DO WE WELCOME GOD’S REFINING FIRE?

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We’ve lost an understanding of the reality of suffering as a consequence of the fall and neglected to see how God overrules evil for his greater purposes. We need to understand this so our feet land on the solid foundation of God’s Word and the God of that Word—and there find understanding and hope. All other ground is sinking sand.

If you’ve trusted in Christ as the Savior and Lord of your life, you can rest in the truth that your afflictions and sufferings come to you for your ultimate good and his ultimate glory.

Let’s look at four specific biblical reasons why God ordains suffering for His people.

1. To Kill Sin and Grow Godliness

God uses suffering to expose the sin that clings so closely to our hearts. When we suddenly bear an affliction, our pride, impatience, and unbelief will often surface. Pain has a way of cracking open the heart, laying it bare. When I’ve faced suffering, I’ve responded with anger. Though the suffering itself isn’t evil, it illuminates the evil residing within me. Sometimes it reveals my lack of faith in God’s promises. I begin questioning God: How could you let this happen? 

If we’re prone to love something in this world—house, spouse, children, job—more than God, He may sometimes remove the idol. And it will hurt. In doing so, though, we are freed to refocus our primary love on him alone. King David saw a woman bathing, sent for her, slept with her, then had her husband killed. When the prophet Nathan confronted David about his sin, he responded with Psalm 51. Suffering serves as a cleanser, revealing and killing our present sin, and deterring us from greater sin.

2. To Relinquish the Temporal for the Eternal

God also uses suffering to wean us from a love of this world and redirect our thoughts and affections toward that which is eternal: “Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Col. 3:2). Jesus told the rich young ruler to sell all he had and give it to the poor. Then, he said, you will have treasure in heaven. The young man went away sorrowful. Sometimes, God will simply remove those treasures for our greater good; it’s better to lose an eye than to face God’s judgement. (Matthew. 5:29).

As Christians, the afflictions we experience in this life should point us to the reality that we’re “sojourners and exiles” (1 Pet. 2:11; Heb. 11:13) here on earth, journeying toward the ultimate city. Our citizenship is in God’s Kingdom (Phil. 3:20). This fallen world is not our home, and the afflictions we experience along the way serve as arrows directing us to release what’s fading and grasp what’s unending.

Paul declares that God “comforts us in all our afflictions,” adding: “For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ, we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Cor. 1:3–5). As the Lord of true comfort, we are to see our pain as “preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison” (2 Cor. 4:17).

“Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

3. To Produce a Hypocrisy-Free Faith

God also uses suffering is to refine us, as fire refines gold by burning away the impurities (Jer. 9:7; Zech. 13:9; Mal. 3:3). Suffering will often distinguish the true believer from the hypocrite by the response of each. In our suffering, we are given the opportunity to discover the sincerity of our love, hope, and faith in God.

Are there areas of dishonesty or insincerity in your heart? A plunge into a season of affliction can reveal these. When suffering falls on a church—whether through illness or persecution—“Christ’s summer friends” flee, as the Puritan John Flavel put it. Affliction causes the believer to cling to God and the unbeliever to forsake him. In this way, it comes as a sort of revealing test to separate sheep from goats and refine his precious people through fire.

4. To Bear Witness to the World

Under the rod of affliction we’re given the unique opportunity to bear witness to the gospel’s power in our lives—which effectively calls others to repent and believe. The believer’s own endurance under trial serves as a shining public witness to the truth of God’s Word.

I’ve known believers who have suffered so well that onlookers have asked about the unshakable hope and peace the sufferer enjoys. God uses the suffering of his people to display his grace in securing their salvation. Our frequent trials prove our hope and faith is not in vain, and serve as a platform to showcase gospel hope.

Our Father in heaven ordains suffering for us because he loves us (Heb. 12:6). He is weaning us from a love of this world, transforming us by the renewing of our minds (Rom. 12:2), and will complete the good work he began in us (Phil. 1:6). May we rest in the surety of his covenant promise that, even amid suffering and trial, he will never leave us nor forsake us (Heb. 13:5).

