Five Good Reasons God Doesn't Stop Suffering

 

Suffering 20

 

          Any study of suffering must include an examination of the problem of evil and suffering. Loosely defined, this is the atheistic attack upon the existence or power of God. “If an all-powerful god exists and he refuses to stop suffering he is a lousy god. If god exists and he cannot stop suffering he is a lousy god. Ergo, he is either a lousy god, or, more realistically, there obviously isn’t one.”

          Curiously enough, the shoe is on the other foot. The problem of evil/suffering does not prove the non-existence of God, and if you attempt to make it do so your conundrums are deeper than the Christian’s difficulties.

When you assert that God does not exist then there is no absolute standard of morality. If there is no absolute standard of morality then there is no right and wrong, no good and evil. This is the atheist position, but it makes him extremely uncomfortable because there is blatant evil in the world. Put another way round, atheism is intellectually self-defeating. When the atheist asks you to account for the existence of evil/suffering ask him to account for it first. We can, in our worldview; he utterly cannot.

Having asserted we as Christians can do so it begs the question how. We rejected the answers offered last week, but what are the good answers?

First, I would point you backward in this series. I do not accept that we do not know why God allows suffering. The Bible is the revelation of God. It shows us Who God is. It also shows us why God operates the way He operates. I have already offered you five of those answers in this series: 1) to glorify Himself, 2) to be consistent in allowing us the exercise of free will, 3) to create good, 4) to judge evil and provide consequence, and 5) to grow us into the image of Christ. 

The second answer I would offer to the problem of evil/suffering is that God actually is restraining most of the evil/suffering right now. Was 9/11 a tragedy? Yes, a horrific one. Nearly 3,000 people lost their lives, and the resulting waves of suffering extending outward from that are enormous. Yet nearly 50,000 people worked in that complex on a daily basis. That equals a restraining rate, for lack of a better term, of ninety-four percent. And how many 9/11s have their been in my lifetime?

I believe God actively restrains much of the evil and suffering that would otherwise go on in a world occupied by fallen natures, men given over to evil egged on by demonic hatred. If you do not believe me just go read the book of Revelation. Much of it is about the Tribulation period on Earth, a short span of years marked by mind-boggling catastrophe. Yes, some of it is the direct judgment of God on man, but much of it is simply man’s nature now entirely unrestrained by the Holy Spirit. (II Thessalonians 2.7)

Even on a personal level, God actively restrains the vast majority of evil/suffering in our lives. The concept of a guardian angel is scriptural, as seen in Matthew 18, Psalm 91, and Daniel 10, amongst others. We literally have no idea of how much harm God has prevented, a realization driven home occasionally by some close brush with death, and by a simple reading about Elisha’s protective angelic army in II Kings 6.  

          The third answer I would offer to the problem of evil/suffering is this: if God always intervened miraculously and immediately faith could not exist.

          People like to think miracles produce faith. The opposite is true, as evidenced clearly in the life of Christ. Miracles authenticate the messenger, but they often produce both opposition and apathy. After all, if miracles produce faith why did God take away the sign gifts? Because faith is not developed via miracles; faith is developed by the Word of God. (Romans 10.17). His Word is enough and needs to be enough.

          We dare not come to the place where we expect God to do something miraculous every time we are hungry. We are supposed to pray humbly for God to provide while we work as hard as we can at that provision. If that provision was abundant and painless to obtain would the result be more faith? Absolutely not.

Luke 12.16–19 And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry.

          The dependence on God we call faith or trust implicitly involves doubt and struggle. If you take away evil whole cloth, if you remove suffering from this world, there is precious little difficulty left to force us to learn to trust in God. If life always runs smoothly with zero suffering we would never come to cast our all desperately upon the Lord. Faith is not faith if it is not faith in the dark.

          The fourth helpful answer I have found to the problem of evil/suffering is similar to the third one. If God always intervened miraculously and immediately gratitude and praise could not exist.

Psalm 40.1–3 I waited patiently for the LORD; And he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, And set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings. And he hath put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God: Many shall see it, and fear, and shall trust in the LORD.

