Suffering: April 2005
Table of Contents
Give Us Hearts Like Thine
What grace, O Lord, and beauty shone
Around Thy steps below!
What patient love was seen in all
Thy life and death of woe!
Forever on Thy burdened heart
A weight of sorrow hung;
Yet no ungentle, murmuring word
Escaped Thy silent tongue.
Thy foes might hate, despise, revile,
Thy friends unfaithful prove;
Unwearied in forgiveness still,
Thy heart could only love.
Oh give us hearts to love like Thee —
Like Thee, O Lord, to grieve
Far more for others’ sins, than all
The wrongs that we receive.
One with Thyself, may every eye
In us, Thy brethren, see
That gentleness and grace that spring
From union, Lord, with Thee.
Jesus said: “Come unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28).
The Sufferings of Christ
Luke 24:26
Multitudes of saints look at all the sufferings of Christ with an adoring feeling of their infinite value and believe that all are for themselves, undergone, in love to them, and the means of their blessing. I can only pray God that this feeling may be deepened in them and in myself too. We cannot feel it too deeply.
Suffering for Righteousness’ Sake
Christ did, we know, suffer from men. He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. The world hated Him before it hated His disciples; it hated Him because He bore witness of it that its works were evil. He was “light,” and he that does evil hates the light, nor comes to the light, because his works are evil. In a word, Christ suffered for righteousness’ sake. The love which caused the Lord to minister to men in the world and testify of their evil brought only more sorrow upon Him. For His love He received hatred. This hatred of man against Him never slackened till His death. Christ suffered from man for righteousness’ sake. Suffering for righteousness may be your happy portion; suffering for sin is, as regards the Christian, Christ’s part alone.
Suffering in Gethsemane
A weight of another character pressed upon the Lord — the anticipation of His sufferings on the cross and their true and pressing character. On His path of life death lay. So it was in Gethsemane, when it was yet nearer, and the prince of this world came, and His soul was exceeding sorrowful unto death. There was no forsaking of God yet, though there was dealing with His Father about that cup which was characterized by His being forsaken of God. But in Gethsemane all was closing in. It was the power of darkness and the deeper agony of the Lord told itself out in few (yet how mighty) words, and sweat as it were drops of blood. The cup His Father has given Him to drink, shall He not drink it? Never can we meditate too much upon the path of Christ here. We may linger around the spot and learn what no other place nor scene can tell — a perfectness which is learnt from Him and from Him alone.
The Atoning Sufferings
We cannot have too deep a sense of the depth of the Lord’s suffering in His atoning work, of that which no human word is competent to express (for in human language we express but our own feelings)—what the Lord’s drinking the cup of divine wrath was to Him. With this nothing can be mingled and mixed up. Divine wrath against sin, really felt and truly felt in the soul of One who, by His perfect holiness and love to God and sense of God’s love in its infinite value, could know what divine wrath was, and what it was to be made sin before God, of One too who was, by virtue of His Person, able to sustain it, stands wholly apart and alone.
But God’s divine majesty, His holiness, His righteousness, His truth, all in their very nature bore against Christ as made sin for us. All that God was, was against sin, and Christ was made sin. No comfort of love enfeebled wrath there. Never was the obedient Christ so precious, but His soul was to be made an offering for sin and to bear it judicially before God. At the end of the three hours of darkness, this is expressed by the Lord in the words of Psalm 22, “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?” Here the Lord suffered that not one drop of what He took might remain for us. It had been everlasting misery and ruin for us; His own divine perfection in love went through it without one ray of comfort from God or man.
Love brought Him to the cross, we well know, but His sorrow there had not the present joy of a ministration of love. He was not dealing with man, but suffering in his place, in obedience, from God, and for man. Hence it was unmingled, unmitigated suffering — the scene, not of active goodness, but of God’s forsaking.
He suffered from the hand of God upon the cross. There He suffered the just for the unjust; that is, He suffered, not because He was righteous, but because we were sinners, and He was bearing our sins in His own body on the tree. As regards God’s forsaking Him, He could say, Why hast Thou forsaken Me? for in Him there was no cause. We can give the solemn answer. In grace He suffered the just for the unjust; He had been made sin for us.
