The Cross in Suffering
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.
You would think that if you were God’s chosen life would be easy street. Afterall, wouldn’t the God who created the universe grease the skids for you so that everyone would know? It makes sense, prove He is the One True God by making everything easy for those who worship Him. Holy Scripture tells a different story. Since Genesis chapter 4 God’s people have been villainized, persecuted, and even murdered.
For the unbelieving world this is article one for proof that God does not exist. “My father prayed but his cancer didn’t go away.” “I prayed and my child still died.” “We were faithful and we still lost everything.” “Look at all the sick and suffering people, there is not statistical difference between Christians and non-Christians!” Either God is not loving or God does not exist!
The hard truth is the fact that sin and evil exist is not disproof of God, it is merely proof of sin and evil. We live in an Antinomian world, a world that is full of lawlessness. As the Apostle Paul sums up in Romans 3 after showing how both Jew and Gentile have fallen:
“None is righteous, no, not one;
11 no one understands;
no one seeks for God.
12 All have turned aside; together they have become worthless;
no one does good,
not even one.”
13 “Their throat is an open grave;
they use their tongues to deceive.”
“The venom of asps is under their lips.”
14 “Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.”
15 “Their feet are swift to shed blood;
16 in their paths are ruin and misery,
17 and the way of peace they have not known.”
18 “There is no fear of God before their eyes.”
People have forgotten Original Sin. They have in effect become what we call Pelagians. Pelagius taught that you could live a whole life without sin. Before even turning to God’s word, sickness and death disprove this. And once you turn to God’s word you find, 23 For the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). If people could be sinless, they would not die. But we cannot abide by such simple truths. There must be another answer to the cause of suffering. It cannot be our fault!
Antinomianism leads to a transactional view of God. To think that everything in this life will be better for Christians than non-Christians is not a Christian idea nor taught in Scripture. It is a lie, and lies come from the Devil (John 8:44). It is meant to make us walk away from God when things go wrong in our lives. It is made for us to blame God when our spouse dies, our children are sick, our government is unfaithful or evil.
A transactional view of God approaches God that if I uphold my end of the bargain God must bless me. Afterall, God cannot break His covenantal promises! It presumes we (and everyone else) are guiltless because we do the bare minimum. We’re here at church so we are following the first 3 Commandments. Ignore the times we’ve taken the Lord’s name in vain, been ungrateful to the Lord, despised His word, idolized ourselves or something else besides God. Afterall, those don’t really count, everybody does that. And we honor those in authority…unless we don’t like them. We haven’t murdered anyone. We haven’t committed adultery. We haven’t stolen anything. Everyone lies, but we haven’t lied maliciously! So that doesn’t really count. And who even really knows what it means “to covet” anyway?
This transactional view shows up in different ways as well. I once watched a reality TV show, and a mom was praying with her daughter. She explained to the audience watching, “We pray for others first so God will be sure to answer our prayers for us.” A transactional view of God approaches God not with the eyes of faith but as if He is ATM machine. It is a pagan view of God, and I mean that in the literal sense. Because I have done A, B, and C, God must do X, Y, and Z. You might as well worship Zeus, or Thor, or the Great Spirit in the Sky.
Abraham did almost everything right. Yet the only parcel of ground that Abraham, his son Isaac, and his grandson Jacob/Israel ever owned of the Promised Land was a graveyard. Mary and Joseph followed the word of the Lord and had to flee to Egypt. The parents in Jerusalem fed their children that evening and the next day:
18“A voice was heard in Ramah,
weeping and loud lamentation,
Rachel weeping for her children;
she refused to be comforted, because they are no more.”
The truth of the matter is that suffering is caused by sin, our sin and our neighbor’s sin.
Although God does create and preserve nature, yet the cause of sin is the will of the wicked, that is, of the devil and ungodly men; which will, unaided of God, turns itself from God, as Christ says John 8:44: When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own” (AC XIX).
Herod justified his murder of those children. Matthew 2 tells us that “all Jerusalem” was troubled when those Wise Men showed up asking where the new King of the Jews was for they had come to worship him. If that news had gone out it could have led to a revolution! There would have been violence and bloodshed in the streets. It was for national security Herod had to act, for the good of the people themselves, his advisors assured.
Which brings us to the second reality of our Pelagian world – we are so blind to sin that we even come up with reasons to call it good! What a miserable world we in which we live. It is easy to point to the gross examples of this mentality. The Fascists of Italy, Spain, and Germany were saving the nation, so a few thousand or million needed to die. The Communists of Russia, China, Vietnam, etc. were saving the people, so a few thousand or million needed to die.
We look at those histories and sit there like a Pharisee in the Temple and loudly proclaim, “I thank you God that I am not like other men, even like those _______________.” In so doing we cannot see the murder in our heart, the log in our eye, the evil twisting our soul. We live happy content lives knowing we are God’s perfect and preferred children.
And then suffering happens. Suffering lays bare the truth that our Pelgianistic Antinomian minds want to run away from: sin exists and it exists in us. It causes us to examine our lives, our hearts, and our minds. It requires us to confront those deep dark places we like to ignore. It shows us our limitations and weaknesses. Yes, there is evil in the world, yes there is evil in my heart. Does this mean God does not exist?
The answer to that is, “No, God does exist.” God has provided an answer to our suffering, to our neighbor’s suffering. God has provided the better way. God provides, even during suffering. God provided Joseph to protect Israel. God provided Joseph to protect Jesus. God provided Jesus to comfort Rachel in her grief. He took those Holy Innocents to His bosom. Their blood was not the first or the last spilled in man’s wicked attempt to thwart God. But God spilt His own blood to pay for the wickedness of man.
Do not be surprised when the fiery trial comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you (1 Peter 4:12). Suffering is not proof of an absence of God, but proof of the abundance of sin in the world. The cross is proof of the fullness of God, of His grace and mercy. That God does not abandon us to our suffering but comes to us in His Son for the redemption of sinners and the calling of the dead out of their graves.
God came into the world to lay down His life for the whole world. God shed His blood because we shed each other’s. God died because we died. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
I am your pastor, your shepherd. I have walked with you in your illnesses. I have sat beside you and your dying family member. I have been there at the miscarriages and infertility issues. I have listened to your confessions and absolved your sins. I love you. God loves you more. I have not died for you. I cannot die for you. God did. God did more than listen to you, walk with you, and carry your burdens. God gave an ultimate answer to them: the empty tomb.
Jacob trusts in God, so goes down to Egypt under the protection of his son. Joseph trusts in God so goes down to Egypt under the protection of the Lord. Rachel is comforted in the arms of Christ, who comforts us. The world, opposed to God, persecutes the church and points to suffering as a reason God cannot exist. But we, the church clings to our Savior for He has overcome the world. And now what can the world do to us?
If God allows trial, so be it. God is still with us. We entrust our souls to the Lord. It is a hard thing to do. The lies of the world and our sinful flesh want to peel us away from our only source of hope and comfort. We must keep our eyes focused on the light shining in the darkness. We must return to God’s word and continue to gather with His people. We need to receive the Sacrament and have our faith strengthened. We need to be reminded of our baptism. Taking up and carrying our cross is no easy matter. It is simply the work laid out before us in the wisdom of God. And He is with us, even unto the end of the age (Matthew 28:20). We can weep and we can lament. We can grieve for what we have lost and bewail what we are going thru. For Christ is with us, even in the valley of the shadow of death (Psalm 23:4) Jesus is with us.
May the comfort and peace which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