          We praise Him because He saved us, but if there was no evil we would not have needed to be rescued from anything. I thank God vocally several times a week for allowing me to live and pastor in the peaceful environment of Dubuque. Yet would I have such a fervent gratitude for this place if I had not spent sixteen years in the gritty urban heart of a city of millions? Every week, as I meet with our men to pray on Wednesday mornings, unbidden will come to me a gratitude to the Lord for a unified church. Yet would I have such a grateful spirit if I had not endured a years long poisonous atmosphere and down-right vicious church split as a teenager? Each Sunday night as I drive home from church I thank God yet again for the physical strength to get through the day. Yet would I express such thanks as readily if He had not allowed me to be laid so low so often with Meniere’s Disease? 

          What would I praise and thank Him for if everything in my life had always been peaches and cream? No, beloved, no. The simple truth is we would have no real sense of the loving kindness of a good God if we had not also tasted the pain, suffering, trial, and struggle that preceded it.

          Lastly in progression allow me offer you this thought: none of us would survive a moment in a world in which God punished evil immediately and totally.

The Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
John Martin, 1852

          There is a word for immediate and total justice – hell. The wages of sin is death. (Romans 6.23)

I, for one, am grateful for a longsuffering God, for a God who is rich in patience and mercy. That means He lets me sin. Since suffering is loss and loss is always tied to sin my sin will produce suffering for someone somewhere.

Could God stop it? Yes, He is not limited in power. Does God know about it? Yes, He is not limited in knowledge. Does this mean God is not good? Of course not, it is proof of His goodness. Does this mean God does not love us? Of course not, it is proof of His love for us. Does this mean He does not exist? Not in the least. It proves He is consistent, good, merciful, wise, patient, and powerful.

The existence of evil and suffering do not prove the impotence of God or the absence of God at all. They show the greatness of God.

…and that is the right answer.

Why Doesn't God Stop Suffering? Six Bad Answers

 Suffering 19

 

Auschwitz

          While out soul winning recently with one of our men I met a rather harsh individual. He stridently insisted he did not believe in God. How could he if God let little children be born without arms? How could he if God allowed dictators like Hitler to live? How could he believe in a God Who allowed people to suffer all over the world?

          His corrosive attacks did not surprise me. The existence of suffering is a key piece of the atheist armor. “If an all-powerful God exists and he refuses to stop suffering He is a lousy God. If God exists and He is unable to stop suffering He is a lousy God. Alternatively, He does not exist at all and that is why suffering continues unabated.” In Randy Alcorn’s excellent If God is Good he phrased the supposed conundrum this way: “If God is good, then he would want to prevent evil and suffering. If he is all-knowing, then he would know how to prevent it. If God is all-powerful, then he is able to prevent it. And yet a great deal of evil and suffering exists. Why?”

          Over the next two weeks I want to answer that question. We begin today with some bad answers. In other words, these are concepts posited in an attempt to answer the problem of evil and suffering but they are bad answers. They are the wrong answers.

          The first wrong answer to the problem of evil and suffering is that there is no evil or suffering. In the late 1800s, the infamous Mary Baker Eddy of the First Church of Christ, Scientist, essentially offered this argument. It is a foolish argument for one simple reason: there clearly is evil and suffering in this world. The Bible tells us evil and suffering exist from one end to the other as does our human experience. To assert there is no evil and suffering is to reject the truth of God’s Word. Our Saviour said, For ye have the poor always with you. (Matthew 26.11) Job, who knew a bit about suffering, said, Yet man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. (Job 5.7) This side of eternity we are shades wandering a vale of tears.

          The second wrong answer is that there is no God. But there is. The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God. (Psalm 14.1)

          The existence of the cosmos proves God is. It so happens I am reading an old treatise at the moment, Stephen Charnock’s 1682 The Existence and Attributes of God. In it, he makes a lengthy and compelling argument against Darwin’s evolutionary theory centuries in the future. Darwin, as revealed in Benjamin Wiker’s 2009 work, The Darwin Myth, launched his theory on the world specifically in order to attack the existence of God. Charnock deconstructed Darwin centuries earlier by walking the reader down a faultless chain of reasoning that must end ultimately in the existence of God. In short, everything has a producing cause except the First Cause. That alone is uncaused, and must be eternal and all-powerful. Ergo, God.

