Suffering and the Recovered Reign

"Since then the children have shared in flesh and blood, he also himself in the same way partook of the same, that through death he might bring to nothing him who had the power of death, that is, the devil, and might deliver all of them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage" (Hebrews 2:14-15). The recovery of humanity's lost reign did not come through raw display of power. It came, deliberately, through death.
Colossians 2:15 describes the same event from another angle: at the cross, Christ stripped the hostile principalities and powers of their authority and openly triumphed over them. What matters is the sequence — the decisive defeat of the powers of death is tied specifically to the cross, not merely to the resurrection that followed it. This has direct bearing on how present Christian suffering should be understood. Believers now stand against the remaining, though legally disarmed, activity of these same hostile powers (Ephesians 6:12), and Scripture repeatedly describes the Christian calling using the Greek nikē — "to overcome" or "conquer" — a term achieved through patient endurance rather than the avoidance of hardship. Suffering faithfully carried is therefore not a detour from the believer's calling to reign; it is training and qualification for it, following exactly the pattern by which Christ himself reigned — through enduring the cross rather than escaping it.
This is why the promise to the one who overcomes is worded the way it is: "He who overcomes, I will give to him to sit down with me on my throne, as I also overcame, and sat down with my Father on his throne" (Revelation 3:21). The throne was never reached by a shortcut. It was reached, first, by a cross — and every crown now offered to his people follows the same road he walked to win it.