Why is there suffering and pain in life?

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.

Buddha said that "to live is to suffer," and he said that the reasons for suffering were ignorance and craving. The Bible agrees that suffering is everywhere and that a good deal of suffering is due to misplaced desire, but at the core, the Bible provides a very different explanation for suffering. The Bible explains that the entire world "groans" and that all men suffer because of sin (see Romans 8:18‑23). All of us have put our own personal desires ahead of God's. All of us are sinners by choice. We decide to live our lives independently of God and His laws (see Isaiah. 53:6).

It is safe, then, to affirm that disobedience to God is the secret; and that, but for sin, there would be neither sorrow nor suffering.

In considering the fall of man we are apt to concentrate on the dire consequences for the human race, and to lose sight of what that dreadful event meant for God. The consequences of the entry of sin were certainly enormous, and this is seen as we find almost the whole human race swept away at the flood because of the corruption and violence that filled the old world, and as we see the condition of the world today even where there are the external benefits that have been brought by Christianity. Sin brought with it a guilty and defiled conscience, alienation from God and enmity with Him, the principle of sin in man’s nature, and all the sorrow, suffering and death that fill the world. What man did to the Son of God in putting Him on a malefactor’s cross showed what man in his nature, and in his disposition towards the God who has showed him nought but good.

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.

In a word, then, we must look at sin from God's point of view, and measure it by His standard, else we shall never have a just sense of what it is or what it deserves. It is the height of folly for men to attempt to lay down a rule as to the amount or duration of the punishment due to sin. God alone can settle this. And, after all, what was it that produced all the misery and wretchedness, the sickness and sorrow, the death and desolation, of well-nigh six thousand years? Just one act of disobedience — the eating of a forbidden fruit. Can man explain this? Can human reason explain how one act produced such an overwhelming amount of misery? It cannot. Well, then, if it cannot do this, how can it be trusted when it attempts to decide the question as to what is due to sin? Woe be to all those who commit themselves to its guidance on this most momentous point!

It is the height of folly for man to reason about the severity of divine judgment, or the apparent lack of proportion between the sin and the punishment. All such reasoning is false and impious. What was it that brought in all the misery, the sorrow, the desolation, the sickness, pain, and death — all the untold horrors of the last six thousand years? What was the source of it all? Just the one little act — as man would call it — of eating a bit of fruit? But this little act was that terrible thing called sin — yea, rebellion — against God!

Now you can search from the beginning of the Bible right to the end and you will find that disobedience is the root cause of all the sorrow that comes upon the people of God, either individually or collectively. Indeed, the reason why Adam and Eve were expelled from the garden was because they disobeyed, and Paul reminds us that "by one man's disobedience many were constituted sinners" (Romans 5:19), and we can go right through the divine narrative again, and again, and again, and we trace all the sorrow to this one source - disobedience. We know what is the right thing to do, but we take our own way, and of course, we reap the consequences.

Let no one suppose that those who suffer most in this world are the greatest sinners; it is often not so, though undoubtedly the greatest sinners will suffer the most in the lake of fire, for at the last great judgment they are to be judged every man "according to their works" (Rev. 20:13). We have no intention of charging the poor and suffering with the greater guilt. What we desire to do is to show, in a few words from the Bible, what is the cause of the universal misery, and it is plainly taught there that the world's misery springs from the world's sins, and the fact that it rejected and killed the only One who could have put it right.