          The orderly design of nature proves God exists. C. S. Lewis famously suggested this with his mid-twentieth century illustration of a man strolling through a field. Suppose that man comes upon a watch lying in the middle of the path. Would he assume the watch had always lain there, quietly ticking the world’s seconds away one by one? Of course not. The watch clearly had a maker, a designer; its complexity demands reason assume as much. Just so it is with this world. Creation is an orderly and intricately designed masterpiece, and as such is clear evidence of the existence of the Creator. To this the psalmist agrees. The heavens declare the glory of God; And the firmament sheweth his handywork. (Psalm 19.1)

          Yet another natural proof of God’s existence is seen in the way men are different than animals. We are born with a conscience, a basic morality. The squirrels gamboling in my Arborvitae and wreaking havoc on my porch do not. This conscience is built into us from birth, and the only explanation of its existence is that Someone put it there, a Creator.

          Additionally, the Bible proves God exists. How else can you account for its miracles and its prophecies? How else do you account for Christ’s civilizing influence on world history? How else do you account for the Jews jaw-dropping perpetuity against vicious hatred over millennia?

          The third wrong answer to the problem of evil and suffering is that God exists, yes, but He has only limited goodness. But this is manifestly false for God is always good. Thou art good, and doest good. (Psalm 119.68)

“But even the Scripture records actions of God’s which are not good!” No, it does not. You have confused kindness for goodness.   

          “But there are things going on in my life that are definitely not good.” You may, perhaps, be right, but do not say God caused them. God may not always appear to be good, but He is always good.

          “But you yourself said evil and suffering exist. If they exist how can you say that all that God does is good.” Because God is so amazing He can and does use even that evil and suffering to produce good. We have spoken of this already in this series. We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28)

          The fourth bad answer to the problem of evil and suffering is that God has limited power. But He does not. And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. (Matthew 28.18) It is not that He cannot stop evil and suffering; it is rather that He chooses to allow it for His own (good) reasons.

          “Ha! Can God build a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?”

          That is not a limitation; it is an absurdity. An omnipotent God cannot do what is intrinsically impossible. He cannot make a square circle or a round rectangle. God is rational and has created a rational universe. He can suspend gravity if He chooses but He cannot move a rock downward and upward at the same time. To assert this undermines His omnipotence is not unassailable logic; it is nonsense.

It is true God cannot lie (II Timothy 2.13) and God cannot deny Himself. (II Timothy 2.13) Yet it is not His lack of power that causes this; it is His nature. I wrote earlier in this series that God has created man with a free will. He chose that Himself and He cannot violate Himself. But that does not mean His power is limited; He is still sovereign. (Daniel 4.17)

The fifth bad answer to the problem of evil and suffering is to assert God has limited knowledge. But He does not; He knows all and sees all. (Psalm 139.1-16)

The idea that God’s knowledge is limited is an attractive one to those who argue with atheists. It seems to allow for a continued belief in God while not having to account for His lack of desire or inability to stop evil and suffering. It is not only an attractive option, intellectually, it is also a growing one. It is generally known by the phrase open theism.

Essentially, open theism operates like this: God can know with certainty what He plans to do, but He cannot know with certainty what we will do in response. Why? Because He made us with a free will. How can an individual's will be genuinely free if God knows ahead of time what we are going to do? Hence, God’s knowledge is limited by our unknowable future choices.

          With such intellectual sophistry open theists assert that God was only partially aware of my daughter’s death before it happened, and thus His existence and integrity are undamaged by my ensuing suffering. But such a lousy answer holds zero comfort for me. After all, once He did know about Abigail’s death why did He not do anything about it then? No, there is no comfort here. There is only the hollowness of an unbiblically bad “answer.”

          “See here, Pastor Brennan. God knows you are going to drink a white chocolate mocha at 10 AM tomorrow. You cannot not do that or else God would be wrong. So the only way a genuine free will can exist is if God does not know the future.”

          Au contraire. God’s foreknowledge is not cause. God lives outside of time. There is no past, no present, no future with Him. He is eternal in both directions and exists everywhere at once. (I have a theory of physics related to the omnipresence of God but I shall spare you in this already too long post.) God can and does know what I will decide to drink or not drink at any certain time tomorrow without causing that action on my part. I am bound by linear time; He is not.

