WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?
SUFFERING IN HOPE
Romans 8: 17-27
INTRODUCTION
Philip Yancey in his book, "Disappointment with God" tells
the story of a mom, Maggie, who had two children with Cystic Fibrosis.
She was a Christian. Her son died at the age of twelve. Her daughter,
Peggie, surprisingly graduated from college and got a job. There was some
hope that she would actually survive this dreadful disease. However, when
she was 23 she suffered a long, painful and horrible death from cystic
fibrosis. This was in spite of many years of faith-filled prayer by hundreds
of people for her healing. Maggie wrote to Mr. Yancey some time after
her daughter’s death describing how she died in faith, to the glory of
God. However, in the letter she also described her reaction to her daughter’s
suffering and the fact that God loves his people and has power
to heal every disease. After describing some of the horror her daughter
experienced she writes, "So, it’s against this background of human
beings falling apart…that God, who could have helped, looked down on a
young woman devoted to Him, quite willing to die for Him to give Him glory,
and decided to sit on His hands and let her death top the horror charts
for cystic fibrosis deaths. I tell you Philip, it does not help to talk
of the good that results from pain. Nor does it help to talk of God almost
always letting the physical process of disease run its course. Because
if He ever intervenes, then at every point of human suffering He
makes a decision to intervene or not, and in Peggie’s case His choice
was to let C.F. rip. There are moments when my only responses are grief
and an anger as violent as any I have ever known…. Again I wonder, how
could he be in a situation like that and sit on his hands?"
I do not believe there is a more troubling or difficult problem than
this one posed by Peggie’s mom. If God is infinitely powerful and has
pledged himself to all who trust in Christ in love as his dear children
and sealed that love by killing his own Son, then why does he permit Christians
to suffer? Why are Christians in Sudan raped, murdered and sold into slavery?
Why are we beset with temptations to sin and why does he permit us to
succumb to sin? Why does he not answer our prayers to heal our children
or to cause a wayward spouse to repent? Now there is an evil and erroneous
way of dealing with this problem to which millions of professing Christians
subscribe. Millions of Christians of various theological traditions believe
what a man I do not know wrote to me in an email. He told me that it was,
without question, God’s will to heal Jared right now. The only thing hindering
his healing is whether or not Jane and I will believe God is going to
heal him. We must never speak negative words or listen to any negative
report. Jesus wants to heal him and we hold the key; we must never think
that God will not heal Jared. While he had the sense to not say it directly
it was everywhere implied in his letter, if Jared is not healed it is
our fault and if he is healed it is to our credit. This man and millions
of professing Christians like him believe that it is God’s will for Christians
to never be sick or to suffer in any way and that if we do suffer it is
only because of our own lack of faith. They believe that faith is believing
that God will do whatever you want him to do. You need to know that this
teaching is anti-Christ. It is false and is a blasphemy to God and destroys
people by destroying true faith.
As we began to see last week, the apostle Paul in Romans 8: 17-36 is
giving the biblical answer to the question, if God loves us and we have
been given his very own life and made his children, then why do we struggle
with temptation, sin, hardship, disease and persecution? If God is our
Father, why in the world are we suffering as we are? How can we have any
hope that any of God’s promises are going to come true when our son, who
loves Christ, is in the condition that he is in? Paul’s assertion in the
second half of Roman’s 8 is that…
MAIN POINT
The Christian life is full of hope in spite of suffering because…
I. Christ suffered in hope (v. 17)
We saw last week that Paul’s first answer is we are co-heirs with Christ.
In other words, all of God’s promises are true for us because of Jesus
and we obtain the promises the same way that Jesus obtained the promise
of glory, he suffered. We saw that these two things are infallibly linked
together, as Paul says at the end of v. 17, we are children and heirs
of God "…if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may
also share in his glory." The only people who are going to heaven
are those who have suffered with Christ. And everyone who suffers
with Christ is going to enjoy eternal happiness in the presence
of God. This is not a cause/effect relationship as if God rewards me with
heaven because I suffer. Rather, because we are co-heirs with Christ who
suffered and then gained glory so it is with us who are his followers.
Last week we saw there are primarily three ways we share in the sufferings
of Christ. First, we endure disease, accidents, being yelled at by your
wife or treated rude by the check out clerk trusting God, without grumbling
or complaining against God or man. Second, we spend our life fighting
against our own sin and repenting when we lose the battle. Third, we joyfully
choose to deny ourselves the pleasures of this world in order to love
and serve others. Anyone who teaches that Christians should not suffer
is lying to you. The only people who are Christians are those who are
sharing in the sufferings of Christ.
