were meant to live lavishly like today’s “celebrity pastors”, the Apostle Paul did not get the message. “For I think that God has exhibited us apostles as last of all, like men sentenced to death …We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things” (I Corinthians 4:9-12).
Paul suffered a lot through his labors, imprisonments, beatings, and near-death experiences:
“Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea…in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches” (II Corinthians 11:24-28).
Even after those many dangers, there were still arrests, imprisonments, and even another shipwreck coming to Paul in Acts 21-28, not to mention his eventual execution.
Why did he go through all of this? Because Jesus “abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel” (II Timothy 1:10). He boldly proclaimed this gospel so “that we may present everyone mature in Christ. For this I toil, struggling with all His energy that He powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:28-29).
The transformation Jesus brings in our lives even redeems our suffering to produce endurance, character, and hope that “does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit” (Romans 5:3-5). Far from being meaningless, “this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (II Corinthians 4:17). There is simply no comparison between our present sufferings and “the glory that is to be revealed” (Romans 8:18).
Like Paul, may we all be willing to endure “the anguish of childbirth until Christ is formed in you!” (Galatians 5:19). Jesus is worth it!