God Is Not Passive

That God was reconciling the world to Himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And He has committed to us the message of reconciliation.  2 Corinthians 5:19 NIV

Suffering has many faces. The Bible doesn’t whitewash our experience of suffering by saying that it’s all of one stripe. Rather, it recognizes the multifaceted ways that suffering can come upon us. 

Sometimes we have caused our own turbulence by our rebellion against God, He could have allowed us to plunge on in darkness and destruction. This would have been in keeping with God’s holiness and righteousness. 

However, His love, a bewildering because we don’t always deserve it-  attribute of God, would not allow Him to do it. From the very beginning of that downward crash, God has had a plan for mankind’s deliverance, redemption and reconciliation. In fact the plan is so fantastic that it ultimately lifts us far beyond any idea we can comprehend. 

And it was so decisively demonstrated at the cross, where His compassion was embodied in Jesus Christ - not only In the thirty-three years preceding His death, where Jesus suffered alongside us; but ultimately as He suffered FOR us on the cross. 

Romans 5:8 TPT Christ proved God’s passionate love for us by dying in our place while we were still lost and ungodly!

It was the love of God that sent Jesus Christ to the cross. It was because He was in control and controlled by love for His people that He provided that divine substitute for our sin. 

God’s love did not begin at the cross. It began before the world was established, before the time clock of civilization began to move. The concept stretches our understanding to the utmost limits of our minds.  

The question of why God allows suffering is one of the most profound mysteries of life. And it is a difficult question to answer. We cannot turn to any one passage in Scripture to find a thorough and conclusive treatment of the subject. 

There is only one place where we can find an answer and that is in the Bible. Read the Bible! See the countless eons before God created this present earth, when it was “without form and void” and the deep, silent darkness formed a vast gulf between the brilliance of God’s throne and the dark vacuum where our present now exists. 

Realize that God has been active in working toward the alleviation of suffering. 

Genesis 3:6-7 NET When the woman saw that the tree produced fruit that was good for food, was attractive to the eye, and was desirable for making one wise, she took some of its fruit and ate it. She also gave some of it to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Then the eyes of both of them opened, and they knew they were naked; so they sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves.

God gave people the freedom of choice: to choose good or to choose evil. Part of the human makeup that distinguishes the human race from other creatures is the ability to reason and make moral decisions. Man is a free moral agent. 

Adam chose to follow the advice of the enemy, and he rebelled (sinned) against God. Adam’s choice (his sin) opened a storm of suffering for mankind. 

Genesis reveals that Adam’s action produced a wide spectrum of suffering: physical, spiritual, social, psychological, and even ecological. In a very real sense, the suffering of this world is created by humanity. The tendency to sin, the sinful nature, is a human characteristic transferred from Adam and Eve to every generation since. It is part of the human nature we have all inherited.

And yet it is God who took action to solve the problem- the promise that one day He would send His Son to earth to destroy the devil’s work and deal with the problems of sin and suffering. 

We have seen this fulfilled historically in Jesus Christ. By His life, death, and resurrection He triumphed over the enemy and sin, and He is the key to the solution of suffering. By His death, He releases us from the penalty of sin. By His resurrection life, He gives us the power over the tendency to sin as we allow Him to control our lives. 

God has not been passive regarding the plight of the human race. He has taken action. In fact, all of history is moving toward a time when Christ will establish His rule over all the universe.  

The enemy, sin, and suffering will be eliminated entirely. God promises to free us from the penalty and power of sin; and one day He will produce an environment in which we will be free from the presence of sin and the suffering associated with it. 

It is in God’s own suffering that we see His great love. We must not try to evaluate God’s character and judge whether or not He is a loving God by looking at our own sufferings. It is by looking at the cross that we come to know and experience the depth of God’s love for us.