The Christian life is full of hope in spite of suffering because…
- Christ suffered in hope
- And because…
II. The creation suffers in hope (vv. 18-22)
Paul knows that the experience of pain and suffering causes people to
question the love of God, the power of God and the very existence of God.
So he says in v. 18, the future every true Christian is going to experience
is so amazing that the hardships we endure here are as nothing when compared
to the joy that awaits. Do not miss the offhand way in which Paul describes
our present experience as an experience of suffering. He simply assumes,
because we are coheirs with Christ, that the common experience of every
Christian living on planet earth is a life of suffering. However, the
future that God has promised to give to all who belong to Christ is so
amazing and so glorious that the sufferings of Christ that I am now experiencing
are as nothing compared to it.
Verse 18 is the authoritative description of hope. Hope is the confident
expectation of good in the future that enables us to endure the difficulties
of the present. Hope does not mean a wish as, "I hope it doesn’t
rain tomorrow." I want you children to imagine that one night your
dad comes to the dinner table with a silly grin on his face and holding
an envelope. Before dinner is served he announces to the entire family
that in six weeks the entire family is going to take a week’s vacation
to Disney World in Orlando, FL. Then, he opens the envelope and pulls
out airplane tickets for each member of the family and three day passes
for Disney World, Epcot Center and Universal Studios. Your eyes grow huge
with excitement and you press your dad to describe again when you will
be going and how you will get there and what you will do when you arrive.
Your dad has made a promise and you know the promise is true because he’s
your dad and because he has already paid a lot of money so you can go
on vacation. Now, during the next six weeks you are looking forward with
hope to going on vacation. Let’s suppose that during those six weeks you
disobey your dad and he has to discipline you. Or suppose he tells you
to mow the lawn or do the dishes. Or suppose you get the flu and lay in
bed for three days while everyone else is outside enjoying the freedom
of summer. During the course of those six weeks there will most likely
be many things that will happen to you that will not be pleasant, may
indeed be painful. However, will any of that "suffering" negate
the promise that your dad has made for you to go on vacation? In fact,
will not the thought of going on vacation help you to endure the suffering?
Won’t you be thinking when you are mowing the lawn, in a few weeks I’ll
be at Disneyland? Won’t you spend time during those six weeks reading
some of the brochures that your dad has provided about the amusement parks?
Won’t you talk with your friends about how excited you are to go? Won’t
you talk with your siblings about all the fun you are going to have? In
other words, won’t you live in hope?
This is what Paul is doing. He is absolutely certain, because of the
price God has paid to secure our salvation, the death and resurrection
of Christ, that all of God’s promises are going to come true. He has a
confident expectation that the joy and happiness that is coming is infinitely
greater than all the suffering he must endure to get there. The thought
of what is coming fills him with hope, joy, and peace in the midst of
his sufferings now.
Now notice what Paul says next. Verse 19 begins with "for".
The reason Paul is absolutely certain that the future joy is infinitely
greater than the present sufferings is because the creation is waiting
in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. What is Paul
talking about in vv. 19-22 and how is this the explanation for his exuberant
hope? You are going to have to put on your thinking caps in order
to follow Paul’s logic. The reason I am confident that the future joy
is infinitely greater than the present suffering is that the entire created
order is currently waiting with eager anticipation for the sons of God
to be revealed. There are two questions that this verse raises. First,
why is the entire creation eagerly waiting for the sons of God to be revealed?
Paul answers that question in vv. 19-22. Second, to what does the phrase,
"the sons of God to be revealed", refer? Paul answers that question
in v. 23.
Why is the entire creation eagerly waiting? Let’s just be clear that
when we say that someone is eagerly waiting for something, that means
they are confident that good is coming, but the good is not being experienced
at the present moment. The creation is waiting in eager anticipation because
it was subjected to frustration. Frustration is the word used in the book
of Ecclesiastes 31 times and translated "futility or vanity".
When do we feel frustrated or as if something is futile or vain? We feel
this way when things don’t work the way they are supposed to work. We
feel this way when we put in a large amount of effort in a task or relationship
and then it doesn’t work. This is how the entire creation feels. It isn’t
working the way it’s supposed to work. It isn’t fulfilling the purposes
it was created to fulfill.
