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.