The Sufferings of Love
His heart of love must have suffered greatly from the unbelief of unhappy man and from His rejection by the people. We read of His sighing in opening the deaf ears and loosing the tied tongue (Mark 7:34), and on the Pharisees asking a sign (ch. 8:12), of His sighing deeply in spirit. So, indeed, in John 11 at the tomb of Lazarus, He wept and groaned within Himself at seeing the power of death over the spirits of men, and their incapacity to deliver themselves, and as He wept also over Jerusalem, when He saw the beloved city just going to reject Him in the day of its visitation. All this was the suffering of perfect love, moving through a scene of ruin, in which self-will and heartlessness shut every avenue against this love which was so earnestly working in its midst. This sorrow (blessed be God) and the joy that brightens it we are allowed, in our little measure, to partake of. It is the sorrow of love itself.
Sin itself must have been a continual source of sorrow to the Lord’s mind. The holier and more loving He was, the more dreadful was the sin to Him.
Another source of sorrow was, perhaps, more human, but not less true — I mean the violation of every delicacy which a perfectly attuned mind could feel. They stand staring and looking upon me. Insult, scorn, deceit, efforts to catch Him in His words, brutality and cruel mocking fell upon no insensible, though a divinely patient, spirit. I say nothing of desertion, betrayal and denial — He looked for some to have pity on Him, and there was no one, and for comforters, but found none — but of what broke in upon every delicate feeling of His nature as a man. Reproach broke His heart. I do not believe there was a single human feeling (and every most delicate feeling of a perfect soul was there) that was not violated and trodden on in Christ.
The sorrows, too, of men were His in heart. He bore their sicknesses, and carried their infirmities. Not a sorrow nor an affliction He met that He did not bear on His heart as His own. In all their afflictions He was afflicted. That in all my sorrows and temptations and trials, even those which come through my faults and infirmities, I may know that He feels either with or for me is of infinite value. Christ has entered into the sufferings arising from active love in the world, and the sorrow arising from the sense of chastenings in respect of sin, and these mixed with the pressure of Satan’s power on the soul and the terror of foreseen wrath. We suffer for our folly and under God’s hand, but Christ has entered into it. He sympathizes with us.
J. N. Darby, from The Sufferings of Christ
Afflictions and Consolations
The First Epistle of Peter
There are three things in the first part of this epistle: first, the Apostle contemplates the saint in times of various troubles; second, God gives the mind we should have to pass through these troubles; and third, He provides the consolations for such a time.
Undefined Trials
The first trial that he contemplates is the trial of faith (1 Peter 1:513). The form of trial here is that God’s hand is dealing with our faith. The trial is to exercise the soul in the principles of faith. It may be a circumstance or disappointment, but it is something to link the heart with the objects of faith. And it is very beautiful that the wisdom of the Spirit leaves the trial undefined; it is only known as being the trial of faith. It may cause present heaviness, but the support which God provides for this trial of faith is the forward look. In the day of the appearing of Christ this faith which has been burnished by the fire shall be found unto praise and honor and glory.
Notice again the three things here: the trial of faith, the exercise of heart it produces, and the Lord’s comfort of the heart in the trial. The trial exercises the heart to link it with eternity and heaven. The Lord comforts the heart under such a trial by directing it onward to the appearing of Jesus, and the Lord counsels the heart to show it how to behave under the trial. The Spirit of God does not tell us to reason about trial, but tells us to submit under it and rejoice in the hope to which it is leading.
Defined Trials
In chapter 2 you find a very well-defined trial. There is comfort provided and duty prescribed in the midst of it. This kind of trial and suffering is not left undefined but is a suffering that is commonly known in human life. It is a suffering brought from the ill usage and treatment of others. It may be a servant suffering under the hand of a hard master or one suffering under the hand of an evil-minded neighbor or relative. These are well-understood and often-experienced sorrows in this life. The comfort is that the Spirit of God knows our little secret fretting, and none of them no matter how small or ordinary is beyond His sympathy. Though our nature feels the suffering, faith apprehends the unseen eye of God waiting upon the patient endurance of the servant with complacency. As a servant suffering all the day long from the hardness of an evil master was the life of Jesus. He was reviled and ill-treated by an apostate world, yet He threatened not, but committed Himself to Him who judges righteously. The Apostle speaks very sweetly to us of the most common scenes of human life, and he dignifies them with the sympathies of Christ. Can anything be more precious than that?