Notice, this didn’t happen because the creation by nature is futile but
because someone enslaved creation to futility and decay. Paul is referring
to what happened in Genesis 1-3, particularly 3:14-19. God said about
the world that he created that it was very good. It perfectly conformed
to his will and to his desires. It functioned perfectly, fulfilling its
purposes. However, when Adam and Eve ate from the forbidden tree God cursed
creation, the home of mankind. God enslaved creation to the power of Satan.
He made the bearing and raising of children to be full of pain and misery.
And he decreed that the entire created order not cooperate with man’s
efforts to subdue it and use it. And the greatest evidence of the curse
that the world is now under is death. Death makes mockery of every human
ambition and hope. As you read the OT, especially the book of Ecclesiastes
death destroys all pleasure with its inevitability. We are merely walking
corpses and the world we live in is a world full of death and therefore
full of futility. The creation is eagerly waiting for freedom from this
decay, this death, this futility.
Now notice that God subjected creation to death, corruption and futility,
"in hope". Paul is thinking of Genesis 3:15 and the hundreds
of other promises in the OT that declare that death and suffering are
not the last word. God kicked humans out of Eden and placed us in a world
of suffering with the full intention of saving a people out of this suffering
and into a new heaven and a new earth through a Savior. He is going to
remake human beings and the creation so that a holy people will live in
a holy place once more. We are not living in God’s plan B. Adam and Eve’s
sin did not take him by surprise. He has a plan that he is working out
that will end in all of his people and all creation being set free from
decay, death and futility. But notice it is still in the future.
Then, in verse 22, Paul uses the most powerful metaphor to show what
the present experience of the universe is like. He says that creation,
since Adam and Eve’s sin, has been groaning like a woman in childbirth.
Do you see what that means? All the pain and suffering in the world is
like the pain and suffering of a woman delivering a baby. It is painful
and it is present due to human sin but it is not futile, wasted, or pointless
suffering. It is necessary for the baby to be born. There is joy coming,
after the pain. The entire creation has been experiencing the pains of
childbirth since the fall. It is like the woman who is in pain but who
is full of certainty and joy that a baby is about to come. The joy that
is coming is the "revelation of the sons of God" or the "glorious
freedom of the children of God". Verse 23 tells us that these phrases
are referring to, "the redemption of our bodies", that is, our
resurrection from the dead at the return of Christ. The end for which
the world is heading is that when God’s people are delivered from death
in totality and given immortal bodies, at that same time, the entire universe
will be delivered from Satan, death, futility and decay.
Don’t miss the connection Paul is making between creation’s groaning
and his certainty that the future joy every Christian will experience
makes the current suffering seems as if it were nothing. All of the death,
futility and decay in the universe are merely evidence of the eager anticipation
of the glory that is coming. God subjected the world to this suffering
in hope, not in despair. The suffering serves a purpose, just as the suffering
of the woman in childbirth serves the purpose of bearing the child. I
want your experience and my experience to be Paul’s experience in v. 18.
I want us to experience the sufferings of the present time full of hope
because we are so convinced that what is coming will make the present
suffering seem as nothing. There is only one way for that to be true.
You have to want the glory of heaven more than you want the pleasures
of this world. If a woman in childbirth is unhappy that she is having
a baby, then the suffering of childbirth will seem futile and she will
despair. So I tell you what Peter said in 1 Peter 1:13, "Set your
hope fully on the grace to be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."
The Christian life is full of hope in spite of suffering because…
- Christ suffered in hope
- The creation suffers in hope
- And because…
III. We were saved in hope (vv. 24-25)
Verse 23 is connected most closely with vv. 26-27. I will look at that
connection in a moment. What Paul does in vv. 24-25 is insert a sort of
parenthesis to talk about the definition of hope. The reason he does this
is because in v. 23 he said that Christians are waiting for our adoption
as sons. The phrase, we are waiting for our adoption as sons ought to
set off all kinds of alarm bells in our brains, if we’ve been reading
Paul’s letter carefully. Look up in v. 15. "We did not receive the
Spirit who makes us slaves again to fear but we received the Spirit of
adoption as sons". The same Greek word is used in vv. 15 and 23 but
notice the tenses of the verbs. In v. 15 we already have been adopted
as sons but in v. 23 we are waiting to be adopted as sons. Which is it?
Are we adopted as sons or are we waiting to be adopted as sons? The answer
is both. We have been adopted but we are still waiting to experience the
full blessings of our adoption. It’s what v. 17 said, we are children
but we are waiting for our inheritance.
In v. 24 Paul then says, "In this hope we were saved." Again,
notice we are already saved. But then if we compare this verb tense to
5:9 we discover that we will not be saved until the future. Therefore,
we are saved in hope. We have been given something in the present that
guarantees something far greater in the future. We will see what it
is we have been given in the present in a moment but first Paul has to
explain something about the nature of hope. He says, "But hope that
is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already sees?"
We know that we became Christians through faith, by believing the promise
that God would forgive our sins and receive us as his children because
of what Christ did for us. Therefore, we necessarily were saved in hope
of a future fulfillment of the promise. Hope eagerly waits for what is
promised. If you already have it, then there is no need for hope.
But you entered the Christian life in hope, not obtaining what was promised
but looking forward to it. Every saved person lives in confident expectation
that God is going to fulfill his promise that we will live with him forever
in eternal pleasures. In v. 25 Paul then describes the characteristic
of all those who have hope. If you are living in hope than you are persevering
patiently while you wait. Confident expectation of good in the future,
i.e., hope, inspires and motivates endurance or perseverance in and through
trouble.
I have read almost every book written by the late Louis L’More. He wrote
mostly westerns. He vividly and I think accurately talked about the hardships
that people endured on the wagon trains that took people across the Great
Plains and the Rocky Mountains to Oregon and California. The thirst, hunger,
disease, death, attacks by Native Americans, loss of property that these
men and women experienced to get to the west coast is amazing. Why did
they do it and how did they do it? They were convinced, whether truly
or not, that California and Oregon would provide for them and their families
land and wealth and comfort that could not be obtained where they currently
lived. They believed a promise of a better life and they lived in the
confident expectation that when they arrived, life would be good. It was
this hope that enabled them to endure amazing amounts of suffering. It
wasn’t all suffering. Along the way they enjoyed the company of those
they traveled with. Some met their spouses among the other travelers and
were married. Children were born along the way. They enjoyed water from
fresh mountain streams and eating deer and antelope and bison. I’m sure
they admired the scenery and the stops for rest along the way. However,
they persisted and persevered through all the trouble and didn’t make
homes along the way because they were sure that great joy was coming.
This is exactly how Christians live. We are absolutely convinced that
"our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies" will be
so glorious and joyful that we will not stop on the journey until we are
safely home. We endure the suffering and resist the temptation to build
our homes here because we know that Jesus came not to bring heaven to
earth but to bring us to heaven.
I was having a discussion with one of my children this week when I said
something that I’ve been thinking about ever since. I said, "The
only people going to heaven are those who are going to heaven." Do
you see what I’m saying? The only people who went to Oregon were those
who went to Oregon. Those who stayed back in Illinois and talked about
how great Oregon was, did not go. The people who started to go but then
built homes in Nebraska, didn’t go. The only people who went to Oregon
were those who believed that to be in Oregon was better than anything
else and then who endured the suffering of getting there trusting the
promise and enduring in hope, a confident expectation that the joy to
come would make all the suffering now worth it.
The Christian life is full of hope in spite of suffering because…
- Christ suffered in hope
- The creation suffers in hope
- We were saved in hope
- And because…
IV. The Holy Spirit guarantees our hope (vv. 23, 26-27)
I skipped over a part of v. 23 because it is so tightly connected to
vv. 26-27. Notice how Paul describes Christians. He says we have the firstfruits
of the Spirit and we groan inwardly while eagerly waiting. The groaning
is the groaning of a woman in the pain of childbirth. We groan because
of the pain and we groan because we want the joy that
is coming. The groaning is not just the groaning of suffering but the
groaning of longing for the fullness of what has been promised. Every
true Christian lives in this world groaning over the incompleteness of
our salvation and out of longing to have the whole thing. We live in a
state of perpetual sorrow because we know that we have not received the
fullness of the promise and we live in joy because we know that
we are no longer condemned, the HS is helping us and our future is certain.
This is true because we have received part of the promise, which is what
Paul shows by the phrase, "the firstfruits of the Spirit". The
word firstfruit throughout the NT refers to the beginning of a process
that will most certainly be completed. The meaning is very close to what
Paul says in other places about the HS. In both 1 Cor. and Eph. the HS
is God’s down payment to us on heaven. What is a down payment? It is the
first payment towards a debt or obligation. It is also a guarantee that
you will pay the rest. In other words, the Holy Spirit is the first installment
of our salvation and he guarantees that we will be given what has been
promised.
In what sense is the Holy Spirit the first installment and the guarantee
of our salvation? The HS is the first installment on heaven and our guarantee
of it in a number of ways but we are going to limit our answer to just
what vv. 26-27 tell us. First, Paul tells us that the HS helps us in our
weakness. What weakness is he talking about? The weakness of living in
a world that is decaying. The weakness of being made into God’s children
and yet not possessing what we have been promised. As John Piper said
in a sermon, "…the sickness and futility and frustration and decay
and misery of life on the way to heaven." The HS helps us hold fast
to Christ in hope in the midst of the suffering. When a person is enduring
suffering with faith in Christ, we should see the work of the HS.
But there is a specific way that Paul says that the Holy Spirit helps
us. He says that a part of our weakness is that we don’t know what to
pray for and so the HS prays for us. Again, Piper says, "So what
is it that we don’t know what to pray for in this weakness? I think the
answer is: we don’t know the secret will of God about our sicknesses and
our hardships. We don’t know whether we should pray for healing or for
strength to endure. Of course, both are right and it’s not wrong to pray
for either. But we long to pray with great faith, and we groan that we
are not sure what God’s way will be with this sickness or this loss or
this imprisonment. We just don’t know." Dr. Moo adds in his commentary,
"…we cannot presume to equate our petitions with the will of God."
We groan in the suffering because we don’t know what God’s will is in
it.
How does the Holy Spirit help us in this expression of our weakness?
He meets our inability to know God’s will with a full and thorough knowledge
of the Father’s will. He sees our need and he asks the Father to meet
our need perfectly. This is how he sustains us in our weakness. God always
listens to and answers the Holy Spirit because the Holy Spirit always
asks God to do his perfect will in our case. The fact that the HS prays
with groans shows that his praying for us is filled with empathy and compassion
for us. He loves us and cares what happens to us. He, the Holy Spirit,
"feels our pain" and knows God’s will in the matter and so he
asks the Father to do for us what we need and what the Father wills. The
HS prays for us the way Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s prayer.
The Lord’s prayer isn’t just something we mindlessly repeat, it shows
how true Christians pray. Our first concern is that God be worshipped
and treated with the respect he deserves. We yearn for the coming of his
kingdom in fullness. We long to have his will done. Then we ask him to
give us what we need today that we might do his will. Some of his will
has been revealed to us in his word and some of it is hidden in eternal
purposes that we do not know. But the HS knows all of God’s will. So he
asks God to do his perfect will in our case. Every Christian wants above
all else, God’s will to be done. That is what we are to be praying for
and so that is what we want the HS to pray for us as well, isn’t it?
This should not breed passivity in our prayers but rather great boldness.
First, there are a great number of things that we know God wants to do
and that we ought to be asking him to do. If we know something is God’s
will then we should boldly ask for it because God always hears and answers
requests that accord with his will. We know what these things are from
his word. If you are a husband you should be asking God to enable you
to love your wife as Christ loved the church. If you are a wife, you should
be asking God to enable you to submit to your husband as the church does
to Christ. If you are a child you should be asking God to enable you to
honor your parents. If you are a worker you should be asking God to enable
you to do your work with all your heart as if you were serving Christ.
There are hundreds of things you and I know God will do if we will but
ask because he has clearly told us his will. However, there are also many
things we do not know God’s will about. Therefore, as we groan over our
inability to know and to pray effectually about these things we should
remember and thank God for the fact that the HS is helping us in our weakness.
He is asking the Father to do his perfect will. He is taking our groans
and transforming them into perfect, though unknown to us, groans before
God the Father who hears and answers.
Tell about my worship of Christ in those first days as I sat and prayed
by Jared’s bed. What I want more than anything else is God’s will to be
done. Is it God’s will that he be glorified in Jared’s healing or in our
enduring with patience this suffering? I do not know and this adds to
the suffering. There is a day coming when we will always know what God’s
will is. Until that day we rejoice and rest because the HS, who dwells
within us and loves us, prays according to God’s will perfectly.
The Christian life is full of hope in spite of suffering because…
- Christ suffered in hope
- The creation suffers in hope
- We were saved in hope
- The Holy Spirit guarantees our hope
©
Copyright 2002 John Swanson.
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