Why does God allow some to suffer more than others?

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 problem handled in the book is the moral government of God: how to conciliate His righteousness with the sufferings, and even extreme sufferings, of a just and godly man? how to understand the permission of evil, in its worst form of malignant persecution, with His own good, and this before and apart from His revelation in Christ and by redemption? The books of Moses prepare the way for His government of a people, His own elect Israel, where all was to be manifest and a testimony before the world. Here it is His dealings with a soul before the true light shone, and the veil was rent, and sin condemned in the cross, along with the expression of exercises of heart and conscience under God's dealings. Now that we are reconciled to God by Christ's death and know ourselves to be in Christ before God, there is or ought to be a wholly new experience. But it is of the deepest interest and profit to see how the believer was enabled, not merely to walk uprightly when things were prosperous in an evil world but to confide in God spite of adversity and crushing affliction, and not only to submit to His will as chastening but to measure and abhor himself in dust and ashes before God. The beginning teaches that not Satan but God is the source of the action, the middle that He only and effectually carries forward the true lesson for the soul, the end that He is exceeding pitiful and of tender mercy. A whole long book devoted to the exercises of a soul in suffering, and he a Gentile, and this in the canon of the Jewish scriptures from the first! But it is not yet what some call the "mystery of the cross:" this was reserved for Christ.

How then are we using the grace thus shown us? Is it Christ or our own thoughts that we bring in as a standard to judge whatever comes before us? Now had the friends turned, I will not say to such a revelation of God as we possess, but to what is given in the very first communication of God, that third chapter of Genesis to which we have referred, what would have been the result? How does God speak of Him there, and how would it have applied to the case in hand? Would it not have kept them from unrighteous judgment in this way? There surely, if anywhere, is the pattern of all perfection in this world. Was He to pass through without suffering? Would the serpent spare Him? Before his own head should be bruised he was to bruise His heel. The first revelation of God then about the Seed of the woman, the coming Deliverer, ought to have guarded them, like others, from the sad mistake which the book of Job is designed to correct. It is a bruised One that is to bruise Satan finally. He must suffer many things, whatever the glories that should follow. And what believer could think of evil in His case? Does suffering, if unequalled, suppose evil in Him? In no wise. The theory therefore, that the sole cause of suffering for a man in this world is the evil of which God sees him guilty, is false, and not the less but the more mischievous a falsehood, because of a certain measure of truth in it. A narrow view may be most pernicious.

For it is untrue, on the other hand, that evil has nothing to do with man's suffering in this world. If there were no evil, there had been no suffering. Sin then, no doubt, has an immense deal to do with it as the general rule. Take man here below; take any one indulging in any evil: does he not suffer? Of course he does. Thus it is a positive principle of God's righteous government that evil never can be indulged in without entailing the solemn dealing of His hand, though room be left for the distinct working and even suffering of grace. It is true, not only in the future, but also in the present, that one reaps as one sows. But is it the sole or the whole truth? Is God limited to His government? In no way. There was where Eliphaz and his companions were wrong; and Satan knows well how to bend to his own purposes that particular side of truth which we either choose or overlook.

The secret of God, in the knowledge of which faith finds a solution of the perplexing and distressful riddle of human affairs, is not to be unravelled by a study of facts, nor evolved from an extended experience of God's apparent dealings as the Governor of the world. He is, indeed, the Judge and Ruler of all. But although power is His alone, and He is the only and the righteous God, yet to the mind of one who judges the progress of events, and estimates the actual condition of human society by the light of Divine truth, nothing is more abidingly manifest than the apparent inversion of the known and eternal principles of Divine government which the world everywhere presents. "The tabernacles of robbers prosper, and they that provoke God are secure" (Job 12:6). The present impunity of evil-doers, and the continual depression and frequent persecution of truth in the persons of its servants, have at all times served to exercise the faith and patience of God's saints (Jer. 12:1; Hab. 1:1-4).

The suffering, of which the Psalmist speaks, arises from living a godly life in the midst of a godless world, — a world in which for the time being "the wicked triumph" (3), in which they "speak hard things" against God and His people (4); in which they exalt themselves (4), crush God's people, and afflict God's heritage (5), act with violence towards the defenceless (6), and defy God (7).

(v. 1) The distress of the remnant is occasioned, not only by the wickedness of Antichrist rising to its height, but also by the fact that, when it does so, he appears to prosper exceedingly while the godly are allowed to suffer. Moreover, God apparently hides His face as if alike indifferent to the prosperity of the wicked and the suffering of the godly.

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?

(vv. 13-14) Contrasting the outward prosperity of the wicked with the suffering of the godly, the soul is tempted to think that it is useless to have cleansed his heart and washed his hands. What benefit is there in having a pure heart and clean hands, if one is plagued all the day and chastened every morning, while those who are wicked prosper?

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.

Does God then regard with indifference His children's persecutions and distresses? On the contrary their patience and faith in all they are enduring is a demonstration of the just judgment of God; who, if He tries the righteous, loves righteousness, beholds the upright, and will surely rain fire and brimstone and a tempest of burning on the wicked. If he sees mischief, it is to requite it with His own hand. But His children meanwhile are being disciplined in the ways of Christ; and as faith perseveres without a sign, it may be, so patience must have its perfect work, that they may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. And is it not well worth while? "To the end that ye be counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which also ye suffer." So it is His good and holy will: through many tribulations we must enter into that kingdom. It was Christ's way, it is or should be ours. In that day the darkness will pass for the world. All will be plain that is now obscure: uncertainty and complication will be no more. For us the darkness passes away and the true light now shines; and we who were once darkness are light in the Lord. Then for the world, and especially for that portion of it which is now darkest and most embittered, the light will have come and the glory of Jehovah be risen there.

But the very contrariety of the world now to God and to His children only the more proves that the righteous Lord will surely intervene and vindicate in that day all that looks tangled now. One understands easily that, if Satan is as God calls him the god of this age, it can only be in the age to come when the Lord Jesus governs publicly and in power, that as a rule the wicked shall be put down and the righteous prosper. The unbeliever is hardened at the sight of the just man perishing in his righteousness, and of a wicked man prolonging his life in his wickedness. The believer awaits the kingdom of God and suffers for its sake. "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." Unto the sons of God it is given in the behalf of Christ not only to believe on Him but to suffer for Him. When the day comes all will be changed.