WHERE IS GOD WHEN IT HURTS?
THE NECESSITY OF SUFFERING
Romans 8: 17
INTRODUCTION
Last week I explained why it is we are going to spend 9 weeks talking
about suffering and the Christian. We also looked briefly at Job to see
the complex way that the Scriptures describe God’s relationship to suffering
and evil. We are going to spend the bulk of our time over the next two
months looking at two passages in the NT. This morning we are going to
begin 4 weeks looking at Romans chapter 8. I picked this chapter for two
reasons. First, it contains a verse that every Christian who has ever
suffered loves. Romans 8:28 says, "And we know that in all things
God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according
to his purpose." I want to know how God can make such an astounding
promise. I also want to know what it means. The second reason I chose
this chapter is because of v.18. Paul says, "I consider that our
present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be
revealed to us." I want to know what makes the future so amazing
that the sufferings we endure while living here are going to seem insignificant
by comparison. I want to know how to live joyfully in the midst of the
suffering.
A little over a month ago I received a newsletter from some good friends
that serve as missionaries with New Tribes Mission in Papua New Guinea.
They have been teaching the gospel, training pastors and translating the
Scriptures among the Lamogai people. There is a thriving church there
in the jungles as a result of their work and their partner’s work. A couple
from the Lamogai church was sent out to a neighboring village to teach
the gospel there and plant a church. They had one child, a son. During
the last year, while the husband and father faithfully taught the gospel
in this village, this Christian couple watched their nine-year-old son
die from the ravages of a cancer that began in his jaw. He suffered and
died without any medical help either to slow the cancer or to relieve
the pain. Around the same time I heard a report on the Christian radio
station of a 21-year-old young man who was part of a team of young people
that had moved into a drug infested neighborhood in Miami to begin an
outreach to the children in this community. The team was preparing for
a neighborhood carnival when this young man, while playing around on one
of those huge air pillows fell off, hit his head and died. In the room
next to Jared’s up in Skaalen Nursing Home there is a man who is 100 years
old but who suffers from Alzheimer’s. His wife lives at Skaalen as well
and she suffers from Alzheimer’s as well, but even worse. They don’t even
know that their spouse is in the same building. He was the founding pastor
of the Evangelical Free Church in Stoughton. He sings hymns and prays
in his dementia. None of this suffering is the result of persecution.
All of this suffering came to faithful Christians.
I was talking with a young mom one time, who was a Christian and who
was very distressed by how much she was yelling at her children. She was
perplexed because as she told me, "God doesn’t want me to yell at
my children. I don’t want to yell at my children. I plead with God to
help me to not yell at my children but I still yell at my children."
Contrary to what most of our TV preachers tell us, Christians suffer,
a lot. We suffer from illness and accidents and depression and failed
marriages and unemployment. We suffer the guilt of our sin and from our
seeming powerlessness against it. Trouble all by itself is distressful
but it is more so for the Christian because of all the promises we have
been given. Romans 8: 17-36 answers the question that the suffering of
Christians raises.
The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Romans spends chapters 5-8 describing
all the benefits that Christ has won for all those who believe in him.
Just look with me for a moment at some of the things that Paul says just
in the first half of chapter 8. God no longer condemns us. We have been
set free from the law of sin and death. The righteous requirements of
the law are fully met in us. Our minds, because they are controlled by
the Spirit are life and peace. The Holy Spirit will give life to our mortal
bodies. The Holy Spirit so leads us that by Him we kill our sinful deeds.
He enables us to sin less and less. Then in vv. 14-16, Paul describes
the greatest benefit we have obtained and that is that we are now God’s
children. As Paul winds up his vivid description of all that we have obtained
in Christ he is very aware of the problem that he has just created. As
Dr. Doug Moo points out, "How can those who have been set free "from
the law of sin and death" die? How can God’s very own, dearly loved
children suffer?" How can those who are controlled by the Spirit,
sin? The sin and suffering of God’s people seems to call into question
the reality of God’s promises. If there is so much suffering in the lives
of Christians, how can we maintain hope that God’s promise of eternal
life is true? How do we know that God loves us, if life is so hard? These
are the questions that Paul sets out to answer in 8:17-36. My original
plan was to cover vv. 17-27 this morning. However, the more I thought
about v. 17, the more I realized that there is just too much here that
we need to understand for me to try and cover all eleven verses this morning.
