Trials Complete Us

We may not like to admit it, but it’s true: we cannot become like Christ apart from suffering. Going through trials–experiencing their hardships and difficulties–is one way God works to make us more like Jesus.

We have previously noted other benefits of trials: how their inevitability presents us with opportunities to grow and become stronger in our faith. This is why James can write:

My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. (James 1:2-3)

Now, James teaches that these “various trials” also serve to complete us:

“But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” (James 1:4)

James teaches that once endurance has “its perfect work” or, we may say, “has done its job,” then, writes James, “you may be perfect (or mature) and complete, lacking nothing.”

“Mature” and “complete.” In other words, apart from trials, we are “immature” and “incomplete.” That’s why you can count it all joy when you fall into various trials; they present you with an opportunity to grow, grow up in your faith, and become more like Jesus Christ. You can’t become mature and complete if you never suffer. Trials strengthen us, and trials complete us.

You really can’t become like Christ apart from suffering.  

Without trials, we could never really learn humility or genuine love.

Couples who have been married for years have a more profound love for one another precisely because they have been through difficult times together. A young couple who thinks they’re ready to marry and have known each other only briefly hasn’t even had a chance to fight yet! It is through difficulties and challenges that love matures and grows.

Without trials, we could never really learn patience or wisdom.  

Through trials, we become more and more like Christ. The Apostle Paul teaches as much in Romans 8:28-29: “God works all things together for good to those who love God, to those who are the called according to His purpose, for whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son….”

God works all things together for the good of completing us, conforming us more greatly to the image of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Think of it: without trials, we are less like Christ. Without trials, we are immature and underdeveloped. Without trials we are incomplete. Without trials, we could never really learn compassion or empathy.

Paul teaches in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, for example, that God comforts us in our trials and difficulties so that we may be able to comfort others in their trials and difficulties with the same comfort that we have received from God (2 Corinthians 1:3-4). That’s compassion; that’s empathy.  

Paul wrote as one who had faced numerous hardships and difficulties. Have you read of his “thorn in the flesh?” Paul had some kind of affliction. Nobody knows exactly what it was, but he wrote about it in 2 Corinthians chapter 12. Calling it a “thorn in the flesh,” Paul described it as beneficial to him. Given what he had written in 2 Corinthians 1 about our being in a position to comfort others as a result of our own trials, Paul surely was able to see that his affliction served to strengthen him, complete him, and equip him with the ability to bless others in their trials and afflictions. 

Theologian Wayne Grudem sees God’s wisdom in His assigning Paul his “thorn in the flesh.” Defining God’s wisdom as His “always choosing the best goals and the best means to those goals,” Grudem asserts:

It should be our great confidence and a source of peace day by day to know that God causes all things to move us toward the ultimate goal He has for our lives, namely, that we might be like Christ and thereby giving glory to Him.  Such confidence enabled Paul to accept his “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7) as something that, though painful, God in His wisdom had chosen not to remove (2 Corinthians 12:8-10).

Systematic Theology; Chapter 12, “Communicable Attributes of god,” 194.

God, in His wisdom, knows what He is doing. Small wonder that James goes on to say in the very next verse, verse 5, “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God….” We’ll talk more about that next time!

**Excerpt from You’re Either Walking The Walk Or Just Running Your Mouth (Preaching Truth: 2020), pages 7-9, available on Amazon.