          Open theists respond by saying there were some things Jesus did not know. He had to, for instance, grow in wisdom and stature and knowledge. (Luke 2.52) Which means there were things He did not initially know. Even in His maturity He did not know the day of the Second Coming, for example. (Matthew 24.36)

          Right. Because Christ laid aside some attributes of deity in order to be enfleshed at the incarnation. He did so while still retaining that deity. Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. (Philippians 2.6-8) This does not prove that God does not know everything; it proves the humanity of Jesus while still retaining the deity of Jesus.

          The simple truth is Scripture tells us repeatedly God knows everything. He is perfect in knowledge. (Job 37.16) God knoweth all things. (I John 3.20) Indeed, He even knows what we need before we ask Him. (Matthew 6.8)

          “Sure, bud. He knows everything that can be known but He does not know the future for that cannot be known.”

          Really?

Psalm 139.1–4, 16

O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me. Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, Thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou compassest my path and my lying down, And art acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in my tongue, But, lo, O LORD, thou knowest it altogether. Thine eyes did see my substance, yet being unperfect; And in thy book all my members were written, Which in continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of them.

          God not only knows what will happen, He also knows what would have happened if you had made a different choice. Joash struck the ground with an arrow three times instead of five or six, grieving Elisha. And God tells him what would have happened if he had made a different choice. Jesus did no miracles in Tyre and Sidon yet He knew what would have happened there if He had done so.

          The simple truth is God’s omniscience encompasses all knowledge, past, present, and future. The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is. (Revelation 17.8)

          The sixth bad answer to the problem of evil and suffering is that God has limited love. But He does not. His love is without limit or extent. (John 3.16, Romans 8.37-39, Ephesians 3.19)

          I recognize we cannot be intellectually honest and ignore the atheistic attack that the existence of evil and suffering prove either God does not exist or He is somehow severely limited. But to proffer these as answers is to ask me to walk out on the rotten ice covering the Mississippi River in early Spring. They will not hold.

Holocaust Memorial, Berlin, Germany

          I opened this lengthy post referencing a man I met out soul winning. After listening to him attack God at length I finally managed to interject. I said, “You’ve asked me a bunch of questions but you haven’t let me give you any answers.” Quick as a wink, he threw back into my teeth, “That’s because there are no answers.”

          But there are. Not the bad ones proffered in today’s blog post, but good ones. We will look at those next week. Stay tuned.

Ten Reasons the Prosperity Gospel is a Disaster

 

Suffering 18

 

          Several times in this series on suffering I have mentioned in a negative way the creed loosely known as the prosperity gospel. Today, I am going to punch it right in the nose. It is an appalling bastardization of the actual gospel, and a wretched belief system that throws out whole cloth the idea that God might be at work in our suffering.

The gospel, a word used ninety-eight times in the New Testament, is never preceded by any word of any sort referring to money or health as a modifier. The gospel is defined in I Corinthians 15 as the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. The word on its own simply means good news, and that is precisely what the gospel is.

The prosperity gospel, on the other hand, is an unscriptural sham which tells us that if we are right with God He will make us rich, healthy, happy, and successful. It is often found in the already doctrinally challenged environment of the charismatic and Pentecostal circles. It is an enormous and growing presence in the Third World because it promises American prosperity, essentially.

Now, here are ten reasons why it is an unmitigated doctrinal disaster.

First, the prosperity gospel makes our religion about us and not about God. If I understand my chronology correctly, the first sermon ever preached in a church service was given by Christ in Matthew 16. In that sermon our Saviour said, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. Christianity is an upward oriented religion; the prosperity gospel is a downward oriented excuse of a replacement.

Second, the prosperity gospel makes our religion about stuff rather than being about a relationship with God. Again and again in the Word of God we are warned against allowing materialism free reign in our hearts. Take, for example, Christ’s words in Luke 12.15. Take heed, and beware of covetousness: for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth. Yes, we live in a materialistic society. Our families are getting smaller while the square footage of our houses is getting larger. The prosperity gospel brings this cultural preoccupation or weakness into the church and calls it good – which is the precise opposite of what our Saviour said in the passage above.

Third, Jesus modeled the opposite of the prosperity gospel lifestyle. And Jesus saith unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head. (Matthew 8.20) And His entire earthly career proved this out. He had to instruct Peter to catch a fish so He could pay taxes. He thought so little of money He let Judas Iscariot handle it. He left no will or estate. He was buried in a borrowed tomb. This was not carelessness; it was an utter preoccupation with the eternal instead of the temporal.

