Matthew 16:21-28
Jesus Predicts His Death
21From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life.
22Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. "Never, Lord!" he said. "This shall never happen to you!"
23Jesus turned and said to Peter, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men."
24Then Jesus said to his disciples, "If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 25For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it. 26What good will it be for a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 27For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father's glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what he has done. 28I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom."
2 Corinthians 1:5
His Suffering to Our Comfort
5 For just as the sufferings of Christ flow over into our lives, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
2 Peter 2:19
Unjust Suffering
19 For it is commendable if a man bears up under the pain of unjust suffering because he is conscious of God.
John 16:30
Jesus Knows All Things
30 Now we can see that you know all things and that you do not even need to have anyone ask you questions. This makes us believe that you came from God.
Is there such a thing as necessary suffering?...If sin is in this world do we have necessary suffering?...Was it necessary, right, and a good thing for Jesus to suffer?...Is it good we suffer?...When we suffer, are we closer to God -because the pain of unjust suffering is like a conscious to God?...
Jesus tells His disciples that He had to go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests of the Sanhedrin, and the teachers of the law...He tells His disciples that He must be killed and on the third day, He would be raised back to life...He was preparing His disciples for His upcoming sufferings and death (if that is possible)...
How would you react if the One closest to you told you, He was going to suffer, die, or be stoned to death?...And you had a great instinct that He actually knew this was going to happen...My first reaction is to tell Him that He does not know this actually -but then you realize He never lies and that this Man has this uncanny wisdom for all the things that are happening around Him...But He does knows all things, as His disciples and others would soon figure out...So another reaction might be like Peter's...Peter wanting to help His Teacher, blurts our "Never LORD, This shall never happen to You."...Thomas says something similar on their way to resurrect Lazarus...Thomas says "Let us go, that we may die with Him."...These disciples have good intention but the suffering of Jesus was meant to be...It was part of God's Great Plan...It was and is God's Plan to save us...Jesus even rebukes Peter for trying to stop Him from His suffering and His upcoming events...He was going to die on the cross...It was His fate and from His Father...
Jesus did not want to suffer...In fact, in His human-like prayer in Gethsemane, He prays that God take this cup of bitter and anxious sufferings away from Me (Matthew 26:39)... He does want us to suffer, as this prayer suggests (at least to me)...But He teaches us that even when we suffer, we can and should have our mind on God (or we can think about the other things in our lives)...But it is best to be thinking of God...
Jesus' own suffering on the cross, was because of my sins...That is what my sins did to Him...His suffering was and is the Plan of God to overcome death and save mankind from their sins...Jesus, in a way has tried to take the fear, the very pain out of our own sufferings and deaths... So, Jesus' suffering was necessary...When we suffer and look around at different problems of pain, we can be reminded of the cross...Jesus, not only suffered necessarily for us, but He died for us...And like He said He would, He rose again on the third day and lives to this very day...How comforting...
As St. Paul teaches us that we can find strength in weakness, when He says, when I am weak then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10)...St. Paul also tells us that as we understand the sufferings of Christ in our lives, and what He did for us, we can find this Great Comfort...The comfort is that He died for each one of us...He suffered and died at the hands of the Sanhedrin, but it was a necessary and a comforting suffering...