When Evil Prospers – Part 3

In Part 1 of this series, I shared a little of my personal story and discussed the importance of processing, at a deep emotional level, the reality that we are not alone.  Others who have gone before us have experienced similar struggles, pain, sorrow, horror, grief, and unanswered questions.

In Part 2, we discussed what it means to be God’s image bearers in a fallen world filled with darkness.

In this post, we will discuss how Jesus understands and shares our suffering.

The Suffering of Christ:

The truths shared in the two prior posts are truly wonderful!  Yet, they can still, at times, come across as a bit sterile and cliché.

Yes, it is great knowing God is good… that He loves me… that He never leaves me.  From a philosophical perspective, we can discuss and debate how His goodness combined with His omnipotence still fail to restrain evil and suffering.  We can understand God’s sacred respect for human free will and the consequences of living in a fallen world.  We can understand that somehow God uses all of the experiential garbage of living in this fallen world to bring about His will and purpose in our lives.  We can understand how brokenness is a necessary part of effectively ministering to people in broken circumstances.

Yet, when burdens weigh the heaviest… when our desperate prayers for mercy, justice and relief seem to go unheeded… when evil seems to prosper unchecked… when our anguished souls cry out to God in grief… it can still feel insufficient.  A God who allows His children to suffer deep loss and horrible travesties while promising to work it all out for good in some manner only He understands at some future date only He knows, with no promise of relief in the here and now, can seem cold and distant… maybe even cruel.

Sure, God sees the big picture and sees His plan unfolding across the millennia, but that seems poor comfort for us mere mortals suffering in the here and now of this fallen world.

How can God sit back and watch His children suffer while doling out platitudes and proverbs?  If God is such a good and faithful friend, why does He allow us to suffer so?

No matter how we rationalize the reasons… no matter how we explain the biblical context… in that moment of deepest sorrow and darkest evil it still feels inadequate.  Although we intellectually concede our assent, our raw emotions still cry out this question.

If God is such a good and faithful friend, why does He allow us to hurt so deeply for so long?

I have no answer sufficient for this question.  Yes, I have all the previously discussed answers for the intellect.  Yet, I have no answer sufficient for the raw emotional suffering.

But we do have Jesus!

We have the account of Jesus praying in the garden where he sweated great drops of blood.  He have the anguished cry of Christ pleading, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me!

How did the Father respond to the cry of His beloved only begotten son?

He sent angels to minister to Jesus… then sent Jesus to be stripped, whipped, and nailed to a cross to die.

Simple Sketch of Crucifix

Jesus understands our suffering.  Jesus knows what it means to cry out to God for relief and still be left to suffer the deprivations of evil.

Our God has not stood off at a distance objectively watching our suffering while offering empty platitudes of how it is for our own good.  Our God has chosen to join us in our suffering.  He has chosen to suffer with us.  He has chosen to experience the full range of human life in a fallen world.

The author of Hebrews tells us Jesus was made perfect through suffering.

Think about that for a moment.  Our good and perfect God, creator of heaven and earth, was made perfect through suffering.  How can that be?  How can God, who was already perfect, be perfected?

Jesus was already the perfect God.  Through suffering, Jesus became our perfect Savior and our perfect Advocate.

For we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are, yet without sin. Therefore let us draw near with confidence to the throne of grace, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. (Hebrews 4:15-16)

Jesus knows.  Jesus understands.  Jesus has suffered as we suffer.

I may not understand God’s plan, but God does understand my suffering.

Jesus understands my suffering… has experienced it Himself… grieves with me in my loss and bewilderment.  Knowing this, I can trust God’s plan.

This is not the plan of an emotionally distant God with little concern for the pain experienced by mortals.  No, this is the plan of a God who is so deeply personal that He became a mortal Himself, suffered with us and for us, and has sent His Holy Spirit to lead, guide, and comfort us.

Jesus knows God’s plan and Jesus knows our suffering.

Jesus knows!

 

This is the third part in a series on the topic “When Evil Prospers.”  Please join the next post in which I will discuss Lessons from Job.

God Became

[Reposted from November 2014 with minor edits]

god became manDoes God change?

Your first instinct is probably similar to mine…”Of course not!  God is God…He is perfect and unchanging…the first and the last…the beginning and the end…the great I Am…Who is, Who was, and evermore shalt be!”

And that answer is both correct and biblically supported.   Many Bible passages discuss God’s unchanging nature.

Every good thing and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.  (James 1:17)

But, just as we begin to get truly comfortable with the concept that God has not, does not, and will not change, we find this word became.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us…  (John 1:1 & 14).

Did you catch that?  The Word is God and the Word became flesh.  God became flesh!  God became

The word became denotes change.  Not minor change, but fundamental change.  He didn’t temporarily disguise Himself as human…He became human.

God became man.

In the Old Testament, we’re told,

God is not a man that He should lie, nor the son of man that He should repent…  (Numbers 23:19)

God was not a man…but He became a man.  God was not a son of man…but He became a son of man.  In fact, Jesus often referred to Himself as the son of man.

God became!  He changed…God became something He previously was not.  Almighty, perfect, unchanging creator God became a created being.

God did not change His nature.  Jesus still does not lie, nor need to repent.  Although, as the Son of Man, Jesus did receive the baptism of repentance.

In becoming human, God did not lower the standard of deity…rather, He raised the standard and condition of humanity.

For us, God changed who He is.  His identity is forever changed.  God became one of us…human.  Jesus will forever be human.  Jesus will forever bear the nail scars of His covenant with us…scars that were not there before, but now are…for us!

The author of Hebrews tells us,

For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through suffering.  (Hebrews 2:10)

Jesus was perfected through suffering…

God changed…He was perfected.

God was already perfect.  He had no need to change…no need to be perfected…no need to become anything other than who He already was.

But we needed a redeemer…a deliverer…a savior.

For our sake, God became a man...through suffering He became our perfect savior! Click To Tweet

He was already perfect deity.  He became our perfect savior.

What a marvelous wonder!

God became

Your thoughts?

The One Ring

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Over the holidays I’ve gotten back into the JRR Tolkien spirit by watching the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) movie series again. As usual, I find rich metaphors in Tolkien’s writing…and hope you’ll indulge my sharing some with you… The … Continue reading