Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3244
“Our light affliction.” 2 Corinthians 4:17.
PERHAPS someone here thoughtlessly says, “Well, whoever calls affliction, ‘light,’ must have been a person who knew very little about what affliction really is! If he had suffered as I have done, he would not have written about ‘our light affliction.’ He must have been in robust health and known nothing of sickness and pain.” “Just so,” says another, “and if he had been as poor as I am and had to work as hard as I do to maintain a sickly wife, and a large family, he would not have written about ‘our light affliction.’ I expect the gentleman who used that expression lived very much at his ease and had all that his heart could wish.” “Yes,” says another, “and if he had stood by an open grave and had to lament the loss of loved ones, as I have done. And if he had known what it was to be desolate and forsaken, as I have known it, he would not have written about ‘our light affliction.’”
Now, if you talk like that, you are, all of you, mistaken, for the man who wrote these words was probably afflicted more than any of us have ever been! The list of his afflictions that he gives us is perfectly appalling—“in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths often. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; in journeying often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by my own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; in weariness and painfulness, in watching often, in hunger and thirst, in fasting often, in cold and nakedness.” Is there anyone here who could truthfully make out such a catalog of personal afflictions as the Apostle Paul endured?
“Well then,” says one, “he must have been so hardened that he took no notice of it, like the Red Indian who will endure terrible torture without a groan, or like the Stoic philosopher who conceals his inward feelings beneath an unmoved countenance.” No, you are also mistaken. If you read Paul’s letters to his private friends and to the Churches, you will see that they bear abundant evidences that he was a man of great tenderness of spirit and of intense emotion—one who could suffer and who did suffer most acutely. His education and training had fitted him for a life among the most learned and refined of his countrymen, yet he had to support himself by laboring as a tent-maker and to journey here and there in peril and privation. And though he endured all this in absolute submission to the will of God, yet there was nothing stoical about his resignation!
“Well then,” says another, “he must have been one of those careless, lighthearted people who never trouble about anything that happens and whose motto is, ‘Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die.’” Oh, no! The Apostle Paul was not at all that kind of man! He was the most thoughtful, logical, careful, considerate man of whom I have ever read. He knew what it was to be joyful, yet there was never any sign of levity about him. He had a grandly buoyant spirit which lifted him above waves of sorrow in which most men would have sunk, yet he was never frivolous! He wrote of “our light affliction” even when he was heavily afflicted and while he acutely felt that affliction! The sailor forgets the storm when he is again safely on shore, and we are all apt to think less of our sickness when we have been restored from it—but Paul was in the midst of affliction when he called it “light.” He felt the weight of it, and was fully conscious of the pressure of it upon his spirit, but the elastic spring of faith within his skull was so vigorously in action that he was enabled at that very time to call it, “our light affliction.”
We must not forget that Paul had afflictions which were peculiarly his own. There are afflictions which Christians have because they are Christians and which those who are not Christians do not have. And Paul, as an Apostle of Jesus Christ, had sufferings which were peculiarly his because he was an Apostle. Because he was specially called to be the Apostle of the Gentiles. Because he was chosen to carry the Gospel to many nations. Because he was called to stand even before the cruel Emperor Nero—for that very reason—he who was peculiarly gifted and especially chosen above all others to do most arduous and onerous work was also called to endure unusual trial. He had spelt out the word, “AFFLICTION” as perhaps no other mere man had done—he had seen it written in capital letters across his whole life—so he could speak, not as a novice, but as one who had graduated in the school of affliction, and yet he wrote concerning “our light affliction.” Before I have finished my discourse, I hope that most, if not all here will agree with the Apostle and say, “We also call our affliction light.”