Henry Lyte understood (rightly) the believer to be a pilgrim in this world—not belonging to the world or the things in it. He also understood that, while we are in the world, we have a mission, a purpose, and a chief end. But, one day, that mission will come to an end. One day, the sufferings and persecutions we endure will cease. One day, our hope will change to glad fruition. For the Suffering Servant, our Savior, will return and make all things new.

If there’s one hymn I’d like sung at my funeral, this is it. When you get a diagnosis of cancer or you are persecuted because of your biblical worldview of marriage, how do you find joy and comfort in God? How does God use the sufferings and persecutions you experience to sanctify you and draw you closer to Him? That’s the subject of the 19th-century hymn, “Jesus, I My Cross Have Taken,” by Henry Francis Lyte (1793–1847).
Often sung to the tune, ELLESDIE (by Mozart)—or more recently to the Indelible Grace version by Bill Moore (meter 8787)—the hymn is presented in six stanzas, each capturing various facets of the Christian’s endurance and joy amidst suffering. The hymn moves from the general statement of Jesus’ calling to take up our cross and follow Him, through differing aspects of that affliction in this life, to a final portrait of our heavenly glory, where “hope shall change to glad fruition; faith to sight, and prayer to praise.”
Matthew 16:24 provides the biblical backdrop of the hymn: “Then Jesus told his disciples, ‘If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me’” (cf. Matt. 10:38). A disciple of Jesus must deny himself—his will, his sin, his selfish ambitions—and then take up his cross to follow Jesus. Taking up one’s cross is recognizing the difficult (and often painful) consequences and implications of following Christ. This is the cost of discipleship: ridicule, slander, imprisonment, fines, torture, and even death. “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard that leads to life, and those who find it are few” (Matt. 7:14).
But we should expect the way to be difficult. Indeed, this is what Jesus taught: “[B]ecause you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world, therefore the world hates you…. If they persecuted me, they will persecute you” (John 15:19, 20). The reason why Christians are hated today is because Christ was hated, and they belong to Him. As the hymn states: “Let the world despise and leave me; they have left my Savior too.”
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Not only does Christ know and understand the affliction of the elect, the elect can—in a mystical sense—commune with Christ because he suffered for them. Christ, [Flavel] explains, “looks down from heaven upon all my afflictions, and understands them more fully that I that feel them.”

The Church today needs a robust and refreshingly biblical theology of suffering and it would behoove us to consider the voices of the past—in particular, the Puritans. They not only tasted some of the most bitter afflictions to befall humanity, but also carefully applied the balm of gospel promise to those who would receive it by faith.[1]
One of the most significant Puritan expositors of a theology of suffering was John Flavel (c.1630-1691) of Dartmouth.[2] Flavel experienced severe suffering within his own lifetime with the loss of three wives, children, his parents, ejection from the church in England, and the continual persecution from state officials. Because many of his writings deal directly with the theme of suffering and sovereignty and because of his own experience with it, Flavel is a significant resource for understanding a puritan theology of human suffering and divine sovereignty. While we are not exploring the questions pertaining to the origin, nature, or responses to suffering,[3] the following simply presents eight reasons (from Flavel) in answer to the question: Why does God sovereignly ordain suffering for Christians?
1. To Reveal, Deter, and Mortify Sin
When afflictions press against a believer, he or she may see his or her true inclinations, which are often full of sin. He writes, “I heartily wish that these searching afflictions may make the more satisfying discoveries; that you may now see more of the evil of sin, the vanity of the creature, and the fulness of Christ, than ever you yet saw.[4] These “searching afflictions” are meant to reveal sin to the sinner so that it might both deter the sinner from sinning further and so that it might mortify that sin exposed. God will lay “some strong afflictions on the body, to prevent a worse evil.”[5] Flavel contends, too, that God ordains suffering to mortify sin. He explains, “The design and aim of these afflictive providences, is to purge and cleanse them from that pollution into which temptations have plunged them.”[6]
2. To Produce Godliness and Spiritual Fruit
Not only does sin need to be removed, but it also needs to be replaced  by those things that are pleasing to God. When believers please God by faith-filled works, they are filled with happiness and bring glory to God. Suffering is the ground from which God brings forth fruit from his people. He explains,“The power of godliness did never thrive better than in affliction.”[7]
Suffering, then, is the breeding ground of spiritual fruit so that God, as it were, plants the believer into the soil of suffering to produce godliness.
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If you haven’t thought through this issue before, I want to encourage you to consider studying it. It shouldn’t scare us to think through the wisdom of our Confessional heritage. Rather, it should–at the very least–cause us to ponder the rationale and explanation for Westminster’s interpretation of the second commandment. Wherever you land on this issue, this much we can agree upon: We should all strive to understand the Second Commandment more faithfully, to reaffirm the sufficiency of Scripture in all of life, to avail ourselves to the ordinary means of grace and to strive for undivided worship.

No, the Westminster divines weren’t intentionally attacking The Jesus Storybook Bible; but they probably would have taken issue with the pictures of Jesus.
I serve on the Theological Examination Committee for the Presbytery in which I minister–which means, among other things, that I help examine candidates who sense a call to the ministry. Over the last couple of years, I’ve noticed an increasing number of candidates taking an “exception” to the Westminster Standards’ interpretation of the Second Commandment, mainly due to the interpretation of the use of “images” in worship.
A good place to start when considering this issue is to look at what the Second Commandment actually says? In Exodus 20, we read,
You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the LORD your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments (v. 3-6; cf. Deut. 5:8-10).
The Westminster Divines interpreted this by affirming, “The second commandment forbiddeth the worshiping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in his Word” (Westminster Shorter Catechism, Q. 51). The Westminster Larger Catechism similarly teaches:
“The sins forbidden in the second commandment are, all devising, counseling, commanding, using, and anywise approving, any religious worship not instated by God himself; tolerating a false religion; the making any representation of God, of all or of any of the three persons, either inwardly in our mind, or outwardly in any kind of image or likeness of any creature whatsoever; all worshipping of it, or God in it or by it; the making of any representation of feigned deities, and all worship of them, or service belonging to them, all superstitious devices, corrupting the worship of God, adding to it, or taking from it, whether invented and taken up of ourselves, or received by tradition from others, though under the title of antiquity, custom, devotion, good intent, or any other pretense whatsoever, simony, sacrilege; all neglect, contempt, hindering, and opposing the worship and ordinances which God hath appointed” (Q. 109).
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