Why does God allow suffering and evil?

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 … 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.

How perfect the rebuke to man's dream of God indifferent to all! of a mere theory of earth progressing under natural laws! It was Jehovah who here raised the question: Satan could only avail himself of the prosperity of Job to insinuate self-interest … What a comfort that even the enemy's hand is under God's hand! All is measured on the side of evil, infinite on that of good.

The Book of Job affords us the example of the relationship of a godly man outside and doubtless before Israel, and God's dealings with men for good in this world of evil … Elihu, who takes up this ground in God's stead, explains not redemption but chastising and government. These things God wrought oftentimes with man.

God permits His people to be put into the crucible and tries them, even by fire, but it is because faith in His estimation is a thing of exceeding value. So we are going to look at our testings in the light of this, God is dealing with us for the refining of faith, and to strengthen it. The fact of the matter is, if we Christians suffer no testings we shall never be anything but weaklings in a spiritual sense: It is the very testings that make us spiritually strong.

It is a fact that we shall never be in heaviness through manifold temptations except there is a "needs be" for it. God does not test us capriciously. It is not that He delights in our testings and our heaviness or even in chastening or rebuking or scourging; we are assured of that in Hebrews 12. So we each have to say to ourselves, If God did not see some spiritual need to be met I should not be face to face with, and under the heavy pressure of, this trial.

Your trials, your testings, which God sees to be necessary — they are only for a season, because He is going to reach His blessed and glorious end. He is going to make them efficacious. They are going to accomplish blessed results, and the faith that has been tested in the crucible … is going to be found to praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ.

"Thou shalt also consider in thine heart, that, as a man chastens his son, so the Lord thy God chastens thee." This blessed word holds good at all times and under all circumstances … Our Father never departs from this principle, never uses the rod, save under the prompting of perfect love. Holiness is the end, love the motive. Moreover, true discipline is but one of the forms of the activity of true love.

The Christian is not exempt from the sorrows and sufferings that are the common lot of mankind because of the entry of sin into the world, but in his trials the Christian has a resource of which the man of this world knows nothing … Faith brings God in between the heart and its sorrow, resting in what God has spoken, having the assurance that "all things work together for good to them that love God, to them that are the called according to His purpose."

Perfect love and perfect skill blend in the circumstances directly ordered of Him, and all that He may allow the enemy to bring against us is controlled by Him, for the enemy is not free to do as he pleases with us.

If we understand that God is working with us for His glory and our rich blessing, it is surely not difficult to submit to His will — yea, we would not desire to be in any other circumstances than those He has chosen for us, so that we might gain from the trial, learning in a fresh way His great love in comfort.

First of all, "the whole creation" groans and travails in pain together … Dominion was given to Adam over all, and by his sin he ruined all. He was, so to speak, the top link, intelligently connected with the Creator, with all other links in the chain dependent on him. When he fell, all creation fell with him.

The Christian is called upon to suffer in this world, as is so frequently stated in Peter's first epistle … There is abundance of joy in God, coupled with suffering for Christ, and with Christ, as we share in a measure His feelings as He passed through this world of death and doom.

Afflicted by the tribulation, this was the vessel's part; not straitened, for God was with the vessel. Without means of escape, that was the vessel; yet not without resource, for God was with it. Persecuted, that was the vessel; not forsaken, for God was with it. Cast down, that was the vessel; but not destroyed, for God was with it.

The more the natural man was annihilated, the more was it evident that a power was there which was not of man.

The light affliction, which was but for a moment (for such he esteemed it in view of the glory), worked out for him an eternal weight of glory which was beyond all the most exalted expression of human thought or language.