So, this morning we are going to examine just v. 17. I’ve renamed the
sermon also. It is now, "The Necessity of Suffering." Next week
we will cover vv. 18-28. If you’re taking notes, that means we will spend
all of our time on the first point.
MAIN POINT
Every Christian follows Christ in a life of suffering that leads to
a life of eternal joy
The relationship of the Christian with God is described in the most intimate
terms in vv. 14-16. God loves us as a Father loves his own children and
we return that love by calling him "Daddy". We who were God’s
hated enemies, through the work of Christ, have been adopted into God’s
family and given his very own life. Rather than hating God and being hated
by him we love him and he loves us. Paul, in v. 17 adds to this concept
of our being God’s beloved children by making the further assertion that
we are not only adopted children but because we are adopted children,
then we are heirs of God. By using the language of inheritance, Paul immediately
points out two things. First, we are like children of a very powerful
and wealthy man. However, we are not simply the children of some human,
we are the children of God. Just imagine what it would be like to be the
son of Bill Gates or some other wealthy or powerful man. Can you imagine
the sense of security and optimism you would live with as his son? Our
Father is far more powerful and generous than the wealthiest human imaginable
is. However, the second thing that Paul’s use of inheritance language
tells us is that we do not yet possess all that God is going to give us.
God will pour out on us incomprehensible benefits. We will receive from
God advantages that stagger the imagination. However, to be an heir necessarily
implies a period of waiting until we receive the inheritance.
Now, we are not only the beneficiaries of God’s estate but we are joint
heirs with Christ. In other words, our inheritance will come to us because
we belong to Christ and in the same manner it comes to Christ.
Not only did Christ purchase our inheritance at the cost of his own life,
but also he is the model of how it is that we are going to gain our inheritance.
That is why Paul concludes with this statement, "if indeed we share
in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory."
The two halves of this last clause are irrevocably connected to one another.
Only those who share in the sufferings of Christ will also share in his
glory. We will not share in Christ’s glory, that eternal inheritance,
unless we also share in his sufferings. This leads to two questions that
are absolutely necessary for us to answer. First, what do we mean by the
sufferings of Christ? Second, what does it mean for us to share in those
sufferings?
What do we mean by the sufferings of Christ?
Some of you may remember that in the catechism that we are memorizing
as a church one of the questions we asked and answered went like this:
"What did Christ’s humiliation consist of?" (Humiliation is
another way to say "sufferings".) "Christ’s humiliation
consisted of his being born, and that under humble circumstances; under
the OT law, his experiencing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God,
and the curse of death on the cross; burial and the power of death for
a time." The sufferings of Christ that Paul is talking about in this
verse are not simply his betrayal, trial, persecution at the hands of
the Jewish council and Roman soldiers and finally his death and burial.
This refers to the sufferings of his entire life. I know this, not only
because this is what the authors of the Westminster Shorter Catechism
thought. In vv. 18-22, Paul goes on to describe the suffering that is
in the world due to God’s curse upon it in response to human sin. Paul,
in the context, does not talk about the suffering of persecution but the
general suffering that everything and everyone in the whole world experiences
because we live in a fallen world. I want you to think with me about all
the sufferings of Jesus.
- Jesus suffered all the indignities of being human and living in a
fallen world.
Jesus suffered, as a man, all the ways that humans around the world suffer.