Fourth, the prosperity gospel depends on bad or absent hermeneutics. Paul instructed Timothy to study the scriptures carefully. (II Timothy 2.15) The single most important factor in this is the rule of context. Yet the prosperity gospel’s theological existence depends on taking passages out of context, both the immediate context and the wider subject context. At the same time, the prosperity gospel must ignore entire sections of Scripture such as I Peter, Job, and whole sections in Psalms. This is a crucial failing, for we are instructed to declare unto you all the counsel of God. (Acts 20.27) Put another way round, the prosperity gospel butchers the Word of God, hacking it into mutilated pieces it then displays like gory trophies while calmly insisting the patient is whole and sound.

Fifth, the prosperity gospel takes our eyes off of Heaven. By definition, it focuses our hearts on the here and now, which plainly violates Paul’s admonition in Colossians 3.2. Set your affections on things above, not on things on the earth.

The mature Christian has two great hopes or expectations: the Second Coming of Christ or glorification via the valley of the shadow of death. The prosperity gospel Christian has entirely different hopes or expectations: present prosperity, present health, or present success. Things that are different are not the same.

Sixth, the prosperity gospel is not borne out by scriptural example. Jesus was crucified. Stephen was stoned. Paul was beheaded. Peter was crucified upside down. Andrew, Bartholomew, James, Matthew, Matthias, Phillip, Simon, and Thomas were all martyred. When Moses got his act together, he turned his back on a life of ease in Pharaoh’s pleasure palaces and embraced a life of affliction. (Hebrews 11.24-26) Paul leaves no doubt that prior to his martyrdom, he lived a life of sorrow, pain, struggle, and suffering. In labours more abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more frequent, in deaths oft. Of the Jews five times received I forty stripes save one. Thrice was I beaten with rods, once was I stoned, thrice I suffered shipwreck, a night and a day I have been in the deep; In journeyings often, in perils of waters, in perils of robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilderness, in perils in the sea, in perils among false brethren; In weariness and painfulness, in watchings often, in hunger and thirst, in fastings often, in cold and nakedness. (II Corinthians 11.23-27) You can strain that with a cheesecloth and you will not find any prosperity in it anywhere.

Seventh, the prosperity gospel is not borne out by church history. Foxe’s Book of Martyr’s anyone? And others had trial of cruel mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment: They were stoned, they were sawn asunder, were tempted, were slain with the sword: they wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins; being destitute, afflicted, tormented; (Of whom the world was not worthy:) they wandered in deserts and in mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth. And these all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise. (Hebrews 11.36-39) The prosperity gospel is either ignorant of church history or blind to it, one or the other.

Eighth, the prosperity gospel is not borne out by life experience. I grew up in a pastor’s home. I have attended nineteen years of formal education entirely in Christian environments. I have pastored now for a quarter century. I have known many, many sweet Christian people, people who have only known poverty, illness, trial, failure, and a complete lack of what the world would call success. And their distilled Christianity was all the sweeter for it. I emphatically reject that these precious children of God were not worthy to hold the theological hem of the fraudulent television hucksters of our era.

Ninth, the word faith foundation of the prosperity gospel turns prayer into magic done by a genie at your bidding. As such, it is not the right view of God. He is majesty personified, not my personal chef, and I dare not forget that. With God is terrible majesty. (Job 37.22) God is greatly to be feared in the assembly of the saints, And to be had in reverence of all them that are about him. (Psalm 89.7) Our God is a consuming fire. (Hebrews 12.29)

In point of fact, there are numerous examples in Scripture of God refusing to accede to the saint’s requests. Again, Paul comes to mind here. He labels his affliction the messenger of Satan to buffet me yet God specifically tells him He will not remove it. It is better that Paul should suffer and remain humble. (II Corinthians 12.7-9) Speaking frankly, I feel that somewhat. It is my considered reason that the Lord has allowed me to struggle with Meniere’s Disease for the same reason. I need my pride afflicted, not magnified by my ability to banish all illness in the name of the Lord Jesus.

