By Dr. Charles J. Tomlin
Flat Rock-Zion Baptist Partnership
April 19th 2020
The global suffering surrounding the Coronavirus is unprecedented.
It’s immense, tragic, overwhelming, and random too.
Perhaps it's the randomness that most difficult; most get well, but many don’t.
Such mysterious, global, suffering, raises many questions: medical, political, economic, and theological too.
And for the believer, the granddaddy of all questions is:
“Why do is there so much suffering in the world?”
The very first prayer I was taught to pray was: ‘God is great, God is good, …’.
And this is exactly where the question lies:
If God can’t stop suffering, then how you say can ‘God is great’.
If God can stop suffering, but doesn’t, how can say ‘God is good’?
As a pastor, I’ve observed that many Christians don’t like this question.
The question is hard. Many are afraid of it too.
It’s also the main excuse unbelievers cite as their reason for unbelief:
“How can there be a loving creator when the innocent suffer?”
Is there any kind of answer to this line of reasoning?
Well, in this text from Romans chapter 8, the apostle Paul looks this question straight between the eyes. It’s perhaps the only place in the Bible, here in Paul’s most sophisticated letter to the Romans, that the world’s suffering is given full consideration,
And at first, at least, it doesn’t appear that Paul us helps that much.
For with one single line, being a good Jew, Paul places the ultimate responsibility upon God. But strangely, he does with an optimistic twist.
In verse 20, Paul writes that ‘…the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope…’.
Hope? Hope of what?
Here, Paul repeats the most basic, primordial, biblical understanding.
He’s takes us back to Genesis, where Adam’s sin and disobedience forced God’s hand to subject His own creation to futility, which includes meaningless suffering and death too.
For Paul, God does not cause suffering, at least not directly, but futility and suffering are now a necessary part of how things are, at least for now.
But Paul also concludes, God did this ‘in hope’ that one day the glory of creation will be restored as God intended. This creation will be set free from its bondage to decay (21) and our bodies will be redeemed from suffering and death (23).
Now, that’s certainly something to hope for, isn’t it?
But what I find most interesting is Paul’s idea that God has hopes for his creation; hopes which can now, only be realized through suffering.
CONSIDER…THE SUFFERINGS
Paul’s biblical perspective is important, because there’s are many less constructive, and even a few very destructive ways to ‘consider the sufferings’ of the present time (18).
The worse way was etched in my mine as a 16-year old. I had accompanied my father to visit our grieving neighbours, right after their 6- year old son died after being struck by a car when getting off the school bus.
While in that awful moment, we were sitting there with that young family the interim pastor came in.
Then, he told them in these exact words, “I know it’s hard, but you must find a way to accept the will of a God.”
I couldn’t believe it. How could he dare say such a thing?
But the truth is, many Christians still give sloppy answers about human suffering that are more harmful than helpful.
Some I have heard go something like:
‘I know this is hard, but everything happens for a reason’,
‘God’s a purpose for this’. He needed an another angel.
The other unhelpful phrase I hear is: ‘God doesn’t put more on us than we can bear.’
I was at a funeral home not long ago and I heard all of these and more, in one evening.
In contrast to what is often said, Paul says, in this text, that God has subjected the creation to futility.
Thus, many things happen in life for no reason. They without purpose; meaningless.
And this futility includes most suffering too. It has no particular reason, other than this is the way it is.
Now, this doesn’t mean there is no reason for some suffering in the world.
A lot of suffering in the world is, in fact, caused by humans themselves.
For one thing, Scripture is clear that human sin brings suffering and casts a shadow of death over the whole world: ‘The Soul that sins, shall die’.
In this Scripture, Paul’s certainly isn’t negating that link.
But Paul is also saying that most of the creation’s groaning in pain, is what it means to live in a physical world.
Recently, a health expert was on the news explaining how many diseases in the world have popped up in recent years, due to increased human invasion into what used to be animal habitat.
Lyme’s disease, SARS, Ebola, and even this Coronavirus, are diseases that have jumped from animals to humans because of the choices humans have made to live in places where once, only animals lived.
You can see the same thing with many natural disasters too, he said. Humans are building homes in places that are beautiful, but put themselves at a higher risk of inviting disaster upon themselves.
Living on a planet like ours, is beautiful, but it can be complicated.
It’s a lot more complicated than the simple answers we often give.
IN HOPE WE WERE SAVED
So, if suffering is part of our lives, when then did God choose to ‘subject’ this world such futility and suffering?
It may come as surprise, but the Bible has asked more questions about this, than it has given answers.
The question about why suffering, especially as it relates to the righteous, is all over the Bible.
The Psalms ask it. Job asks it. Lamentations is full of it. The prophet Habakkuk complains to God about it.
The prophet Jeremiah questions God about it: In the 12th chapter he prayed: “Righteous are you, O Lord, when I complain to you; yet I would plead my case before you. Why does the way of the wicked prosper? Why do all who are treacherous thrive?”
Many of the biblical writers cry out the same kinds of questions we still ask. The Bible also questions why great world-wide suffering happens, which causes so much suffering and disruption.
So, how does Paul answer Jeremiah’s complaint, our complaints, and answer why so much struggle and suffering is built into this world?
The most surprising word Paul’s uses in Romans 8, is the word ‘hope’. Paul answers human suffering in verse 24, saying: ‘…in hope we are saved’.
Notice, that this ‘hope’ he means is a ‘hope’ that saves us through our suffering, but not from our suffering?