Suffering for Righteousness
Now look at the third chapter where we get another suffering. “If ye suffer for righteousness’ sake, happy are ye” (vs. 14). When we go on in a path of integrity or uprightness, maintaining it at all cost, because of our faithfulness to the Lord in doing what is right we are made to suffer. This is another kind of trial. The Spirit of God comforts us by telling us to sanctify the Lord God in our hearts — to remember how Christ was in the same condition.
With that thought he points us to the days of Noah. Noah for a long period was preparing the ark. He looked like the fool of his generation. There is a beautiful link between Noah’s preparing the ark and what ought to be the condition of our soul. We should have a good conscience, not just a good moral conscience, but a freed conscience. The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives us a good conscience towards God; it discharges our conscience from all guilt and delivers us from all fear of a coming judgment. Just as every stroke of Noah’s hammer told him he would be safe in the “day of judgment,” so in the trials of righteousness we go on by maintaining a good conscience. We must not give up a good moral conscience. Regardless of what it may cost or we may need to suffer, we must not give up righteousness. Our support in this path is that all is settled between us and God for eternity by the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Our conscience has eternal peace.
The Trial of Holiness
In chapter 4 there is another kind of sorrow. In the very opening we see not the trial of righteousness but of holiness. What is the difference? Righteousness is uprightness of conduct outwardly in the world; holiness is the purity and chastity within. In this world we have to fight both the battle of holiness within and the battle of righteousness without. And what is our comfort in this conflict? We shall soon give an account to Him that is ready to judge the living and the dead, and while we are living our time, we do it not to the lusts of men but to the will of God. This is our comfort.
Martyr Suffering
Later in the chapter we find another form of suffering we will call “martyr suffering.” It is not suffering in the trial of faith, or suffering from the hardness of an evil master or from a relation, or the suffering for righteousness, or the trial of holiness in our members, but what we call martyr suffering. “Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you: But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy” (1 Peter 4:12-13).
“Think it not strange,” says He, for when you are taking the journey to the prison or the stake, you are on the journey with the Saviour to Calvary. You and I may not be prepared for it, but we must not measure the Spirit’s thoughts by our attainments. It is but a little pain for a while, until His glory shall appear. Note the cheerful spirit here: “If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye; for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you.” It is a happy thing, when the martyr is on his way to death; you should see the Spirit of glory resting upon his head. O beloved! Those suffering this persecution know even while in the dungeon that the hand of God is fitting a crown of glory for their brow! “The Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you: on their part He is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified.” We know not what a day may bring forth, but Jesus knows, and He will provide.
The Mighty Hand of God
In the last chapter, we find in verse 6, “Humble yourselves, therefore, under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time.” We cannot tell in what form that “mighty hand” may humble. It may be by removing prop after prop, disappointing one expectation of the heart after another. It may be by terrible ways God may humble us, and in what seems worst of all, He may appear to be against us. He may seem to carry Himself so against our circumstances and our present joys that the heart begins to fear that God is against us. His hand is a “mighty hand,” but let that comfort us instead of frightening us. There is a great comfort in this word “mighty.” It is not a “soothing hand”; it is a “mighty hand” that seems set on bruising. But the Spirit of God says, “Humble yourselves” under it, for “He will exalt you.” Oh how beautiful! See how roughly Joseph spoke to his brethren. He put them in prison and told the keepers to take charge of them, but in secret he wept, and in due time, he “exalted” them.
“Casting all your care upon Him” (1 Peter 5:7). Oh, what comfort there is in these words! I believe that Joseph’s tears in secret have a strong message for our ears, because they tell us what God’s heart is feeling while His hand is outwardly dealing roughly. The devil will tempt us to doubt God at such a time. He will say, Don’t “humble yourselves” under that hand. We must resist the devil just as Jesus always did.
“The God of all grace, who hath called us unto His eternal glory by Christ Jesus, after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, stablish, strengthen, settle you. To Him be glory and dominion forever and ever” (1 Peter 5:1011). Thus the mighty energy of the Holy Spirit carries the Apostle Peter, you and me, as well as those “strangers,” through every variety of human trial. Whether it is the undefined exercise and trial of faith; whether it is enduring suffering from the hardness and ill-nature of those that are around us, or from the maintenance of righteousness and a good conscience, or from the struggles between flesh and Spirit, or martyr suffering, or enduring under the hand of God, or the devil himself, the mighty energy of the Spirit of God provides strength and consolation. May the Lord preserve us from unbelief and keep our hearts with the sense of these eternal realities.