Tenth, the prosperity gospel ignores plain Bible teaching. The tear-soaked leaves of Holy Writ contain numerous calls for us to suffer. (Acts 9.16, Philippians 1.29, II Corinthians 12.10, I Peter 3.14, I Peter 4.16) Additionally, some of us are called to experience persecution (Matthew 5.10-12) and endure the hatred and scorn of heathen men. (Matthew 10.22)

No, beloved, no. The prosperity gospel will not do at all. It is nothing more than a perversion of the real gospel by false prophets. Do not be deceived by its glitz, glitter, and glam. Do not allow yourself to be mesmerized by its passionate preaching. See clearly the folly of your own heart’s deceitful desire for riches.

Be a Berean. Reject the prosperity gospel. 

The Glory of Suffering

 

Suffering 17

 

          Every pastor, indeed, most mature Christians know what it is like to have someone turn a tear-streaked face toward them and beg to understand why God is allowing them to suffer. “I don’t know, “ is a bad answer. We do know. We may not know the specifics of God’s reasoning in any one situation but He reveals several purposes for suffering in His Word. We have already looked at some of them. God uses suffering to produce good that would not otherwise come into being. God allows suffering as a necessary adjunct to the exercise of free will. Suffering grows us; it is the school in which we are brought to perfection. And suffering is sometimes necessary as the consequence of judgment on sin. Today we come to yet another reason God allows suffering, perhaps the most important reason of all. It is this: God allows us to suffer so that He may be glorified.

          I know this for the basic reason I know any spiritual truth. God tells me in His Word. Behold, I have refined thee, but not with silver; I have chosen thee in the furnace of affliction. For mine own sake, even for mine own sake, will I do it: For how should my name be polluted? And I will not give my glory to another. (Isaiah 48.10-11) Everything that happens in my life is designed to make God look good, and everything includes that which I suffer. Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God. (I Corinthians 10.31)

          The lost man would view the last paragraph as indicative of a selfish God. In fact, they often hurl this at us in debates. “Your God tortures you so that He will look good; He says so Himself. What kind of an awful God is that?” To the contrary, however, this is not selfish or cruel or arrogant of God. It is not arrogant for God to demand glory for He absolutely deserves it. It is not selfish either for God is eminently gracious and thoughtful toward us in our suffering. It is not cruel for He does not stomp others down to lift Himself up; precisely the opposite, He raises others and that is what makes Him look so good. Put another way round, God does not do something to us in order to make Himself look better; He does something for us and through us, and that makes Him look better.

2 Corinthians 4.15–17

15 For all things are for your sakes, that the abundant grace might through the thanksgiving of many redound to the glory of God.

16 For which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.

17 For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory;

          Over Christmas, a friend of mine from college days breathed his last. He was my age, with a lovely wife and family. Yet he struggled most of his life with various serious health issues, and in the end his body was so eaten up with cancer he wasted away until he simply stopped breathing. Through the blessing of social media, I was able to follow along for the last few weeks of his life. People would show up to visit, life-long friends. They would sit with him, pray with him, weep with him, sing with him. Everyone knew death was waiting at the door. Yet to watch him in those final days was to watch a man who loved His God deeply, praising Him for His goodness as he began the climb through the ravine of the shadow of death.

Chad Vest
1973-2022

          I watched it from hundreds of miles away and I marveled. How could a man, struck down entirely too soon, leaving ministry and wife and children, some still small, praise God so sincerely? What grace. That man looked beautiful to me there on his deathbed. I admired him more at the end than I had for the 30 years I had known him. But that glory that rested on him was not his glory. It was reflected glory. God was the source of it, the originator, creator, and author of it, and owner of it. Ultimately, all glory belongs to God.

          It is not as if I glorify Him as I suffer and I receive nothing for it. I enjoy that reflected glory, but I also taste a deep joy in the process. 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. (I Peter 4.13) To be counted worthy by Him of suffering? What joy there is in that. (Acts 5.41)

          In the next few paragraphs, I would like to give you six ways your suffering produces His glory. In the process, I want to encourage you that as you suffer you fulfill His plan for your life exactly; you bring Him glory.

          First, we see that God is glorified when we trust Him in and through our suffering. Allow me to turn again to that inimitable example of suffering, Job, to show you this.

Job 1.6-12

6 Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them.

7 And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down in it.

8 And the Lord said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil?

9 Then Satan answered the Lord, and said, Doth Job fear God for nought?

10 Hast not thou made an hedge about him, and about his house, and about all that he hath on every side? thou hast blessed the work of his hands, and his substance is increased in the land.

