Why do Christians suffer?

As to why believers, whose sins have all been gone into, judged, and judicially made an end of in the death of Christ, are not exempted from suffering is a cause of great concern in the minds of many who have not the scriptural answer to such a very important question. One can very well understand a rejecter of the gospel, upon whom lies the wrath of an angry God, being greatly afflicted, but to find one who is so loved as Christ is being in evil circumstances is quite another thing altogether.

Secondly, we are reminded that there is a need for these sorrows, for these trials are for “a season, if need be”. The Father does not cause His children a needless tear. The needs be is to prove our faith. This does not mean to prove whether we have faith, but rather to make manifest the preciousness of the faith we have. Gold is not put into the fire to prove that it is gold, but to bring out the precious qualities of the metal. So God proves our faith by various trials to bring out the precious qualities of our faith. Faith, counting upon God in the trial, leads to submission to what God allows: faith in God enables the soul to wait in patience (James 1:3). Faith in God enables the believer to be steadfast against the attacks of the enemy (1 Peter 5:9). The soul may have true faith, but when the trial comes these blessed qualities of faith — submission, patience, steadfastness, confidence and dependence upon God — become manifest.

(Vv. 2-4). The Apostle commences by encouraging us to rejoice in the trials that become the occasion of developing the practical life of godliness. Firstly, he tells us that trials test and prove the reality of our faith. Secondly, they are a means used by God to develop patience, or endurance. Thirdly, if patience is allowed to do its work, it will lead to a well-balanced Christian life, in which our own wills are refused and God's will is accomplished. For this we must “let patience have her perfect work.” The work of patience is to break down our self-confidence and self-will and teach us that, apart from God, we can do nothing. When patience has had her perfect work, the soul will show its submission to God in trial by bowing to what God allows and waiting for the Lord. “It is good that one should both wait, and that in silence, for the salvation of Jehovah” (Lam. 3:26 N.Tn.).

The God of all grace, who called saints to His everlasting glory in Christ Jesus, is the best security against all that creature can or cannot do meanwhile; and the more, because as Father He carries on a constant, watchful, and righteous government of His children all through the wilderness (1 Peter 1:13-17). But there is another needed and weighty consideration. As Jews, they might associate with the Christ immunity from suffering and promotion to high honour; but as Christians, their portion is to share His sufferings for righteousness and love and truth. No mistake more common in Christendom than looking for present reward and distinction and ease through the gospel and the church. But it is a hateful lie of Satan. The Corinthian saints slipped easily into this snare, to the apostle Paul's pain and horror (1 Cor. 4:8-14); it was still more natural for such as had been Jews. So the apostle Peter seeks throughout to impress suffering as the necessary path of the Christian, and "after having suffered a little while," as his beloved brother to the Hebrews (Heb. 10:32-39), fortified by not a few even of old (Heb. 11:35-38) but above all by His case who sums up all as our perfect exemplar (Heb. 12:2-3). It is through suffering in faith and patience that we are disciplined and bear fruit to Him who deigns thus to prune the branches of the vine.

The wicked being allowed to persecute, without the power of God being presently exercised against the persecutors, led Paul to say by the Holy Ghost, "If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable." But does not God really watch over and protect His saints? Yea, truly, and the church's pathway through the world is both for the glory of God and for the brighter shining of His saints when the glory comes. Saints are conscious of God's care and love, and know that during this present dispensation it is not so much by delivering them from the sorrows and trials of life, as by maintaining their faith and bringing them triumphantly through all. "My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations [not temptations to sin] , knowing this, that the trying of your faith works patience" (see James 1:3-4 & 13-14). This is not mere resting upon God during the trial, but joy because the trial is sent. This is one of faith's victories, whose eye is fixed not on present suffering but on God's glory in it. "That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perishes, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:7). Many instances of God's special interposition might be adduced, but the general and normal aspect of this dispensation is that the saints of God have to suffer, whatever a Christ-rejecting world may do. So it appears that the seed grows up "he knows not how." But faith goes beyond the appearance, trusting and confiding in God.

But there was something still more perplexing, for there were times in the lives of the most honoured servants and saints, when they were suffering, and being made to pass through the deepest trials when the wicked were prospering, and at their ease. This was, to the righteous, most baffling. The patriarch Job, who was perhaps the greatest sufferer in the Old Testament — but there were many others (James 5:10-11) — had to say: "Wherefore do the wicked live, become old, yea, are mighty in power? Their seed is established in their sight with them, and their offspring before their eyes. Their houses are safe from fear, neither is the rod of God upon them. …" (See Job 21:7-13). So also with David "I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree" (Psalm 37:35). Such things these men could not reconcile with the justice of God's moral government. In His revealed will, the order seemed to be joy and happiness for the good, but sorrow and suffering for the evil. The law had laid this down very fully and clearly, and it had been said, "He that will love life and see good days, let him refrain his tongue from evil, and do good; let him seek peace, and ensue it" (1 Peter 3:10-11; also Psalm 34:12). Yet those who sought to live according to this were kept in suffering. Think of a man like Job of whom Jehovah could say to Satan, "Hast thou considered My servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth," yet his suffering were prodigious. It is just at this point that we may learn the wonders of God's wisdom, and see the richest and choicest of His dealings with His children in the world. The wicked may prosper for a brief season, as we have seen, but in a moment their candle goes out, and then for them it is the blackness of darkness for eternity. The righteous may suffer in a world where sin and death are permitted, but, this, in the hand of a Father, is educative in view of forming the character, and making them morally Christ like in view of future glory.

