Why does God let us feel pain?

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).

God lets us fall into sufferings to prevent falling into snares.

Yes, God in infinite and tender goodness can, and does, bring His children through sorrow and suffering. He did it with Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David and others, and He is doing it to-day. He may chasten for sin, as corrective, or He may discipline the soul as seeing danger ahead, which surely is preventive, and, as in the case of Job, He may put us through a good deal of trial, that we may learn ourselves, and enter better into the knowledge of Him — which is surely promotive.

In the story of the few interesting incidents in the life of the apostle Paul, he tells us with unmistakeable plainness, that the thorn in the flesh was sent for the express purpose of preventing self-exaltation, and thus suffering wrought in the prevention of sin.

The Saviour had just delivered Himself from the malice of His enemies, who took up stones to cast at Him because He declared Himself the "I am." As He passed by, He noticed a man who had been blind from birth (John 9). The disciples enquired whose sin was responsible for this affliction — the man's, or his parents'? They were as narrow-minded as Job's three friends, who regarded suffering as a special mark of divine displeasure, having no other thought as to it. The Saviour pointed out a higher purpose — "that the works of God should be manifest in him." The man's misery furnished occasion for the display of divine power and goodness.

John 9:2-3. The disciples, with their Jewish prejudices, thought that the blindness might have been inflicted anticipatively for some sin foreseen by God or as the result of the sin of his parents. In His reply the Lord shows that God can use affliction to make manifest the works of God. A life-long sickness is not necessarily the outcome of a specific sin, but may be allowed for the display of the grace of God.

The question has been often asked, Why does God allow the people on whom He has set His love to suffer in this way? and the answer is simple. It is because He loves them. There may be, there are, other reasons, but this is the chief. Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth, and if the heart wander chastening is necessary. The wise man tells us, "By sorrow the heart is made better," and experience teaches us the truth of this. How readily will evil attach itself to the best of us! but in the furnace of affliction the dross is separated from the purer metal, and consumed. Moreover, when we endure chastening, God deals with us as with sons; and every trial which visits us, were we but patient under it, would be fruitful in blessing to our souls. True, the experience of passing through the trial is not pleasant; it would be no trial if it were; but a morning of joy succeeds the night of sorrow, and in the quiet after-time we say with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted."

Do you think it is only of Job that God thinks? Do you think that God is not thinking of every one of you now, and that in the presence of the evil angel? Do you suppose that this was something entirely exceptional? The account of it was, the allowance of it was, the special circumstances of it were peculiar; but the principle is the same for every believer. God in His sovereign love and grace takes a pleasure in His children, far more than we take in any of ours. And you know what that is for a parent. Well now, God takes more pleasure in you — not merely in Job — in you. I grant we do not deserve it; that is another thing altogether. Love does not count up deserts at all. Love goes out because God is love, and for His own glory in Christ the Lord. Now He is able to do it righteously; able to do it effectively. But here there was tremendous suffering before Christ came in, and before the full light of God came. God allowed all that; nevertheless it was He that began it; and, if God begins, how will He end? Worthily of Himself. It is not merely patching up; it is not merely repairing, but a radical work of self-judgment in the soul.

But I do not call these spiritual sufferings; they are what are common to man. It might be so with an unconverted man; only there was this peculiarity about Job, which he did not know at first — that God was allowing Satan to bring all these things. Satan's pleasure and hope was to entangle Job's feet and cast him down, and that he would curse God. That was what Satan dearly longed to bring about. God allowed him to have his way, but not to kill Job. That would have been agreeable to Job; but it would not have brought out the great moral of the tale, which is, blessing brought into his soul by the very things that seemed to be against him, and not merely by the things that he experienced. When he began to find fault, he had to learn that that very God was One who never could swerve from what was excellent, and that in all this He had a purpose of blessing for Job. Not merely in his having outward blessings, i.e., of a temporal kind, but blessing for his soul.