He Suffered, So Will You
WATCH ON YOUTUBE - LEAD A BIBLE STUDY ON THIS - RESOURCE
If the Christian life has turned out to be harder than anyone told you it would be — and that gap between what you were promised and what you are actually living through is starting to make you wonder whether something has gone wrong, let’s look at Hebrews 5:7-9
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:7–9) ESV
The book of Hebrews was written to people who were thinking about walking away. Life in Christ wasn’t what they had anticipated. They were struggling in every way, and the temptation to cut and run. The author’s answer is not to minimize what they are going through. It is to show them the Jesus they are tempted to walk away from — and what he actually went through to become their Savior.
Here is the question this passage is asking you:
What if the hardest season of your life is not where the process broke down — but where it is doing its deepest work? What if the difficulty is not evidence that something went wrong — but evidence that something is actually working?
Think about someone learning a skilled trade — woodworking or welding or architecture. The hardest students to train usually aren’t the ones who come in knowing nothing. Sometimes the hardest ones are those who already learned it wrong. Before they can build the right habits, they have to dismantle the wrong ones. The instructor doesn’t skip that phase. He works through it — slowly, repeatedly, sometimes frustratingly — because the only way to build something true is to clear out what is false. The unlearning can be tough. But the teacher doesn’t abandon the apprentice in that phase. That phase is precisely where the real work is happening.
The difficulty isn’t a sign that the training has failed. It’s a sign that it’s working.
Now look at what the author of Hebrews says about Jesus in verse 8. He doesn’t say Jesus endured obedience. He doesn’t say Jesus demonstrated obedience. He says Jesus learned obedience.
In the original Greek, the word for “he learned” and the word sitting right next to it: — “he suffered” – they rhyme. The pairing is deliberate. The author wants you to feel how connected they are. They’re inseparable.
The eternal Son of God — not despite being the Son, but although he was the Son — learned obedience through what he suffered. Not around it or after it, but through the suffering. His formation didn’t bypassed the process. The learning and the suffering were the same event.
And then look at verse 9: “being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation.” The word translated “made perfect” doesn’t mean he was morally improved — he had no sin to correct. It means he was completed — brought to full qualification as your High Priest. The suffering wasn’t incidental to that completion. It was the path to it.
What the text says here is this: the formation of the Son of God, while he was here and growing, came through suffering, not around it — and he is now the perfectly qualified Savior standing on the other side of the process.
This is why the author of Hebrews can say to people who are tempted to walk away: look at your Savior. He was not spared the process. He was formed through it. And what the process produced in him — a perfected, fully qualified High Priest who knows exactly what your suffering costs — is now entirely available to you.
You were not promised a shortcut. But you were given something better: a Savior who walked the road ahead of you, all the way through, and is now interceding for you from the other side of it.
One of the conclusion we can reach here is that in a fallen world that constantly sees life badly, being reoriented just cannot be simple or easy – but Jesus will bring us through all of it.
So, what the text says here is: Although he was the Son of God, Jesus learned obedience through real suffering — not around it or after it, but through it. That suffering brought him to full qualification as the source of eternal salvation for everyone who trusts him. The process was not incidental. It was the path.
AND THIS MEANS… Trust — specifically, the trust that reframes suffering as formation rather than abandonment.
Before we pray about this, I’ve put together a free resource for you — ten verses for the season nobody prepared you for, each one with a plain-language note on what it means for exactly where you are. There’s a link in the description below. So, now, let’s pray about this
Father, you are the God who did not spare your own Son from the process — and your commitment to our formation is deeper than our comfort. Forgive me for reading my hardest seasons as evidence of your absence — when your Son’s hardest season was where you were most at work. Thank you that Jesus learned through what he suffered — and that what it produced in him is now freely given to me. Meet me in the middle of this season — let the reality of a Savior who walked this road be more solid under me than the weight of what I’m carrying.
In Jesus’ name we pray.
Remember: he learned. So do we — and this means your hardest season is not where God abandoned you, but where the same God who formed his Son through suffering is forming you.