It’s important for you to know that Jesus didn’t cheat. He didn’t use
his divine power to alter any part of the environment that he grew up
in. We know this for several reasons. In the Isaiah 53 we are told that
the Messiah "…had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing
in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected
by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom
men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not." We
are told in the gospels that Jesus was hungry, thirsty and tired. We are
told that he was tempted in every way that we are tempted, yet he never
sinned. No one knew who Jesus was for 30 years and even after he began
doing miracles, no one really knew who he was. His mother and brothers,
in the first year of his public ministry, came to Capernaum to forcibly
take him back to Nazareth because they thought he was crazy. His family
did not know that he was the Messiah, which means that he did not exercise
his power at all prior to his public ministry.
Meditate with me for a moment on the ways Jesus shared in our suffering
as human beings. He was surrounded by sickness and death. He lived among
people who had no medical technology like we do. No pain killers, no antibiotics,
no knowledge of microbes that cause disease. You can be sure that he witnessed
the deaths of many children, probably many of his close relatives. He
went through the loss of his human father, Joseph, as a young man. What
kind of suffering did he observe Joseph go through? What kind of grief
and anguish did he witness and participate in as his mother and siblings
grieved? As the oldest son, he experienced the burden of caring for his
widowed mother and any of his siblings who were still at home as was most
likely. The Scriptures are silent on this matter, but I would presume
that he was sick, because he was fully human. He hit his thumb with the
hammer. He cut the wood wrong. Pieces didn’t fit together as he wanted
them to. People we dissatisfied with his work and complained about it
to him. Other children made fun of him. He had at least six siblings.
You can be sure that they argued with him and took advantage of him. Adults
yelled at him for no good reason. His parents were unjust in their treatment
of him. He grew up in poverty, eating a very simple diet. He suffered
the impatience of Joseph as his father taught him his trade of carpentry.
He suffered all the indignities that being human entails.
- Jesus suffered under the unrelenting pressure of temptation to sin
Not only did he suffer in all the external ways that we suffer but he
suffered under the temptations of sin in ways we cannot even begin to
understand. He was tempted to sin, just like we are, only he never gave
in. He felt the pressure to retaliate when his siblings wronged him, yet
he never once permitted himself a self-righteous, vindictive thought,
let alone speak words of retaliation or cursing upon others. He never
once complained against the unjust treatment of his parents. He never
once complained that he had to work harder than everyone else. He never
asked why his brother James didn’t have to do the dishes. While he grieved,
he didn’t murmur and complain against God when his father died. He never
got defensive when accused of poor craftsmanship by those who were trying
to take advantage of him. As a single man for 33 years, he felt the pressure
to engage in sexual sin and yet he never once had an impure or lustful
thought or impulse towards a woman. The suffering of Jesus in regard to
sin is almost unimaginable. He never gave in, not once. He lived with
the constant pressure to sin, but never once gave in to sin. We have so
little experience at what it takes to resist sin because we give into
it so easily. We can only bear the pressure of temptation for short periods
of time before we either give in or God mercifully removes the temptation.
However, for Jesus there was unrelenting pressure to break God’s law,
to vindicate himself and prove who he was. Yet, he never gave in to a
single sinful thought. Have you ever done something good for another person
that the other person misunderstood and accused you of doing wrong? Then
you feel the anger and self-righteousness rise in you and the desire to
prove your innocence and to get justice by inflicting pain on the other
person by proving how wrong they are to treat you like this. I don’t know
about your family, but this kind of stuff happens multiple times every
day in our home. Jesus grew up in a big family so you can be sure that
he had this happen to him all the time and yet he never once gave in to
the judgmental thinking or self-justifying and critical speech that flows
from our tongues like water from a poisoned spring.
- Jesus chose all the suffering he endured for the glory of God
and the good of others
Not only did Jesus suffer the manifold ways that all humans suffer but
he chose to suffer. As the eternal Son of God, he freely chose to become
a man and to submit himself to all these sufferings that we have no choice
in. Not only did he choose to enter into the suffering that is simply
part of existence in this broken world, but he also chose to add to his
suffering by leaving home, declaring God’s truth to rebellious and hostile
humanity, choosing as one of his closest companions a man he knew would
betray him. He chose to endure the ignorance and unbelief of the mass
of humanity. He chose to love men who completely misunderstood who he
was or what he was doing and to be used by them to further their own ambitions.
He chose to live a life of risk and discomfort and ultimately, betrayal,
beating and a horrible death on the cross out of love for God and love
for people. It’s one thing to suffer the loss of your father, it’s another
thing to be betrayed by a close friend, abandoned by all who you thought
were your closest friends and handed over to be mistreated by your enemies
and killed when you did nothing wrong. In fact, when you did everything
out of love for those who are mistreating you.
- All of the sufferings that Jesus endured are unjust.
Jesus is God and Jesus is a perfect man. As God, Jesus deserves all praise,
honor, trust, and obedience. All things and all people belong to him.
All things owe their existence to him. He, alone, because he is God ought
to never be treated with disrespect. As the perfect man, he never did
anything to make it just for him to suffer in any way. Disease, accidents,
death, the scorn of others, death on a cross, none of this did he ever
deserve. He is the only child to ever live who could have ever truly said,
when a sibling received a privilege that he did not receive, "It’s
not fair!" He’s the only person who ever lived who could say, when
yelled at by a brother, "I don’t deserve to be treated like this."
The sufferings of Christ are completely and totally unfair.
- God the Father loved his Son in and through all the suffering, even
when he deserted him on the cross.
"This is my beloved Son." When you look at the suffering of
Jesus you have to wonder, where was God? How could a loving Father permit
and ordain such suffering for a beloved Son? Yet, the Scriptures affirm
that this is indeed the case. The Father loved the Son in the cross and
the Son loved the Father in the cross. The Father aimed to give the
Son the best that he could possibly give him, eternal glory and so he
gave him the cross by which he gained the glory.
- Jesus’ sufferings are the cause of the glory he is now experiencing
and that he will experience in the future.
Phil. 2: 5-11, Heb. 10:12-14, Rev. 5: 9-14
Jesus, in the midst of all the suffering, never once experienced despair
or hopelessness. He groaned under the weight of the anticipation of the
cross, but he never gave way to hopelessness. In Hebrews 12:3 we are told
that Jesus, "for the joy set before him, endured the cross, despising
its shame…" Jesus believed the promises of God in the OT that guaranteed
that the Messiah would be vindicated. He believed the promise in Psalm
16 that he would not be abandoned to the grave, nor would he see decay.
He knew that the Lord had made known to him the path to life and would
fill him with eternal pleasures at his right hand forever. Again, you
need to know that Jesus did not endure his sufferings by cheating, by
using his divine power to do what we cannot do. He believed the promises
of God and so lived in hope, in spite of the suffering. He did not alleviate
his suffering in some supernatural way but bore it all in hope. (Next
week we are going to talk about what is hope and how do we live in it.)
What does it mean for us to share in Christ’s sufferings?
I want to first point out that there are at least two ways that our sufferings
differ from Jesus’ sufferings. First, there is a sense in which none of
our suffering, in this life is unjust. The suffering that is in the world
is here due to sin and we are sinners and therefore it is just that we
suffer. In addition there is a portion of my suffering that is directly
caused by my own deliberate sins. The reality is that no human being that
is living is suffering as he or she really deserves. It really is true
as some of you have heard me say that when we are asked, "how are
you?" that we ought to say, "Better than I deserve." Jeremiah,
the prophet says in Lamentations 3: 39, "Why should any living man
complain when punished for his sins?" Second, the sufferings of Jesus
were for us in ways that our suffering can never be for others. His sufferings
paid for our sins and gained for us God’s righteousness. Our suffering,
while it may be out of love for others and may bring aid to others, can
never atone for sin. God never takes people to heaven just because they
suffer. My sufferings can never pay the penalty for someone else’s sins.
But having said that, we need to understand that we are to suffer just
like Jesus if we are going to experience the glory of Jesus.
- We suffer the "common" pain that is in the world due to
sin with Jesus
This doesn’t mean that we simply suffer the way every other human suffers.
Rather it means we suffer the pain that is common to all humans as
Jesus suffered and with Jesus. Jared’s accident does not automatically
qualify as sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Having a spouse commit
adultery does not necessarily mean you are suffering with Christ. Resisting
the temptation to steal a tool from work does not inevitably mean you
are enduring with Christ. The way you turn common suffering into suffering
with Christ is first by enduring it the way that Jesus did. He lived by
faith. So, we do not retaliate when we are insulted but we look for ways
to love those who insult us because we believe that God will defend us.
We grieve but we do not murmur and complain against God when we are ill
or accident claims a victim because we take all that comes to us as coming
from the hand of God for our good. We don’t live as if this world is our
home, demanding that everything and everyone cooperate with our goals
because, like Jesus, we are living for our eternal home and eternal reward.
Not only do we live in the common suffering as Jesus lived but
we live in it with Jesus, living upon him. We "fix our eyes on Jesus".
We rejoice in the Lord. We draw near to him to find grace and mercy to
help us in our time of need. We find him to be our refuge and our rock.
This is where the Psalms need to become our prayer book. The psalms will
help us to give expression to our grief and to our hope in Christ as we
suffer. We live on Christ, not the security of healthy bodies, obedient
children, good jobs, full bank accounts, a strong military or faithful
spouses.
Sarah Edward’s letter upon hearing of her husband’s death.
- We engage in a fight with sin.
Hebrews 12: 3-4 says to suffering Christians, "Consider him who
endured such hostility from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary
and lose heart. In your struggle against sin you have not yet resisted
to the point of shedding your blood." Jesus’ earthly life was a struggle
against sin. He struggled by resisting the temptation to sin and he struggled
to destroy the power of sin through the cross. So, everyone who belongs
to Christ is engaged in a battle against his or her own sin. When you
groan over your temptations and employ every means at your disposal to
keep from sinning and to obey God in acts of holiness and love, you are
suffering with Christ. You are not suffering with Christ when there is
no struggle in your life with sin. When you live as if the fight with
sin is over because Christ died for you and you’re going to heaven and
so you don’t need to worry about sin, then you are not suffering with
Christ and you will not share in his glory.
- We choose to suffer in order to bring glory to God and to love others
Christians inconvenience themselves and take risks in order to do acts
of love for others so that the greatness of Christ might be displayed
in their suffering love. Some of us do this by going to live in another
culture in order to share the gospel with those who have never heard.
Some of us do this in acts of martyrdom. But all of us do this in daily
acts of self-denial in order to care for the needs of others without expecting
anything in return. Again, a mother getting up in the middle of the night
to care for her baby is not suffering with Christ unless the mother does
it in dependence upon Christ to do it without grumbling and for the joy
of serving her child for Christ. But Christians don’t merely love those
who are nearest them but they love strangers and the weak and downcast.
It is no accident that orphanages and hospitals and leper colonies were
all begun by Christians. Christians suffer with Christ by not only loving
those closest to them for the sake of Jesus but also by loving the strangers
and co-workers and neighbors and fellow church members that God brings
into our lives. Am I being inconvenienced in any way in order to love
others? Am I depending upon Christ in order to love others joyfully?
While considered in ourselves none of the suffering we endure is undeserved,
yet because we are God’s children and have escaped the suffering that
is in the world because of sin, all the suffering we endure is unjust.
We are to be like the widow in Jesus’ story in Luke 18. We know that we
are being oppressed by our enemies unjustly and so we cry out to our Righteous
Judge to give us justice. We cry out that God’s kingdom would come and
that his will would be done on earth as it is in heaven. We long for the
day when Christ will return and destroy his enemies and ours and vindicate
us.
- God loves us in and through the suffering he ordains
Just as God’s love for his Son never changed but was expressed through
his ordaining suffering for him, so God loves us in and through the suffering
he sends.
- Our sharing in Christ’s sufferings is the cause of our sharing in
his glory
This is going to be what we talk about next week.
© Copyright 2002 John Swanson.
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