When the Road Leads Through Suffering

Christ did not avoid the path of suffering. He set His face toward it, walking straight into betrayal, pain, and death for the sake of His people.

There are moments in the Christian life when the road ahead becomes difficult to ignore. We can almost sense it before anything fully unfolds. Something shifts. The path that once felt open and manageable begins to narrow. The questions we’ve been able to keep at a distance begin to press in more closely. We start to realize that what lies ahead of us probably won’t be easy.

Suffering has a way of doing that. It forces us to confront realities we would rather avoid and strips away the illusion that we are in control of our lives. It exposes how fragile our plans really are, and in those moments it isn’t uncommon to wonder where God is. Scripture doesn’t pretend that these moments are rare. In fact, Scripture shows us more clearly that they are quite common. But it does show us something that can be very difficult for us to accept: that the path of suffering isn’t foreign to the life of faith. In fact, it stands at the very center of it.

At a pivotal moment in the Gospel of Luke, we are told that “when the days drew near for Him to be taken up, He set His face to go to Jerusalem” (Luke 9:51). That phrase, “set his face”, is deliberate and unyielding. It speaks of a fixed resolve, a refusal to turn aside. Jesus is not wandering toward Jerusalem. He is moving toward it with purpose. He knows what He’s doing, He knows exactly what awaits Him there, and He moves toward it deliberately and purposefully.

He has already told His disciples that He will be betrayed, rejected, suffer, and be killed (Luke 9:22; Mark 10:33–34). There isn’t any ambiguity in His words. The path ahead leads directly into suffering. And still, He goes. This isn’t the movement of someone caught off guard by circumstances. It’s the movement of the Son of God who willingly enters into betrayal, suffering, and death for the sake of His people. Jesus does not avoid the cross. He sets His face toward it.

This matters deeply for how we understand our own suffering. One of the quiet temptations we face is the assumption that if God is truly at work in our lives, the path should become clearer, easier, or more stable over time. We expect that faithfulness will lead us away from difficulty, or at the very least protect us from the deeper forms of pain. But the life of Christ tells us a different story. The closer that He moves to the fulfillment of His mission, the more clearly the path leads through suffering. The road doesn’t become easier as He approaches Jerusalem. It becomes more costly. But it is precisely through that suffering that our salvation is accomplished.

This is the heart of the theology of the cross, that God’s work isn’t always found where we expect it to be. It isn’t confined to moments of visible success or clarity. More often, it is hidden beneath weakness, struggle, and even apparent defeat. The cross is the clearest example of this. What the world sees as failure, God reveals as victory. What appears to be abandonment becomes the place where mercy is poured out. What looks like the end becomes the beginning of redemption.

Because this is how God works in Christ, it should not surprise us when our own lives follow a similar pattern. This doesn’t mean that we should seek suffering out. Scripture never tells us to love pain for its own sake. But it does teach us that suffering is not outside the reach of God’s work. In fact, it’s most often one of the very places where He meets us most deeply.

I’ve seen this in my own life, particularly the last six months or so. Things weren’t perfect before, but they weren’t awful either. Then a bomb came out of nowhere and blew up my life and the lives of my family. Everything got turned on its head in a single Friday afternoon at the beginning of August, and all four of us were left reeling in its wake. And yet, right through the middle of it, God showed up. Oh, we had no idea what He was doing or why things were happening. We still don’t. Things haven’t happened the way we hoped it would, and it doesn’t look like things will change moving forward. But God has been here with us, every step of the way. He hasn’t abandoned us; He’s stripped us bare of every false place we might put our trust and forced us to rest in Him and His promises alone. And in the middle of that, He’s provided blessing and opportunity, however bittersweet it might be.

“Christ does not avoid suffering. He enters into it—and meets us there.”

When our strength begins to fail, we are brought face to face with the limits we would rather ignore. When our plans collapse, we are forced to confront how little control we actually possess over them. When the road becomes uncertain, we are driven to look beyond ourselves for stability. And it is there, often reluctantly, often painfully, that we begin to see Christ more clearly. Not as a distant figure untouched by suffering, but as the One who has entered into it fully with us and for us. The One who has walked this road before us. The One who did not turn away when the path led to betrayal, pain, and death, but set His face toward it.

This is where the Christian finds hope. Not in the promise that suffering will be avoided, but in the certainty that Christ has already entered into it and overcome it. The cross is not merely an example of endurance. It is the place where sin is defeated, where death is broken, where the power of the devil is undone. And because He has walked that path, we do not walk ours alone. The same Lord who set His face toward Jerusalem now meets us, His people, in the midst of our own struggles. Through His Word, He speaks into our uncertainty and promises us His salvation and resurrection. Through Baptism, He seals us into His body, the Church, and the Father declares us righteous for the sake of the Son. Through absolution, He frees us from the weight of our sin as we wrestle with our combined identity as saint and sinner. Through His Supper, He strengthens us with His own body and blood. He doesn’t call us to face suffering in our own strength. He meets us within it, and carries us through it.

There are seasons when the road ahead feels unclear, when the weight of life presses more heavily than we expected. In those moments, it is easy to wonder whether something has gone wrong. But the path of Christ reminds us otherwise. The road that leads through suffering isn’t outside of God’s purposes. It may, in fact, be the very place where His work is unfolding most deeply, because the One who walked toward the cross with unwavering resolve did so for you, and He has not abandoned you on the road you now walk.