Editors’ note: This excerpt is adapted from Brian Cosby’s new book, A Christian’s Pocket Guide to Suffering: How God Shapes Us through Pain and Tragedy (Christian Focus, 2015). For a more extensive survey of these five points, see Cosby’s book Suffering and Sovereignty: John Flavel and the Puritans on Afflictive Providence (Reformation Heritage, 2012).

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THE PROBLEM OF PAIN

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C. S. Lewis said in The Problem of Pain, “The human spirit will not even begin to try to surrender self-will as long as all seems to be well with it.” Our self-will deceives us; in loss, tragedy, and suffering we may finally come to terms with our need for help.

Why do God’s children undergo pressure, suffering, and deadly peril? Paul answers clearly: “that we might not rely on ourselves but on God” God uses our weakness and inadequacy not only to build our character but also to manifest His strength and grace to us and through us.

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself. Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him, we have set our hope that he will deliver us again. You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.” 2 Corinthians 1:8-11

Paul says, “Suffering exposes our theology. …Suffering will deepen your faith or it will weaken it. …Your suffering is not a failure of God’s plan. …In suffering, God reveals us and reveals Himself. … suffering is the workroom for grace.”

Death and Suffering – only credible HOPE

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Twin Towers attack

The only truly satisfying answer to the existence of death and suffering is found in God’s word. Pain, suffering and death are intruders into God’s creation and He has already provided a way out with the promise of eternal life.

The BIBLE tells of the creation of a once-good world, in which death and suffering are not “natural” at all, but are intruders. They occur because of humanity’s rebellion against its maker (Genesis 3).  But if fossils formed over millions of years, which so many Christians just blithely accept as “fact”, then that wipes out The Fall as an answer to evil, especially “natural evil”. The fossils show the existence of things like death, bloodshed and suffering. So if these were there millions of years ago, they must have been there before man and hence before sin. This is the rock against which old-age compromises inevitably founder. This is also the reason why the age of things is not some obscure academic debate that Christians can put in the “too-hard-for-now” basket. Because it strikes to the heart of the hugest questions of all in relation to the nature of God, sin, evil, death; questions at the very core of Christian belief (or reasons given for no belief, for that matter).

When we try, however inadequately, to see things from God’s viewpoint rather than our own, things become quite different. There is suddenly nothing unfair about the deaths of any one of us, no matter what the circumstances.

God is the sovereign Judge who is totally holy (1 John 1:5). It is impossible to overstate His utter abhorrence of even the slightest sin. He is our Creator, He establishes the rules for our existence. Just as He destroyed almost all of mankind with Noah’s Flood which incidentally buried the myriad of dead things found in rocks all over the world (fossils); we know from His Word that He will eventually wind up the history of this fallen world and there will be a new heaven and new earth.

“and He shall wipe away every tear from their eyes; and death shall be no more; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain, any more: the first things are passed away.” Revelation 21:4

Thank goodness God is merciful and loving (2 Peter 3:9), and long-suffering. In the most profound display of mercy and grace imaginable, He stepped into our shoes as a man, JESUS CHRIST, God the Son. He came to suffer and die so that God’s righteous anger against sin could be appeased and the penalty paid for those who place their trust in Him and receive His free gift—forgiveness of their sin and admission into God’s family—by faith.

There are daily reminders of His Curse on all creation all around us. When they are punctuated by horrifically sad concentrated bursts such as recent disasters, we are doubly reminded of the awfulness of sin. Does knowing the answers to the “big picture” make us callous to suffering? Far from it: we are moved even more by compassion, just as the Lord Jesus was when He lived among us. Because of Jesus, Christians—those who take the Bible as the Word of God, and know Jesus Christ as the Creator incarnate—are at the forefront of digging into their pockets to help alleviate suffering.

“If (since) Christ is God and died for me, then nothing I can do in obedience to Him can ever be too much”.  paraphrase C.T.Studd.

For more information check out article by Dr Jonathan Sarfati, “Why would a loving God allow death and suffering?” on http://www.creation.com.