11 But put forth thine hand now, and touch all that he hath, and he will curse thee to thy face.

12 And the Lord said unto Satan, Behold, all that he hath is in thy power; only upon himself put not forth thine hand. So Satan went forth from the presence of the Lord.

Job 13.15

15 Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him: But I will maintain mine own ways before him.

          I am not saying that all of our suffering is the direct result of a contest between God and the devil, but those around you know Whom you believe in. They see how often you are at church. They know how you are raising your family. They are well aware you are religious. And it makes God look good if you maintain your confidence in Him even when everything is falling to pieces.

          Big whup if you worship a god when things are going well. But when they are not? And you still kneel prostrate at His feet and weep of His goodness? Well then, that is different; it shouts to all and sundry what an amazing God He is. When you still love Him, still follow Him, still worship Him, still trust Him, and still serve Him even though He has allowed pain entrance into your life you are a powerful testimony of how wonderful He is.

          Second, we see that God is glorified when He turns bad into good. 

          It is undeniable that God turns suffering into good. Joseph said, But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive. (Genesis 50.20) As a pastor, I struggle to turn good into good, yet He spins suffering into beauty and does so effortlessly. It is wondrous to see and a direct evidence of how amazing He is. And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. (Romans 8.28) 

          The third way God is glorified in suffering is when His power is displayed. Think of the blind man in John 9, for example. He suffered for an entire lifetime so that Jesus could look amazing in healing him.

Christ Healing the Blind Man
Sebastiano Ricci c 1716 

John 9.1–3

1 And as Jesus passed by, he saw a man which was blind from his birth.

2 And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind?

3 Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

          I reiterate, this was not some macabre torture. It is a gracious kindness that the God of the universe would stoop so low as to use our suffering for the grand purpose of revealing or manifesting Himself. I am sure if you asked that blind man decades later if it was worth it he would have unhesitatingly agreed. “I was blind – so Jesus could heal me.” What an honor. He got to be the living, breathing example of the power of Jesus Christ.

          Fourth, God is glorified when we are justified.

          Suffering is rooted in loss, and loss is rooted in sin. In short, all suffering is somehow connected back to sin. Suffering exists because sin exists. Yet in spite of the power of sin, God is more than able to legally declare us justified in every action, thought, or deed. How should man be just with God? (Job 9.2). Society bends itself into a pretzel trying to find a way to cure the sin problem and the effects of sin. It throws money at it. It attempts to educate man out of sin. It gives him a new environment. Others descend in hopelessness to drug abuse. Governments mandate the mirage of shared prosperity that is socialism. The wealthy seek to insulate themselves from the effects of poverty and crime. Others turn to psychology or penance. False gospels abound. Yet nothing works; man is still haunted by his sin and the effects of it. …until Christ washes us in His blood and presents us entirely justified before His Father’s throne. Glory!

          Fifth, God is glorified when we are sanctified. I have previously written an entire post about this. God uses suffering to form the image of Christ in us.

          Sixth, God is glorified when we are glorified.

          Let us meditate on Paul’s explanation of this in Romans 8.

Romans 8.17–23

17 And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.

18 For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

19 For the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God.

20 For the creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of him who hath subjected the same in hope,

21 Because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

22 For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.

          To go from so low, denizens crawling through the sin-reeking swamps of Earth, to so high, citizens of Heaven. To go from so bad to so good. To go from so wretched to so glorified. To go from entirely wicked to wholly pure. Someday I will be glorified. Yes, that will be glory for me, but it will be more glory for Him. After all, He is the one Who has done it.

          God could have stopped the devil at the very beginning. He could have stopped the devil at every moment since. In preventing or stopping sin God also would have prevented or stopped all the loss and suffering that flows from sin. But He chooses to allow it to continue so that, amongst other reasons, there is a proper green screen on which He can display His love, His grace, His wisdom, His justice, His longsuffering, His mercy, His compassion, His care, His faithfulness, His power, His understanding, His knowledge, can display Himself. That we, as awful and low-down as we are, could be glorified, could reign with Him at His side, could be entirely and permanently and perfectly cured of all ill and wrong, that all sorrow and sighing and death could be done away… What a God He is.

          Beloved, He washed our eyes with tears so we could see. See what? The glory of God.