Adapted from The Northern Witness,
by J. G. Bellett
Groans and Glory
Romans 8:18-27
The way in which the expected glory utterly outweighed the sufferings in the mind of the Apostle is comforting and instructive to notice. This is not because he did not suffer, nor that sufferings are pleasant, but suffering is soon over! “I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” It is not merely that he knows he will then get rest and glory, but it is the sense of the glory he has now in comparison with his sufferings. He is like a person who is so filled with the bright hopes of tomorrow that he is getting through today as fast as he can.
The Glory Revealed in Us
“The glory which shall be revealed in us” is our glory and yet God’s glory. God counts it fair that, if we are in sufferings, we should be in the glory too. “If so be that we suffer with Him, that we may be also glorified together.” If our part is suffering, it is also so in respect of the glory to be revealed. By the power of the Holy Spirit there is the sense that the glory is really our own. If a man has the sense of its being his, he will be getting towards it as fast as possible. If his heart is in that state, filled with the Holy Spirit, he will pass on through the world as an angel would pass through it. This is a “present evil world,” so he does not linger, but is in haste to get through.
Affliction and Glory
“Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). For one whose mind realizes eternity, there is no room for anything else about this present evil world. We never realize eternity, until we fill it with the Father’s love and Christ’s glory. If we think of eternity otherwise, we only look into a mere vacuum. We are confounded on the one hand, and filled with glory on the other. Finding ourselves in the glory of God, we hardly know how to grasp it — “a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.” The glory is a blessed thing that it is ours, so that we can appreciate it in that way.
“The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.” This is not to become proud with the “glory which shall be revealed in us”; it is not a change of time, but the glory is present to his mind, and he realizes the glory. “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time” —the present sufferings had lost their hindering power, because he saw the power of God in them and endured afflictions according to the power of God. The great thing is to get the heart into conscious association with all that fair scene. And if we have our hearts always occupied with Christ and glory, we too shall be always there.
The Hope of Glory
Amazingly, the soul becomes soft when happy in the Lord! All roughness is removed. Saints cannot quarrel about being happy in the Lord, though they may quarrel about doctrine or discipline. We ought all to look onward and have the heart filled with the glory. The effect of this is to put suffering in a place as unworthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us. It is not the divine essential glory, of course, but the manifested glory. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God. God has children, and He must display His sons in His glory. When He transfigures them, He manifests them. Then, and not till then, the creature is introduced into the liberty of the glory of the sons of God. The creation is not intelligent about the liberty of glory. They must also wait, for they will not be brought back until man has been. When man fell, all creation was involved. All the misery of the creature, whether sickness, bodily suffering, and so forth, came by man, so all the deliverance comes by man. By and by there will be a blessing on the fruit of the ground and not a curse.
Meanwhile the Christian suffers. But see how the energizing power of the Holy Spirit fills him with this “earnest expectation.” He so sees the love of God and the thought of God in the thing that is coming that his neck is stretched out, as it were, looking for it. God is a faithful Creator, and so He will bless accordingly.
The Holy Spirit Helps
The Holy Spirit inspires the whole creation with hope, so that all are looking out for the manifestation of the children of God. That is what they wait for. They groan, but not intelligently. We have the key to the groaning. “The Spirit Itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. And He that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because He maketh intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”
“The creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption.” Everything connected with it — sickness, death, suffering. The creature was “made subject to vanity.” He calls it all vanity. Take the flogging of horses to see how fast they can go or how much they can carry: This is “creature” groaning and vanity. Unless God sustained them, how could even the angels bear to witness it all? Look at what is called military prowess. Think of thousands being killed by their fellowmen in a single fray! Man walks in a vain show and toils for death, thus spending all his strength to die! The creature is subject to vanity and cannot get out of it until brought into the liberty of the glory of the children of God. There is more villainy and misery, I suppose, in the civilized world than anywhere else. Evil passions break out and show themselves in various forms. People are kept down by mere power or influence. Men are saying, “Peace, peace,” and all the while trembling with fear, looking for those things that are coming on the earth, for come they must, and God alone knows what will turn up in a short time.
