Suffering is part of the Christian calling, because following Christ in doing good guarantees some suffering in a world bent against God. Peter teaches that suffering is a way to cease from sin, so Christians should arm themselves with Christ's attitude: the Father's will matters most, even if it leads to suffering. Because sin transgresses God's royal law of liberty, the suffering it brings is a powerful teaching tool that deepens understanding of how God wants us to live. When approached with faith, meaning belief, trust, and obedience, suffering bears good fruit, including abhorrence of the sin that caused it, so that God's law is written indelibly on the heart. This is part of the New Covenant, in which God promises to write His law on our hearts (Hebrews 8:10; 10:16), and keeping that covenant means trusting Him to carry out His work in us. Even undeserved suffering accomplishes good, as Christ's wholly undeserved suffering did. It may teach what reading cannot, bring closer identification with the Savior, foster sympathy for others, test trust, or keep us humble and submissive. God will not allow temptation or adversity beyond what we can bear. He either strengthens us or provides a way of escape. A long-range view helps, since affliction is momentary and is preparing an eternal weight of glory (II Corinthians 4:16-18). All of it serves the purpose of making us glorified members of the God Family.

Trials are God's refining process, meant to purge impurity and make believers more like Him. James 1:2-4 says the testing of faith produces patience, and the Greek dokimion describes proving coinage to show it is genuine and unalloyed. God's aim is to make His people perfect and complete, lacking nothing. Hebrews 12:6-7 shows that He corrects and disciplines every child He loves, and 1 Peter 4:12-13 says the fiery trial is not strange. Trials are also necessary for growth, because growth cannot be measured without testing. Like pruning a shrub, they are meant to make believers soar and become stronger rather than to defeat them. Growth is what trials should produce, but it is not automatic. Self-pity, doubt, and resentment can destroy the fruit, so believers must, with God's help, evict carnal thoughts and play the hand they are dealt. Normal emotions such as tears and grief are not sinful. Joy, the Greek chara, is not forced positive thinking but a character trait tempered by fire. It comes mainly after the trial, as Hebrews 12:11 says: chastening is grievous for the present, but afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness. Christ Himself endured the cross for the joy that followed. This joy is a calm delight and cheerful peace, an awareness of having survived and grown. It brings deeper appreciation of ordinary life, thankfulness, and sympathy for others. Each trial is specific to the person and is what that person needs to become more like God, a purpose that becomes clear through perseverance. Those who endure and are proved will receive the crown of life (James 1:12).

Trials are gifts from God that awaken dormant strengths and refine His elect, so they are not the end of life but the means by which God saves and builds it. Just as Major de Seversky's lost leg, which he took for the end of his life, focused his energies and became a blessing in disguise, so Lazarus's sickness was "for the glory of God," meant to lead people to see God beyond the circumstances. Paul's thorn in the flesh kept him humble and dependent, and Christ's power was made perfect in his weakness, so that when he was weak, then he was strong. Israel's forty years of manna were a continual test to humble them and prove their hearts, "to do you good in the end," teaching them to live by every word of God rather than by their cravings. Chastening proves that believers are legitimate sons, so the trials they carry are a distinction rather than a handicap, a symbol of victory already won. Those who suffer with Christ will be glorified with Him, and present sufferings are not worthy to be compared with the coming glory. Christ left an example of suffering, and God is conforming His elect to His Son's image through it. Seeing trials in faithful foresight, rather than only in hindsight, lets believers rejoice in them and serve others out of what God has worked in them.

Reaching perfection may require some suffering. Hebrews 6:1 urges believers to "go on to perfection," and the Greek behind "go on" carries the sense of bearing a burden, bearing patiently, and enduring the rigor of a thing. Jesus says that he who endures to the end shall be saved (Matthew 24:13). Christ Himself walked this road, for the Captain of our salvation was made perfect through sufferings (Hebrews 2:10; 5:8-9), and Paul likewise pressed toward the goal. Eating unleavened bread during the Feast of Unleavened Bread reminds believers that they are to become unleavened, purified, and perfected, as God's workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10). The perfecting is in love. God is love, and He is shaping and molding believers into the likeness of His Son, changing human nature, filled with lusts and sin, into His divine nature. Keeping His commandments is how the love of God is perfected in a person (I John 2:3-5). When Christ returns, believers will be like Him, perfected in love and given incorruptible bodies, and will no longer sin. Merely cleaning out leaven profits nothing unless it is put to work in replacing the carnal nature with God's nature.