suffering for the right reasons

For Christians the purpose of suffering is to prove their true character, to clear away the dross of sin and to allow the pure nature of Christ to show itself. some strange thing: Christians should expect and prepare for suffering.¹

But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings; that, when his glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy [1 Pet. 4:13].

Why are we to rejoice in trials? Because suffering prepares us for the coming of Christ. Paul wrote in Romans 8:17, “And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint–heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together.” I think we need to face up to the fact that there is no shortcut to living the Christian life. There is no easy way. Let me repeat, the Christian life is a banquet—because He has invited us to the table of salvation—but it is not a picnic. We are to suffer for Him and with Him. And we will know the reason for each testing when we stand in His presence someday. I tell you, I would be embarrassed to sit down with Paul in glory and be on the same level with him, because he suffered so much. And today some folk criticize Simon Peter, but we are also going to look up to him when we get to heaven. The Word of God makes it very clear that suffering is a part of the Christian life. Suffering is what develops you. We hear so much talk about how everything is supposed to be smooth and lovely in the Christian marriage and in the Christian home. My friend, I do not agree with that at all—sorrow and suffering will come to the Christian home. I know of nothing that drew my wife and me together like the death of our first little one. And believe me, we wanted that little one. We sat in that hospital room and simply wept and prayed together. That is still a sacred memory in our lives—it did something for us.²

Evidence for God

Earlier I mentioned Bertrand Russell, who became an atheist as a teenager after being exposed to an essay by the philosopher John Stuart Mill. In that essay Mill argued against the existence of God, saying that if everything has a cause, then God must have a cause, and if God must have a cause, then He is just like any other part of creation. I pointed out that such thinking represents a fundamental misrepresentation of the law of causality, which does not teach that everything must have a cause, but simply that every effect must have a cause.

Another man, the son of an evangelical Methodist minister and scholar, also became an atheist as a teen. The reason for his atheism was the influence of the same philosopher, John Stuart Mill. This young man was captured by a statement Mill made that God cannot be both omnipotent and good. If God is omnipotent and yet allows the atrocities that befall human beings, then He has the power to stop the suffering. Since He does not, it is proof that He is neither good nor all-loving. On the other hand, if He is good and all-loving and does not want to see the savage brutality that afflicts the human race, then it must mean that He simply is incapable of stopping it and, therefore, is not omnipotent. That fifteen-year-old boy felt the weight of Mill’s argument and came to the conclusion that there must be no God, certainly not the God of the Bible.

Later on, this same boy told a story, which became a famous parable. It is a story of two explorers who were working their way through a jungle in Africa, uninhabited, far removed from any civilization. As they were hacking their way through the undergrowth with machetes, they came upon a clearing, and in the clearing they found a magnificent garden. The garden contained flowers and vegetables perfectly arranged in rows, not a single weed invading its beauty. It appeared to be perfectly tended. One explorer said to the other one, “Isn’t this incredible? I wonder where the gardener is. Let’s wait for him and ask him how he came to plant this magnificent garden in the middle of this seemingly uninhabitable place.” So they waited, but no gardener came.

One of the explorers said, “We must have been mistaken. There must not be a gardener. The garden must have happened by accident; it is just an inexplicable freak of nature. So let us go on with our work of exploring.”

The other said, “No, maybe this gardener is different from other gardeners. Maybe this one is invisible, and he is busy tending the garden, and we are just not able to see him.”

As they were having this discussion, one said, “Let’s set a trap for him. We will set up a wire around the perimeter of the garden and attach bells to it. If he in his invisible presence comes to tend the garden, he will bump the wires and the bells will ring, and we will know that he has been here, even though we cannot see him.”

So they carefully prepared their trap, and they waited, but the bells did not ring. One explorer said, “See? There is no invisible gardener.”

The other replied, “Wait. Maybe this gardener is not only invisible but also immaterial. Perhaps he does not have a body that will bump up against the wire and make the bells ring.”

The author of the parable, philosopher Antony Flew, was saying that the concept of God has died the death of a thousand qualifications. In the final analysis, he asked, what is the difference between an invisible, immaterial God and no God at all? Of course, the answer to that screams that the difference is the garden. How does one account for the perfect design of the garden apart from a designer?

Some time ago, I interviewed Ben Stein for the Renewing Your Mind radio program. At the time, Stein was heavily involved in the production of a Hollywood movie titled Expelled. In that movie, Stein addressed what is happening to professors and teachers on college campuses in America, and also in high schools, who have the audacity to suggest that the universe may be here as a result of intelligent design rather than as the result of a cosmic accident. Throughout the history of Western science, the work of philosophy and the philosophical foundations of science have promoted free inquiry on any question of this type with the virtue of having the courage to allow one to go wherever the evidence leads. Yet now in America there is an inquisition against free inquiry. The Orange County school board ruled any teaching of intelligent design out of bounds in the public schools. An editorial that appeared at the time in the Orlando Sentinel strongly agreed with this decision. Yet that is an unintelligent decision, because what is at stake is not just religion or theology but scientific inquiry.

In the midst of this debate about intelligent design, something remarkable happened. Antony Flew announced to the world that he had changed his mind and come to the conclusion that the evidence for God is compelling. Intelligent design is not simply an optional theory, he said, but a philosophical necessity. It has been interesting to see how the world of atheists has responded to Flew’s conversion. His character has been all but assassinated by philosophers and scientists who say that the only reason he changed his mind is that he developed dementia in old age. Flew then wrote a book, There Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, explaining why he changed, and if you read it, you will see that it does not contain the writings of a demented person.

