Why does God allow suffering?

People like to walk by sight, and that was the great fallacy that lay under all the speeches of these three friends. They looked at Job; they looked at what he was; and they look at what he now is in all this terrible crushing to the dust, and they said in effect, 'Well, God is a righteous God, and if there were not some dreadful thing behind all this, God would never have allowed it.' They were completely wrong, and Job was thoroughly right in saying, 'No, I know it is not so, and all your talk cannot get rid of the fact that you have most wicked men that are most flourishing, and you have pious men that are exceedingly suffering, in the world as it is now.' How is that? Because Satan is actively working here; because Satan is the one that men follow without knowing. They are slaves and captives of the devil; and those that are not slaves of the devil are the objects of his vengeance and hatred. God does not remove that; He does not put down Satan yet; he is allowed his way. And there never was a greater proof of it than his leading the world and the Jewish people to crucify their own Messiah, the Lord of glory. Was there any fault here? Here you have the crucial proof. Here was the absolutely sinless One and never such a sufferer.

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.

God does not cause the suffering to His own, but He allows it to happen, so that His servants can benefit from the experience (e.g. increase their faith), and also for His own glory. Two examples are: Job, whom Satan tested to the uttermost, see Job 1 & 2, and Peter, whom Satan desired to sift as wheat, Luke 22:31.

In 1983 a famous Rabbi in the US, Harold Kushner, published a book about the problem of suffering. In it he suggested that we should not blame God for sufferings (which is right); then he goes on to say that God is good, but that He cannot help it when evil befalls His people (which, of course, is a wrong thesis). Perhaps we may remind ourselves at this point of Romans 8:28, where we see the very opposite of Kushner's claim. God not only allows adverse circumstances, He is even in full control and uses them to form believers in His school' (Rom. 5:3-5; Jam. 1:3). His ways ultimately, and surely lead to the fulfilment of His purpose, that we should be conformed to Christ, the Firstborn among many brethren (Rom. 8:29). Why do we have sufferings? Is it not also, to make us realize that we are living in a world which is in direct opposition to God's will? (cf. 1 Peter 2:15).

When the children of God are faithful, God may leave them in trial and difficulty, to bring out that is them which is not of the Spirit. He may also allow evil to have its course and test us, in order that we may understand, that the aim of faith is not here at all, and see that in circumstances the most difficult God can intervene, as in the sacrifice of Abraham and the raising of Lazarus.

While God uses sickness, accidents, and other trying situations to chasten His children, we must never conclude that God is disciplining us only because of sin. (This was the mistake Job's friends made regarding his suffering.) The Lord often uses sufferings and trials to draw us closer to Him. He may seek to strengthen our faith by putting us in situations where we have to depend upon Him.

There is often in God's ways with men suffering for righteousness' sake, and suffering for sin, or to prevent it, at the same time. This often causes perplexity. For the Jews, under a sense of a broken law, there will be terrible trial of faith. They will see the ungodly in prosperity, while it is promised to the godly that "they shall flourish like the palm tree." The consequence of following in the way of righteousness brings dreadful trial on them, and yet what they go through is also in consequence of their sins, yet not condemnation. The nation has received Antichrist, because they would not have the Lord Jesus. At the same time the terrors of the law enter the soul of the righteous, and Satan uses it all against them, urging that they have broken the law. Death is the judgment of God for sin. Who has the power of it? Satan. They cry out in their distress, and God delivers them; but Satan presents death as a terror, and as the judgment of God, to bring their sins to remembrance. They suffer from their sins, but yet they have integrity, and are in the place of exercising integrity. They are brought so low that, though faith is not extinct, they scarcely have any. "Shall he find faith on the earth?" They cry, "How long!" There is faith in the word, but it is near coming to an end. They are like a teil-tree in winter, with no signs of life in it, their leaves all cast. Yet this remnant is the sap of life in the midst of death, and the prophet says, "How long?" The expression "how long?" implies some faith left. They are as though they were cast off, yet hold to God's promise. It cannot be for ever. There is the integrity of heart which will not wilfully break the law, and a terror of judgment, knowing what sin has deserved. The weapon Satan will use in that day is the truth of God; not the grace but the truth.

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.

Thus, although the world be a ruin before God, and although it is too evident that Satan is the restless worker of all evil here below, which is brought before us in the plainest manner in this book, God who is above it all, and who seems to take no part in it, carries on His gracious ways, and this to convert and deliver those who have been wretched, vile, and rebellious. It is not that retributive government to which man's heart would constantly limit God, but a government of souls while the world goes on in pride. Man likes to see people punished when they deserve it. It is natural to the heart. There is something in our nature which, when one is not actually suffering or dreading it, likes to find some (shall I say good or bad?) reason why another should be punished if he does suffer. This was at work in the three friends. But the book of Job is intended to show that they were all wrong in their application of this truth. Not that there will not be perfect retribution when the time comes for it, by the only One capable of carrying it out; but that it is only partial now. Christ alone will act perfectly in it by-and-by; but the time awaits His coming. There will be no adequate retributive government till the Lord Jesus takes the reins. He Himself was in this world the greatest of sufferers, as we know; and so the saints were sufferers before Christ, and still more since Christ. At any rate, the grace now displayed is such that God counts it a privilege given us to suffer for His sake; so that we surely ought to be able to bless God for it in a way that Job and no other could, because we have Christ fully revealed. Job did not know why his gracious Master gave him up to such tremendous and reiterated trouble. He had to learn why, and to learn it slowly and painfully, but blessedly at the end. We begin where he ended. Having in Christ the true light of God, we have not only His perfect love, but that there goes on a kind of divine government quite different from retribution; that there is a gracious dealing of God for the good of souls, and connected with it a moral government, unheeded by the world, which, spite of all appearances to the contrary, never fails. It is not a government consisting in what is public, or what natural men can judge of. It is none the less God dealing with souls, and to all that bow to His word and to Himself ineffable blessing. The discipline may be painful, not to say that it must be. What blessing can there be without it in our nature and in this world? The cross tells what it cost the Lord Himself to make our blessing a righteous thing; the manifestation of the same truth in the highest and deepest way. Where is there a single joy for us, once dead in sins but now saved by grace, that had not its root in the sorrows and sufferings of Him who bore our judgment? And so it is for those that learn what sin is in the presence of God.

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.