Because God, for His own good reasons, did not choose to create this world free of pain, suffering and grief, there are many people who think that God is evil and unfeeling toward the very human race that He created. Their attitude is that God just sits up there on His throne in a perfect paradise while we are left here on earth to fend for ourselves in a world of evil and suffering. They think that God couldn’t care less about what happens to us down here. Or worse, they think that God is just sitting on His throne waiting for the opportunity to slam us for doing something wrong, like violating one of the Ten Commandments, which God knows we are unable to keep in the first place. They believe that God has no clue about what is to be a human and suffer physical and emotional pain. Nothing could be further from the truth!
How do we know that? We know it because God Himself chose to come to earth and suffer humiliation, rejection and the most excruciating physical pain that man could devise. He did it through the third Person of the Trinity, God the Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus, fully God and fully man, came to earth as a human baby, lived among us, suffered all of the daily things that we go through. He got tired, hungry, thirsty, lonely, rejected, mocked and hated. Then Jesus willingly chose to allow Himself to be falsely accused, illegally tried, beaten, tortured and crucified.
Oh, whenever we begin to doubt that God exists, or that He is ignorant of what we go through, or if He is worthy of the name God, since He chose to create this world that often seems to be filled to the brim with pain and suffering, then we need remember that He also chose to enter this world, as one of us. He chose to suffer more than any of us and to die in the most humiliating, physically and emotionally painful manner ever devised by mankind, just to allow us to have the opportunity to choose to have eternal life with Him in His Kingdom of Heaven. Our God is very personally familiar with suffering and death, even the death of a loved one.
God could have simply turned His back on us, just as we humans turned, and still turn, our backs on Him. He did not have to provide a way for us be reconciled to Him. Yet God chose to do it. Jesus chose to do it for us. Why? Jesus did it because he loves us. Jesus did it because He viewed the suffering from an eternal perception. Yet it was not His eternity at stake. It was to secure our eternity for which He suffered!
We too must view any suffering with an eye to the long-term benefits. For example, is it worth it to you to suffer the pain of a thirty second injection in order to avoid the terrible effects of smallpox or polio? Are several months or years of suffering through treatments, such as chemotherapy, worth it to be free from the effects of the diseases the treatments are designed to battle? Sometimes there are wonderful long-term benefits that require a time of suffering to attain. Jesus knew that to be true. Hebrews 12:2 tells us that “it was for the glories of Heaven set before Him that Jesus suffered the cross.” Again, remember that it was those glories that His suffering would purchase for us, not Him, as He already owned all of the glory Heaven offers.
Jesus also told us that we have to go through suffering when we become His followers in order to obtain eternal life in His Kingdom. Listen to Matthew 10:21-22 and 38-39: “Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, children will rebel against their parents and have them put to death. All men will hate you because of Me, but he who stands firm to the end will be saved.” And “anyone who does not take up his cross and follow Me is not worthy of Me. He who loves his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”
Also hear John 16:1-4: “All this I have told you so that you will not go astray. They will put you out of the synagogue; in fact a time will come when anyone who kills you will think he is offering a service to God. They will do such things because they have not known the Father or Me. I have told you this so that you will remember that I warned you…”
In this country at this time in history they are not currently killing us, but they are indeed involved in lesser persecutions and are attempting to eliminate any vestige or mention of Jesus Christ in public. The bottom line is, we Christians will suffer both the emotional and physical effects of living in this fallen world. So it is obvious that God allows and even uses suffering to accomplish His greater purposes. Whether we suffer little, much, or constantly during our lifetime here on earth, our human minds tend to focus on the present, the here and now, while God is focused on eternity – an eternity of good.
What we consider to be unbearable suffering that will never end is in reality but the wink of an eye in all of eternity. The all- important thing is how we deal with the suffering. For suffering tests our true love that can only be found in and through Almighty God. What does the Bible say about the proper eternal perspective we should have regarding suffering? Here are but a few of the passages to help us in that regard:
We are not in a position to judge Him. The final answers to suffering lie with Him, because He is God; we are not. He is the One who knows the end from the beginning. He is the One who can help us to develop an attitude of joy in suffering, as did the early Christians. There are many, many historical sources, other than the Bible, which document the large number of Christians who were killed in horribly painful ways for their beliefs.
Most compelling of all are the multitudes of historical references to the odd attitude of the Christians who were going to suffer these excruciatingly painful deaths. The condemned Christians are, time and time again, referred to as showing joy, contentment and peace as they were being taken to their deaths. And all those Christians had to do to avoid those horrible deaths was denounce Christianity, curse Jesus, and bow down to the emperor’s statue. These martyrs believed, and we must believe, that God’s promises are true. God promises to reconcile all injustices and He promises to reward those who suffer for His sake and to His glory.
God tells us that these rewards are so wonderful, so AWESOME, that we cannot even begin to imagine how great and beautiful they are. So when suffering comes our way, let us not run from God. Let us run to God. Let us talk with Him and pray for Him to help us to gain an eternal perspective on our suffering. Let us ask Him to show us the benefits of our suffering. Let us ask Him to help us to be like Jesus who “for the glories of Heaven set before Him, endured the cross.” Amen.