What does the Bible say about pain?

Next we have the blessedness of the inhabitants of the scene. But how is it described? In the very way that appeals the most powerfully to hearts that have known the sorrows and tribulations of the wilderness. There will be the absence of everything that had caused us grief or anguish here. First, "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes;" not a trace of former sorrow shall remain, and God Himself will remove it. What infinite tenderness in the expression that God Himself shall do this! Even as a mother will tenderly wipe away the tears of her child, so God Himself will delight to wipe away all tears from the eyes of His saints. And once wiped away they can never return; for "there shall be no more death" (how many tears has death wrung from bereaved ones in this scene!), "neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." All these, the former, things will have for ever passed away — these dark clouds — before the perpetual sunlight and joy of the eternal presence of God.

Affliction—how many endure it! How grievous it is, especially when there is wearying pain night and day! The time seems interminable. But let the mind reflect on “the far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory,” and the true proportion is discovered, the divine perspective is ours. What seems so heavy becomes “light affliction.” The contrast is most vivid. “A far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory!” Put the affliction which is for a moment in the scale that it may be weighed against the glory, which is eternal. How light the affliction; how weighty the glory.

We now come to the moment sin came into the world (chap. 3). What consequences were involved when Eve thrust out her hand to take of the forbidden fruit! Sin, sorrow, distance from God, pain, weakness, death, all came in as man fell and became a dying sinner.

The Bible alone accounts for the presence of evil, and its resultant misery and death. By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin. It is a righteous thing that misery and death, with all their concomitant evils, should be the lot of man — the righteous dealings of a just and holy God with rebels; and, while sin remains, righteousness demands that all these evils — the fruit of sin — should also remain. Even God's saints, while here in the body, are exposed to the sorrows to which humanity is heir. The Lord Jesus Himself submitted, in grace truly, to all the consequences — sin excepted — of taking a place among men and specially the remnant of Israel, a thing wholly distinct from being made sin on the cross. To remove the sufferings while sin is present would be a denial of God's righteous government.

The message of the book of Job is concerning the suffering of the righteous. Why do the godly suffer? How can their suffering be harmonized with the righteousness of God? if God is love and He loveth His saints why have they afflictions? In one word the theme of the book is the mystery of suffering. The answer to these questions concerning the suffering of the godly is twofold. God permits their suffering for His own glory. This we learn in the first two chapters. God received glory to Himself when Job, enabled by His grace and by His power, sinned not in the midst of the fiery trials through which he passed. Then God permits the righteous to suffer for their own good. It was a wholesome experience for Job; the sufferings chastened him and he received great blessing. This is the double answer in the book of Job as to the suffering of God's people. And yet there is a mystery of suffering which will only be fully bared when God's saints are in His presence and "know as we are known." Till then we walk in faith, trusting Him who has told us "that all things must work together for good to them that love God."

“The Lord is good.” It is one of the greatest triumphs of God that He has given the knowledge of His perfect goodness to many a frail man, so that the most untoward circumstances, the deepest bereavement or sorrow or suffering, cannot shake their confidence. Even Job said, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him.” But we are permitted to go a step further. We know that whatever is brought upon the believer by God is not merely the product of divine goodness, but the positive plannings of divine love. However severe the trial and deep the pain and trying the exercise, it does but the more convince us of that clear warm love that makes no mistakes—a love which is so deeply concerned that the divine purpose should be worked out in us that it will not shrink from adopting means that may at the moment bring the tear to the eye and make the whole frame wince and quiver. Nevertheless afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness to them which are exercised thereby” (Heb. 12:11).

It ought not to be supposed, however, that illness, or indeed, other afflictions, are always chastisements. The branch that bears fruit is purged that it may bring forth more fruit (John 15). And in the case of Job, the grand mistake of Job's friends was to suppose that because of his terrible affliction, he must have committed some grievous sins. God allowed Job to be afflicted with painful and humiliating ills for his ultimate blessing, and so he does with many a saint today. He may send sickness, bereavements, setbacks, to break down the flesh, to wean us from the world, to produce brokenness of our wills, and spirituality, or to give warning to the believer where there is lack of carefulness in walk, or incipient departure from the Lord.

Identifying himself with the erring ones, he continues to plead their cause, and invokes a recompense upon their persecutors. He was like a bird chased by the hunters without cause. He does not in this ignore the righteousness of God in visiting His people with judgment. On that side there was cause enough. But Babylon 's oppression of Judah was quite unwarrantable from the standpoint of human equity. Her wars were dictated by the greed of dominion and the lust of power. It often occurs that God permits sorrows to come upon His own by way of discipline, which, so far as the actual troubles are concerned, were not really deserved. For instance, a saint may be falsely accused, and thereby caused extreme mental grief, while all the time he frets under the knowledge that he is guiltless of the cruel charge, and feels that he is wickedly treated. But this, when rightly viewed, would be seen to be but an opportunity to be a partaker of Christ's sufferings. For was not He hated "without a cause," and did not false witnesses rise up against Him? Such circumstances, therefore, painful as they are to flesh and blood, are often a necessary part of the education of the soul. And if, at the time, we are conscious of failed in personal dealings with God, it is used as chastisement, that we may be partakers of His holiness.

And the experience of Job is by no means unexampled, as most can testify from their own histories. But what sorrowing saint ever consulted the scriptures in faith and sought in vain for cheer and support? There the blessed Lord ever lives and speaks before the eyes and ears of His people. There we have the incomparable fact of God manifest in flesh upon earth, in the very midst of a world like ours. There we see His manhood bringing Him into daily contact with the abundant sorrows of this vale of tears; yet the glory of His Godhead outshining and forbidding us to think of Him as altogether such a one as ourselves. Hence nothing more quickly calms the troubled spirit than a reverent consideration of that Man of Sorrows Who "Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses," of that Divine Word Who, while tabernacling among men, began to do what He will more perfectly accomplish in due time — to wipe away all tears from off all faces.

It has been said that the great essential feature of comfort is substantiality; in order to be effective, it must have a solid and permanent basis. And this basis our God has given us in His Son. For what can be more changeless than He Who is "the same yesterday and today and for ever?" And in this we are privileged beyond saints of Old Testament days. They hung upon promises — upon what God had said He would do. But now grace and truth has come by Jesus Christ. In Him God was and is manifested in all the fulness and tenderness of His love, so that no sorrow can withstand His presence. There we see divine tears welling forth from human eyes, for His interest and sympathy in the sorrows of mankind were those, not of a man only, but of God Himself.

“Nor distress,” or pain within, no internal trouble or weariness, no pain from without or from within. These things which together make up the volume of human misery exist no more, neither does that which caused them — sin. All have passed away. “The former things,” of which those mentioned are part, “have passed away.”