The Hope of Christ Coming
“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together.” How astonishing it is that Christians can go on trying to better the world, with so much Scripture to the contrary! When Christ was here, every outgoing of His heart was stopped; they turned away from Him and rejected Him. Though He had cast out a whole legion of devils out of their land, they could not endure His presence, but “besought Him that He would depart out of their coasts.” When He is manifested in glory, then will it be revealed in us. It is the realizing of this glory that fits us to enter into the sorrow of the groaning creation around. The hope of Christ, coming in glory, lifts us above it all.
When I have the Holy Spirit, I may be full of joy and full of hope, but this does not prevent my groaning as a creature. The more I joy, the more I feel this wretched body is an earthen vessel that cannot hold the treasure.
The Redemption of the Body
Christ was “declared to be the Son of God with power . . . by the resurrection from the dead”; so we are declared to be sons and are waiting to be raised up bodily by Christ. We must never confound the groaning here spoken of with the groaning of the soul for its own salvation. This we have already. The redemption of the body also is our hope, for Christ is made unto us, of God, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption. Redemption comes last, as in itself comprising all, and not of the soul only. The full result is salvation; I have only the earnest of it now. I must wait patiently for it.
Abraham had not a place to put his foot on, though God had given him the whole land. When hope is settled, you go on quietly today, expecting Him to come. The Holy Spirit has fixed our hearts on this hope, and we are waiting for it. While we groan, the Holy Spirit itself groans, so that though it is a groaning creation, we have His company. If you groan, these groans are according to God and are as divine as your hopes, though in a different way. But as the Son became a man, and, as a man down here, had these feelings, so the Holy Spirit dwells in me, and these groans are precious, because in these groans it is the positive intercession of the Holy Spirit, and “He that searcheth the heart, knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit,” so that if God searches my heart, He finds the Holy Spirit there.
God’s Empathy
It is wonderful how God Himself empathizes in everything, filling us with His hopes, His sorrows, and affections. If it is God who listens, He hears. How thoroughly He is come in to possess man’s soul! Thus my heart groans, while it is said, “The Spirit Itself maketh intercession.” It is a great comfort to know they are not selfish groans in me, because while I am groaning with all around me it is the Spirit’s groan in us.
Adapted from W. Kelly
Contrasting Attitudes in Suffering
Two men stand out as examples in the way they reacted to suffering. The first example is Cain, who considered the sufferings too great to bear. The second example is Job, who considered himself too good to suffer so much. These two extreme attitudes stand in contrast to our blessed Lord.
Cain said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear” (Gen. 4:13), when he was faced with the judgment of God for his sin of murder. The firstborn and heir of Adam measured the punishment according to his own ability. He rejected God’s righteous judgment even though God in mercy was reaching out to him seeking his restoration. Cain chose to go “out from the presence of the Lord.” He then built a city. But there was no remedy for the situation by living apart from God, nor did it exclude sorrow from his life. “Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation,” but “the sorrow of the world worketh death” (2 Cor. 7:10). The remedy was to go to God in the problem because it was too great for him.
When the Lord Jesus, the true Firstborn, was faced with the contemplation of the judgment of God for sin in the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed, “O My Father, if this cup may not pass away from Me, except I drink it, Thy will be done” (Matt. 26:42). Like Cain, He felt the greatness of the judgment, but in perfect submission to the will of His Father He accepted it from Him. He did not flee from the consequences, but submitted to God’s judgment for sin, which was death.
“There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job; and this man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God and abstained from evil” (Job 1:1 JND). This man was tested with excruciating suffering that provoked him to say, “I am righteous: and God hath taken away my judgment. Should I lie against my right? My wound is incurable without transgression” (Job 34:56). This complaint came out after a long time. Even though he proved Satan’s assessment as to his behavior wrong, he developed a wrong attitude. He blamed God and justified himself. He was too good for everyone. If Cain’s punishment was too great for him, Job was too good for the punishment. Both these attitudes obstruct God’s way of blessing for those who are suffering.
“Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow His steps: who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth: who, when He was reviled, reviled not again; when He suffered, He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that judgeth righteously” (1 Peter 2:2023). In contrast to Job, the Lord Jesus did not regard His own righteousness as reason to avoid suffering. Though He had not sinned to deserve any suffering, yet He patiently endured it. In regards to His righteousness, He committed it to Him that judges righteously. This is the example He left us to follow.
D. C. Buchanan
Tsunami — The Question of Suffering
Romans 8:22
The recent tsunami that devastated southern Asia on December 26, 2004, has once again focused the world’s attention on human suffering. The awful event was as sudden as it was devastating, leaving the world in a state of shock. In view of all this, the news media felt compelled to carry the various views of the world’s major religions as to the meaning of it all and why God permits such things to happen. The question of suffering in this world and the reasons why God allows it have been a subject of controversy for thousands of years. Job, as an individual, struggled with the issue in his day, and men have argued about the matter many times over the centuries.
It is only natural to want answers to these questions, for this world has been a place of untold suffering ever since sin entered it. Scripture tells us that “as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned” (Rom. 5:12). True Christians at least accept this, but when such awful devastation occurs as happened in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and other places, perhaps questions are raised even in the minds of believers. Thousands of people, particularly young children, perished, while others who survived lost everything they had in this world, including their homes, possessions, livelihood and family.
The Skeptic
The skeptic reasons that if God were all-powerful and all-loving, He would intervene to stop such suffering, and if He is not, then He is not truly God. He then goes on, in his mistaken reasoning, to deny that there is a God, or at least to raise a question about His existence. Indeed, an article about the recent tsunami in a well-known publication concluded with the remark that “innumerable voices cry out to God. The miracle, if there is one, may be that so many still believe.”
Unhappily, even those who take the place of being leaders in the Christian world sometimes make very upsetting remarks. David Hart, supposedly an orthodox theologian, described talk of God’s inscrutable counsels as “odious” and the suggestion that such disasters serve God’s good ends as “blasphemous.”
As in every question of a moral and spiritual nature, only the Word of God can give us an answer, and I believe that we have definite answers in the Bible to the questions that arise when such things as famines, earthquakes and floods fall upon this world. All of our curiosity may not be satisfied, but God gives us all we need to know in order to react in a right way and to honor His claims over us.
The Purpose of God
Scripture gives us at least three reasons why suffering is in this world, and for the first reason we must turn to Ephesians 1:910: “According to His good pleasure which He hath purposed in Himself: that in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven, and which are on earth; even in Him.” God had in His counsels in a past eternity the exaltation and glory of His beloved Son, and all His ways with man in this world are directed to that supreme end.
While surely God has no delight in the suffering that sin has produced, the fact remains that He has been more glorified, and ultimately man has been more blessed, than if sin had never entered the world. Evil is permitted for the greater manifestation of the glory of God and for the everlasting comfort of His people. In His ways that are “past finding out,” God may allow evil to have its full result, for it allows for the full exhibition of His love and, ultimately, His full triumph over evil. If evil rises to seemingly impossible heights, we must remember that “where sin abounded, grace did much more abound” (Rom. 5:20). Had there been no need for salvation, the Lord Jesus Christ would never have had the glory that is now His in view of redemption, and God would not have been glorified as to the question of sin, as He has now been in virtue of Christ’s work on the cross. Because of the humiliation the Lord Jesus suffered, Philippians 2:9 tells us, “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name.” His exaltation is directly proportional to the suffering, as one hymn so well puts it, “Full the joy, as fierce the wrath.”
The Heart of God
Coupled with this reason for suffering is the second one, namely, that man has learned the heart of God through suffering in a way that he never could have known it, if sin had not entered this world. If man had lived forever in the Garden of Eden, he could have had the enjoyment of God’s presence in happy fellowship, but he would never have known the depths of love in the heart of God. If there had been no sin and resultant suffering, man would never have experienced God’s comfort in sorrow.
The apex of all this is found in the incarnation and suffering of the Lord Jesus. “Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likewise took part of the same; that through death He might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage” (Heb. 2:1415). The One who was above it all voluntarily came into this world of sin, and when He had experienced from without all the sorrow that sin had produced, He died on Calvary’s cross in order that He might be the One who “taketh away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
To the natural man whose mind is bounded by time, the sorrow in this world sometimes seems unbearable. But “one day is with the Lord as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (2 Peter 3:8). In God’s counsels, the suffering of man which is for a few thousand years is like a few days, but the blessing flowing from the cross will last for all eternity. Man was made for eternity, not merely for time, and God wants us to take an eternal view of things.
