Why God lets us suffer

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."

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.

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."

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.

It ought not to be supposed, however, that illness, or indeed, other afflictions, are always chastisements. The branch that bears fruit is purged that it may bring forth more fruit (John 15). And in the case of Job, the grand mistake of Job's friends was to suppose that because of his terrible affliction, he must have committed some grievous sins. God allowed Job to be afflicted with painful and humiliating ills for his ultimate blessing, and so he does with many a saint today. He may send sickness, bereavements, setbacks, to break down the flesh, to wean us from the world, to produce brokenness of our wills, and spirituality, or to give warning to the believer where there is lack of carefulness in walk, or incipient departure from the Lord.

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.

In fallen humanity man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. Besides the afflictions of man in body, mind, and estate, there are also the oppressions they suffer one from another. In some parts of the earth slavery still exists and in more enlightened parts the rich oppress the poor. James 2:6. Man is very ready to attribute all such things to the Creator, forgetting that God made man upright and God declared that everything that He had made, including man, was very good. It is sin that has brought in the misery, and man, by becoming the willing servant of Satan, has put himself into the hands of his enemy. Besides the afflictions incident on fallen humanity, there are afflictions that fall specially upon the Christian. There are those he may have to suffer for righteousness' sake as well as for Christ's sake. Another class of afflictions which the Christian has to bear is inflicted directly from the hand of God for his good. See CHASTENING.

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.

Why did they suffer? Became they were God's sons. Men, the instruments for their sufferings, might seem to be dealing with them as they chose. It was not so. God indeed allowed it. He had His own purposes in it all for the rich blessing of His saints. He can even use Satan to carry out His ends on behalf of His people. He then was above it all, and was really by their trials training His children. Behind the hand that smote them was the Father, permitting it in His love to them and for their profit. "It is for chastening that ye endure," so wrote the Apostle; "God deals with you as with sons; for what sun is he whom his father chastens not? But if ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons" (12:7-8). It is of the training up of children that we here read. How stimulating was such ministry! To have ease in the midst of their countrymen, who were bitterly opposed to God and His Son, would indicate for them a state of spiritual bastardy. Which of them would desire that?

The outstanding feature of the book of Job is the introduction of a Divine problem to which three men, searching human wisdom, endeavour to find a solution. Beloved, everything in the Divine circle is a mystery. It is all a problem so far as human wisdom is concerned, and God intended that it should be so; but in His wonderful grace He has given us the ability by His Spirit to understand these Divine mysteries. That is why these things are called mysteries, to be understood only by those who have the Holy Spirit of God as Teacher. They are utterly beyond the natural intellect of the men of this world. So these three men, apparently the wisest men of the day in which they lived, attempted to solve the problem of the sufferings of Job by their combined wisdom, but they were utterly unable to find the key to it. We are all well acquainted with that which befell Job. His wealth gone; his family of ten children gone; his health gone, and this once great man is found sitting in ashes and scraping himself with a potsherd. God allowed every difficulty which can come upon us in our pathway through this world to beset Job. All our testings come in these three spheres in our personal history with God; either in our business, or in our families, or in our health. We do not speak of service in the assembly but of our personal, secret history with God. We know that Satan was the cause of it all so far as the immediate circumstances were concerned, but we must remember that God was behind Satan. Do not let us think that Satan can take things out of the hands of God in relation to any one of His children; not for one moment can he do this. We know from chapter 1 that it was not Satan who raised the issue at all; it was God Himself. God discerned that there was something lacking in Job, wonderful man though he was, and God desires that defect to be remedied for, although God did say Job was a perfect man, yet He wanted to make him more perfect. You may tell that is not good English but we shall see how it comes to pass in this book. God said in chapter 1 he was perfect but in the last chapter he was more perfect. I judge he was perfect without at the outset of this history, but he was perfect also within at the end. Not only was his walk right, but ultimately his heart was right. The fly causing the stink in the ointment was Job's thinking that his righteousness was of himself, but he had to learn it was altogether of God and, as the result of this severe trial, he did learn that lesson. Satan was just the being for God to use in order to accomplish what He desired to do in Job. God allows things to work that way at times and it worked with Job. Satan attempted to turn Job against God, but all he succeeded in doing was to destroy that one thing in Job which God wanted removed. Let us not forget that God is behind Satan, whatever He allows him to bring against His servants.