Paul says this hope is a hope as big as all creation, which will ONE DAY be set free from its bondage to decay. But this hope is also a hope that will be obtains as a new freedom for all children of God (21).
This is God’s promise of hope, already made to us, through Christ’s resurrection.
But Paul also says, we must wait in patience for complete fulfilment of this hope.
We have to wait, Paul says, because this very hope is at already at work, bringing God’s salvation to us, right now.
One of the greatest childhood stories ever told, is The Wizard of Oz. It came on every year and a Sunday evening.
I remember how I couldn’t hardly wait to see in on our new, color TV.
It that story, hope was alive and saving too.
It was the hope of going home that guided Dorothy throughout her whole time in the land of Oz.
But getting back home still wasn’t the main point of the story. The story was ultimately about, the kind of person Dorothy becomes, and who her friends become too.
Throughout this entire, difficult and dangerous journey together, they each realize who they are, and who they need to be to fulfil their calling in lives.
The scarecrow already had a brain, but needed the opportunity to use it. The tin man already, had a heart, but needed someone to love,
The lion, already had the courage, but just need be who he was.
And if you recall, the story began with Dorthy’s own discouraged attitude toward her childhood home, but by the end of this story, this discouragement was transformed into one of the most brillian hopeful chants in literature and movies: ‘There’s no place like home’.
This story, which is more than a child’s story, is a story about how hope has the power to save; to transform human character and the human soul.
And isn’t this what the New Testament is saying, when James says, “Brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy,
3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance;
4 and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.
So, again, when you rightly ask yourself, why does God subject this creation to trials, to futility and to suffering?
Paul says, it’s so that we can now, already, in this fallen world, in our current situation, be saved by hope.
…THOSE WHO LOVE GOD
But of, hope isn’t all Paul talks about. It is through this hope, God’s hope, that we can become the people we are called to be; people, Paul describes, who are predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son (30).
This is very big word to conclude with: ‘predestination’’. But it doesn’t means that God chooses some to be saved and others to be lost.
No, this word means, that through this hope that saves and change us, we can, even in this fallen world, still become the people God has created, called and pre-destined us to be all along.
Isn’t it the hope of who we will become, because of what this virus has done, something people are already talking about?
I hear people saying things like “I’ll never take life so for granted again”.
“I hope we can get my life back to normal and we can be together again.”
I even heard a former American diplomate say, “I know I’ve relearned what’s most important again. I certainly hope this means some kind of transformation all over the world.”
Now, that’s getting very close to biblical language, isn’t it?
Who do you hope to become, and to do differently, even more positively, as a result of this Virus threat in the world?
Isn’t it true, that considering the kind of person we should be is seldom seriously contemplated, until we have to face the struggles, the sufferings and pains of life head on.
This is why, Paul says, God’s subjects this world to such futility, so that we will too might find our way home not only be saved by hope, but so that we can become the people God has called us to be.
For you see, God isn’t in the suffering business, but God is in the transformation business.
Our God, the God who raised Jesus from the dead, is the very God still has to power of love to turn trouble into triumph!
This God doesn’t remove our suffering, but he redeems it.
All roads of this text lead us to Paul’s greatest truth, a truth that is made real to us through suffering: “For God is at work in all things for those who love God and are called by his purpose… Paul says. ‘We are than conquerors through Christ who loves us.”
Love is what you have the opportunity to learn most about in a futile, suffering, fractured world.
And you learn, not just about what you love, but you also have the opportunity to know how much God loves us.
“Nothing shall separate us from the love of God in Jesus Christ.” He says.
You don’t learn really learn what love means when all is well in the world.
Just like you don’t learn how much you need God when your health is good and your bank rolls are large.
It is in only in this kind of struggle, and in suffering too,
that we fully realize just how temporary and fragile life is,
and how we shouldn’t take anything or anyone for granted,
and most important of all, it is only in the threats of this world, that we are draw closest to the very love that enables us
to conqueror all these things.
When Martin Luther, the great reformer and his wife, lost a young child to illness, it was very difficult for them both. Luther’s wife, in her frustration, looked straight at her husband in overwhelming grief, and said: “Martin, where is your God in all this!”
Luther’s response expressed his saving hope: “I know exactly where God is in all this. God’s exactly where he was when he lost his son. He’s crying and weeping like we are. And just like God raised his Son up from the dead, I have all the confidence, that God will also raise our child up too.
It’s not easy to have faith like that, but hope can still save us, and help us to learn to love life, to love God, and to love each other even more than before.
The great poet Emily Dickenson said,
“You do not know how to live unless you know how to love Christ,’
especially, when you’re going through loneliness, suffering and pain.
My hope is, that even in this time of great suffering, through hope you are being draw closer to God’s great love for you.
For you see, Hope can still save us, in spite of, and sometimes even because sin or suffering. This saving hope comes to us through God’s love for us, is most important for us now, and in all life’s challenges, because, as Paul says, 'if God is for us, who or what can be against us?... We are conquerors through Christ who loves us.
This is the hope that still saves. Are you living in this kind of hope, especially today. This living hope doesn’t have to wait for the glory that is to come, this hope can come to you right now, in your own life, through faith in Jesus Christ.
Let us pray:
Dear Lord Jesus, you are our hope that saves us.
Because of your great love for us, we can face the futility and our own suffering in this world, with hope.
We have hope because your love is always for us, and is never against us Your conquering love enables us to face whatever comes,
Even without having all the answer,
but because we put our trust and our hope firmly your love. Amen.
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