Yeah. Maybe. A little. :-)
I like this post. I'm going to think about it today.
Since I first stumbled across this mumble mumble years ago (1973, actually — is that scary or what?) I have thought that it was a place where Paul was reaching to express something beyond expression. It is just WRONG to say that anything is “behind” or “lacking” in the perfect suffering of our perfect Lord. Yet he says it.
My rule is to appreciate, to dwell in, such seeming paradoxes, to eschew “explaining away” baffling expressions. I try instead to “abide” with them, to let them “work” as though I were kneaded dough and they were yeast.
(You know, if you want the gluten to come up, there's no way around it but to knead for a quarter of an hour or so. Then there's not much one can do to speed the rising either. You just have to let things work. For it is God that worketh in the dough, both to will and to do for His pleaure and our rising.)
Anyway, thanks. Good eats! Chewy!
Well put. I feel quite similarly.
I can better wrap my understanding around the notion that Christ would have us IDENTIFY WITH HIS SUFFERINGS in a more existential way.
I still have a hard time believing that HIS SUFFERING lacked anything.
One of those mysteries, imho.