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ARE SUFFERING FROM PERSECUTION AND SICKNESS DISTINGUISHABLE?
Another reason for not distinguishing sharply between persecution and sickness is that the pain from persecution and the pain from sickness are not always distinguishable. Decades after his torture for Christ in a Romanian prison, Richard Wurmbrand still suffered from the physical effects. Was he being “persecuted” as he endured the pain in his feet thirty years later? Or consider the apostle Paul. Among the sufferings that he listed as a “servant of Christ” was the fact that he was shipwrecked three times and spent a night and a day in the water. He also says his sufferings for Christ included “toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure” (2 Corinthians 11:27).
Suppose he got pneumonia from all this work and exposure. Would that have been “persecution”? Paul did not make a distinction between being beaten by rods or having a boating accident or being cold while traveling between towns. For him any suffering that befell him while serving Christ was part of the “cost” of discipleship. When a missionary’s child gets diarrhea, we think of this as part of the price of faithfulness. But for any parent walking in the path of obedience to God’s calling, it is the same price. What turns sufferings into sufferings with and for Christ is not how intentional our enemies are, but how faithful we are. If we are Christ’s, then what befalls us is for His glory and for our good, whether it is caused by enzymes or by enemies.
Piper, J. (2003). Desiring God (pp. 259–260). Sisters, OR: Multnomah Publishers.