It may, however, be asked, if doing good leads to prosperity and doing evil to punishment, how is it that in this world so often the godly suffer, and those who do evil appear to prosper? How is it that in this very Epistle that tells us that God's favour is upon the righteous we have the sufferings of God's people brought before us in greater detail than in any other Scripture? How is it that, immediately following the passage that promises “good days” as the outcome of doing good, we read of the possibility of suffering for doing good?

Such questions are answered if we remember that during this day of grace the government of God is moral, and not generally direct and immediate. It is truly a moral government in the sense that good is rewarded by spiritual blessing rather than by material prosperity, so that, while the Apostle puts before us the possibility of suffering for righteousness' sake, he can still add, “happy are ye”.

All the Prime Minister could offer the nation when he took up his onerous office was “sweat and suffering, tears and blood”; and from that suffering none in the land can claim exemption, the Christian as well as the most godless man must take his share of it as being of the nation in the providence of God. So it is written to Christians, “There has no temptation (trial), taken you but such as is common to men.” But the Christian has a great advantage over others and one that enables him to face suffering with a calm spirit, he knows God, who is over all, is “the preserver of all men, specially of those that believe”. He knows that “God is faithful, who will not suffer him to be tempted (tried) above that he is able, but will with the temptation, also make a way of escape, that he may be able to bear it.” That we learn from 1 Corinthians 10:13. The Christian has a further advantage; whatever his sufferings may be, and from whatever cause, he looks beyond them, and can “reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Rom. 8:19), and again, “For our light affliction which is but for a moment, works for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). While he shares the sufferings of the nation, the Christian’s destiny is not bound up with it, his hopes are not worldly or even national, his citizenship is in heaven and his hopes are heavenly and sure and certain. He is “an heir of God, and joint heir with Christ.” And still further, his Saviour who died for him, rose again from among the dead is even at the right hand of God, making intercession for him (Rom. 8:34) and that mighty and ceaseless intercession will carry him triumphantly through all his suffering to his glorious destiny—which is, to be conformed to the image of God’s Son “that He might be the Firstborn among many brethren” (Rom. 8:29).

Suffering comes to us from different quarters and for various reasons, but that which is testing the greatest number now, and causing the most suffering at this time is the war, and many are asking why it should be? Why, if God is good, should there be any war at all? That is a question that calls for an answer. God is good, ten thousand times ten thousand voices bear witness to His goodness, but the world as such has rejected God, and despised the riches of His goodness and forbearance and long-suffering not knowing that His goodness would lead them to repentance (Rom. 2:4) and has chosen to follow Satan, the adversary instead of God. In Eden Adam listened to the voice of Satan and turned his back upon God and by that act of disobedience sin entered into the world and death by sin (Rom. 5:13) and when sin came in, peace spread its wings and flew away. “There is no peace, says the Lord, unto the wicked” (Isa. 48:22). The world has been Satan’s world since that day and “suffering and sweat and tears and blood” are the result, they are part of sin’s foul brood.

Let no one suppose that those who suffer most in this world are the greatest sinners; it is often not so, though undoubtedly the greatest sinners will suffer the most in the lake of fire, for at the last great judgment they are to be judged every man "according to their works" (Rev. 20:13). We have no intention of charging the poor and suffering with the greater guilt. What we desire to do is to show, in a few words from the Bible, what is the cause of the universal misery, and it is plainly taught there that the world's misery springs from the world's sins, and the fact that it rejected and killed the only One who could have put it right.

In the message to Ephesus we have seen departure from first standing. The next state is a different one. We have the church at Smyrna in trouble; the saints of God are suffering. They may have thought the fiery trial some strange thing that had happened to them. But, on the contrary, it is more true that the Lord is grieved with a Christian when He leaves him without trouble for righteousness or for His name's sake. The Lord had Himself known tribulation to the utmost; but in Him it was only the trial of the good that was within, and the bringing out of His perfection. And poor as we are, we too may know trial apart from our evil. The Lord has two objects in view when He lays His hand upon a Christian in the way of chastening. it may come either because there has been something wrong, or because he is in danger of it and this is little felt by him. When David was out of tribulation, he falls into a snare. When his circumstances were full of trouble, then it was that he (inspired, of course, by the Holy Ghost) poured out those sweet strains that we read with joy to this day. The desire to get out of trial is a perilous thing for the soul. The trial may be sent to show us what we really are, or, what is better, to prove what God is for us and to us: but it may be also sent to prevent us from falling into sin. The Lord in His love thus often averts the evil which He sees and we do not. I do not doubt that there is another and a deeper character of suffering, even fellowship with the sufferings of Christ, which must not be confounded with the Lord's faithful discipline, though sometimes it would seem the two things may be in a measure combined. In a certain sense all saints suffer now with Him, though all may not be called to suffer for Him.