The Warnings of God
Finally, God uses suffering in this world to warn men of coming judgment and to bring them to Himself in repentance. This is brought out in Luke 13:15, where some told the Lord Jesus of the Galileans, “whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices.” In answering them, the Lord also referred to eighteen people on whom the tower of Siloam had evidently fallen, killing them. In both cases His remark was, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.” It was a warning to preserve them from coming judgment.
Concerning the recent tsunami that has devastated southern Asia, we are reminded of a similar message in Amos 5:8: “Seek Him . . . that calleth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon the face of the earth: The Lord is His name.” While men may reason about the natural causes of such disasters, we must remember that there are no second causes with God and that He allows such things to warn men.
Some may ask why God chooses to make an example of some, when the whole world deserves the judgment of God. The news media remarked more than once that the damage from the tsunami in most cases occurred in areas of desperate poverty, where those affected were least equipped to cope with it. But God is sovereign, and surely it is His prerogative to judge some in order that many others may fear and turn to Him.
While we do not want to single out any part of the world as being more guilty before God, yet it is noticeable that many of the areas hit by the tsunami were places where Christians are persecuted and where the preaching of the gospel is at least strongly discouraged, if not expressly forbidden, by the governments. Since that awful event, the widespread destruction in these countries has opened the way for many Christian organizations and individual believers to show God’s love in areas from which they would have previously been banned. Not only have they been able to bring material help, but also the wonderful news of God’s grace. Only eternity will reveal the blessing that has come as a result.
The Reactions and Consequences
The question then arises as to those who do not repent. What if man rejects the voice of God in all this? Again, the news media carried the two common reactions of those who face trouble without God — either crushing grief or bitter anger. Others, particularly adherents of false religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism, continue to live in fear of ghosts, while they offer sacrifices and hold rituals, supposedly to lay to rest the wandering spirits of the dead. Sad to say, there are many who will not hear the Lord’s voice speaking to them in these tragedies and who continue to reject the gospel. The government of India rejected international aid, and there is no doubt that at least part of the reason for this is their fear of the spread of the gospel by foreign Christian workers.
Paul comments on this kind of sorrow in 2 Corinthians 7:10, when he says, “Godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death.” When man accepts suffering in this world from God’s hand and then looks to Him for the reason, he recognizes God’s supreme authority and power. He admits his dependence upon God and his responsibility to Him. Then his heart is open to see his true condition in the sight of God. The result is repentance to salvation, and thus the sorrow is not to be repented of, but is rather that which brings man into God’s presence, with resultant blessing. On the other hand, sorrow experienced without reference to God works death, and this is the sad result for those who do not bring God into their thoughts.
May we who know the Lord view these present calamities in the light of God’s Word, on the one hand seeing them as God’s voice to this world, yet, on the other hand, seeing that all is working toward the day when God will “head up all things in the Christ” (Eph. 1:10 JND). Judgment is necessary for the public vindication of God’s holy character, but the eternal state of blessing will be for the everlasting satisfaction of His heart.
W. J. Prost
Theme of the Issue
The theme of the issue is suffering — the sufferings of Christ, of the believer and of humanity.
“Ought not Christ to have suffered these things?” (Luke 24:26).
“Let them who suffer according to the will of God commit their souls in well-doing to a faithful Creator” (1 Peter 4:19 JND).
“The whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain” (Rom. 8:22).
Comfort in Sorrows
There is no comfort like knowing that Jesus has entered into all our sorrows. This is the way God has met the need and desire of our nature. Supposing that Adam had never fallen, we could not speak of God with the comfort that we can since He has come in sympathy, through the incarnation of our blessed Lord. The Lord Jesus having become a man is the source of all comfort. The Lord entered into the depths of all sorrow to give us all the depth of comfort and that we may know that God knows the remedy of our case. He lets us see the feelings of Jesus while entering into our sorrows, and this forms the channel for all His love to flow into our souls.
The Bible Herald, 1877