Have you been traversing some emotional pain? We can’t pretend to begin to understand the following verse, but there it sits, in all of its spiritual intrigue: “I fill up in my flesh what is still lacking in regard to Christ’s affliction, for the sake of His body, which is His church” (Colossians 1:24).
Surely He allowed His soul the full score of complete and total suffering, not only physically and spiritually, but emotionally. Rejection, disdain and mockery apparently were necessary parts of His affliction. His heart, held under the darkness of affliction at the bottom of the barrel—experiencing emotional pain at the lowest of the low, below the belt, gut-wrenching rejection—weathered the worst of human storms.
Our Savior’s suffering in this regard was complete, yet at the same time it was NOT complete. He was willing to suffer again, and even ongoingly, for 2,000 additional years, through identification with the vicarious emotional pain of His “own” (His dear sheep) in order that they might know the fellowship of His sufferings. So it must be that by being in the valley of emotional pain we apparently obtain a depth of fellowship that can be found in no other way. What immutable designs He crafts for spiritual intimacy with Him via the open wound of His own continued suffering through us. Is there no end to the extension of His love and the depth of its concourse?!