What made Flew become an atheist in the first place was not the parable of the garden in the wilderness but the problem of suffering. When he was fifteen years old, he read Mill’s statement, that God cannot be both all-loving and good and at the same time be omnipotent, and Flew could not answer that criticism of Christianity. Nineteenth-century critics of Christianity called the problem of pain the Achilles’ heel of the Christian faith. Flew came at it from a different angle. He said that when the existence of something is asserted, whatever evidence works against it must be taken into account. For example, in order to say that the world is round, all the evidence that appears to render the world flat must be considered. The idea of a round earth took a long time to supplant the idea of a flat earth, because it was strange—so strange that it seemed much easier to continue believing that it is flat.

Scientists know that scientific theories change as quickly as weather patterns. Many things I learned in high school have long since been put aside. In the scientific world, there are paradigms or theories that attempt to describe all of reality; but so far, no scientific theory for understanding everything in the world has been free of contrary evidence. Think, for example, of the well-established claim that uniformitarian geology is a scientific truth. This holds that the changes in the surface of the earth have developed over vast periods of times in a uniform and gradual way, not as the result of a sudden, catastrophic moment that changed everything.

Albert Einstein’s friend Immanuel Velikovsky wrote two books about the anomalies of that, mentioning, for example, the problem of the mastodons that were frozen in the icecap with their bodies completely intact. When scientists thawed and dissected them, they found undigested tropical food in their bellies. Tropical food did not get to the arctic gradually, so the perplexed scientists looked for a theory to account for it.

I am not picking on the uniformitarians. I am saying that every theory, whatever it is, has counterevidence, and if the counterevidence becomes too severe, too multiple, or too profound, the theory has to change, which is what Antony Flew said. Flew read of the holocaust in World War II, about the camps in which so many millions were extinguished, and he became aware of the slaughter that had occurred through Joseph Stalin. Today we read that Saddam Hussein killed more Arabs than any man in human history, sometimes just for the fun of it.

There is unspeakable evil in this world and unbelievable pain and suffering. When we see that, we have to ask the question that the people in the Old Testament raised more than once in the Wisdom Literature: why do the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer? It just makes no sense. There are few people who, in the midst of suffering, can say, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). One must have a profound understanding of the character of God and a profound trust in His goodness.³

could suffering be proof that God is real

I remember well a man who came to my office a number of years ago for counseling. He looked as if he had the weight of the world resting on his shoulders. He was stooped, his head was bowed, and his eyes were cast upon the floor. He was bearing a great deal of guilt for some trials and suffering he was experiencing. Some of his friends had convinced him that he must be living in sin or he would not be suffering so much.

He came to me so that I could assist him in identifying the sin which he had committed so that he could confess it to the Lord. As we visited and prayed together, I discovered that his friends were very wrong. He was suffering not for his sin, but because of his goodness and godliness. He was suffering as a Christian.

What a delight it was to share these verses from 1 Peter with him and to encourage him in being faithful in following Christ even if it meant some temporary suffering for the name of Christ. Peter reminded him that he should not be ashamed, but that he should glory in suffering for Christ.

I will never forget the change in the way that man looked when he left my office. His shoulders were erect, his head was high, and his face was shining with the glory of the Lord! Now he understood the reason for his suffering, and he was rejoicing and praising God for the privilege. He was not facing the judgment of God; he was facing the glory of God.

There is a marvelous solution for those of us who suffer according to the will of God. It is a profoundly simple solution—we should commit our souls to our Lord (v. 19).

He is the faithful Creator who made us in His image and who, through Christ, is in the process of making us become more and more like Him and less and less like the distortion which sin has created. He is to be trusted; He who calls us is faithful; He will do it (1 Thess. 5:24).

And, as we entrust ourselves to our faithful Creator, we should continue to do good. It is always the will of God, and it is always appropriate for the Christian to do good—even when we are suffering and hurting. That’s what Paul and Silas did as they suffered in the Philippian jail; and that’s what we should be doing day by day—to the glory of God.⁴

4:17 the time has come for judgment: Judgment does not always imply condemnation in Scripture. When used in relation to Christians, it consistently refers to the evaluation of a believer’s works for the purpose of reward (see 1 Cor. 3:10–15). the house of God: The focus here is not on a building but on believers. those who do not obey: Throughout this letter, Peter speaks of those who are not part of God’s eternal family as being disobedient (2:7, 8; 3:1, 20).

4:18 scarcely saved: No one deserves to be saved, and no one is able to be saved by his or her good works (see Eph. 2:8, 9). Since everyone deserves condemnation, the fact that anyone is saved is solely the result of God’s grace. appear: If God does not hold back judgment from His own people, imagine the end of the enemies of God who have no one to justify them before Him (see Ps. 1:4–6; RevRev. 20:11–15).⁵

1 Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1997). The Nelson Study Bible: New King James Version (1 Pe 4:12). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.

2 McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Epistles (1 Peter) (electronic ed., Vol. 54, pp. 91–92). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

3 Sproul, R. C. (2011). 1-2 Peter (pp. 172–175). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.

4 Cedar, P. A., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1984). James / 1 & 2 Peter / Jude (Vol. 34, pp. 183–184). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

5 Radmacher, E. D., Allen, R. B., & House, H. W. (1997). The Nelson Study Bible: New King James Version (1 Pe 4:17–18). Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers.