Why do we suffer?
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2012 · 25 March 2012
Everyone has suffered in this life, and as we deal with suffering we also see suffering all over this world. Wars and murders and tornadoes and floods and avalanches and the list goes on and on. So how do we as Christians deal with all this?
As we begin to think about Easter let us look to Romans 8, as the book of Romans is about the good news. It starts with presenting the gospel of God in verses 1 to 17. Then we see the sinfulness of man. But then we read the solution to this all in the wonderful sacrificial death and resurrection of Jesus Christ which we celebrate at Easter.
So in order to understand this let’s start with the context, by the time you come to the end of Romans 5, we have gone through the fact that salvation is by grace through faith in Christ alone, and not by works. And when you get to Romans 6, you’re now talking about the benefits of the gospel and that runs all the way through Romans 8:39.
We could simply say this. Romans 6 and 7 deal with the negative benefits of the gospel and Romans 8 deals with the positive benefit. Six and seven deal with the fact that you’re no longer under the Law, you are no longer dead, you’ve come to life. But in chapter 8, you get into the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.
This is that which the Holy Spirit does in us, for us and with us. So we’re looking now at the benefit section of what salvation brings us. And this is where the work of the Holy Spirit begins to really become clear to us. The Father designed the plan, the Son made the plan possible and the Holy Spirit makes the plan work, okay?
John McArthur says it beautifully, “The Father is the one who chose us. The Son is the one who redeemed us. The Spirit is the one who sanctifies us. Election is the work of the Father, justification is the work of the Son, and sanctification is the work of the Spirit.”
Now let us study the powerful on-going ministry of the Holy Spirit as He moves us from grace to glory. And this is critical for us to understand because this is where we live everyday. A right understanding of the ministry of the Holy Spirit is necessary to worship the Spirit of God for the very things that He is at this time doing in our lives even if that means suffering.
And that leads us now to Romans 8:17 where the ministry of the Holy Spirit is guarantying or securing our future eternal glory. And that, of course, is the ultimate gift of God. We have a guarantee of eternal glory. This is the best of all the elements of salvation, for what would a salvation be that we could lose?
And if it depended on us in any way, we would lose it because none of us could do whatever it would take to secure by our own merit a salvation from God. So the only hope we have for eternal glory is to be secured by the same God who chose us, called us, justified us, and one day will glorify us.
So we could say that the two works of the Holy Spirit are sanctification and security. He is progressively conforming us to a righteous standard which is modeled perfectly by Jesus. That’s what Ephesians 1:13 means when it says we’re sealed by the Spirit, that seal can’t be broken.
Anybody who tells you that you can lose your salvation doesn’t understand the process of salvation. Salvation is a gift given by God before the foundation of the world and everyone in this category of being chosen by God will be glorified for “whom He predestined, He called and whom He called, He justified, and whom He justified, He glorified” (Romans 8:30).
Jesus says in John 6:39, “All that the Father gives to Me will come to Me, and I will lose none of them, but raise them up on the last day.” We will be raised to our eternal condition by the power of the same Holy Spirit that regenerated us at our conversion. It’s a work that the Father designed and the Son validated, and the Spirit effects.
Now look at Romans 8:17 and following, “If children heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.” And with that last line, Paul introduces the concept of eternal glory.
Romans 8:18-25, “18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
“22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.”
Even though we suffer, there is no comparison to the glory that will come to us later. The Holy Spirit uses everything we experience, even suffering, to sanctify us, to grow us, to teach us more of Christ’ attributes such as patience and forgiving those who have and maybe are continuing to hurt us.
One word jumps out at you when we read this passage, and it’s the word groan. Creation is groaning in this passage in verse 22. And then we find in verse 23 that we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit, we too groan. This indicates that the creation and us are going through certain groanings, certain agonies until the final realization of glory.
And all of those groanings are some indication of an unfulfilled reality. All of creation feels this unfulfillment. Believers feel the unfulfillment, even the Holy Spirit experiences that unfulfillment. Nature here is personified. Verse 19, “For the groaning, or the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.”
What does this mean? And why is the creation groaning? This is a kind of suffering condition waiting for the promise to be fulfilled. The present age is the age of sin and suffering and decay and corruption. And the age to come is the age of the new heaven and the new earth and righteousness and purity and holiness and virtue and glory and the absence of death and decay and disease.
Now what does creation mean here? Angels? They’re created beings. No. They’re not groaning. Holy angels are not groaning because they’re around the throne of God now, they’re in eternal perfection and eternal holiness. They don’t have hope for anything better because nothing could get any better than it is.
What about demons? Is he talking about the created angels who fell and are the demons? No. They’re not groaning in hope for their liberation because there is no liberation, there is no salvation, there’s no deliverance, there’s no forgiveness, there’s no better future for demons, only the Lake of Fire.
Well maybe he’s talking about believers. No, he’s not talking about believers because there’s a distinction made between the creation and believers. Please notice, verse 19, the creation is waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, therefore the creation is distinct from the sons of God.
Is it unbelievers? No, because unbelievers are not hoping in Christ, they’re not hoping for glory, they’re not hoping or expecting something better from heaven. They don’t have any information about that; they have no desire for that. And furthermore, if you look at verse 20, they are willing sinners, willing to feed their own corruption.
The bottom line, the creation that groans is non-rational creation, animate and inanimate. So what you have here is a personification of creation, the material heavens, the material earth and everything that’s in them. Creation is given an identity here. It’s personified in a sort of poetic fashion.
So this is a kind of expectancy. It’s as if creation longs to see the revealing of the sons of God. That’s the time when we are all glorified. That would be at the end of all human history, the end of the millennial Kingdom, the establishment of the new heavens and the new earth, creation is waiting for that.
In verse 21 it’s put this way, “that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.” When all the children of God are glorified, creation is going to get the benefit of it, right. Because there will be a new heaven and a new earth, right? This is an amazing cosmological statement of massive proportions. The whole creation is eagerly anticipating it.
Why is creation doing that? Go back to verse 20, because the creation was subjected to futility. It can’t be what it wants to be. All creation when God created in Genesis 1 was originally good, right? And then at the end in chapter 1:31 He says, “It was all very good.” But it was subjected to futility. It can’t fulfill its purpose. It is no longer what it should be, and what it could be.
God subjected creation to its futility, according to Genesis 3:17, 18, and 19 pronounced a curse on the creation, because of the sin of Adam and Eve. When Adam and Eve sinned, a plague came on them, a deadly plague, a plague that was so infectious no human being who ever walks on this planet will escape it.
So it was when Adam sinned the plague was everywhere on the planet and it continues to this day. Decay, disaster, pollution, disruption, degeneration, those are not the result of some evolutionary fluke, or some bad mutation. The things are the way they are in the world because God cursed this entire creation. He cursed it so that man is left to face every waking moment of his life, the deadly destructive corrupting realities of sin.
Environmentalists aren’t going to reverse that, they’re not going to mitigate that. Solar energy won’t do it. Eliminating carbon footprints is not going to do it. Getting rid of fossil fuel isn’t going to do it. Education isn’t going to do it. This is a divine curse.
The world is not on an upward trend, we’re on the way down from perfection to total destruction and there’s no stopping point. That is the biblical world view because when man sinned he was punished by not being allowed to enjoy purity, and he is now a king who lost his crown and is ruling over an corrupt decaying and deadly creation.
So the principle of corruption is everywhere. That’s why the creation is groaning because it has been subjected to futility, not of its own will but as a necessary accommodation to the curse of God on Adam and Eve and on all humanity and it cannot do anything to reverse its slavery to corruption. This is an act of God.
Look at verse 21, “In hope that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption.” The whole creation is longing to be what it was originally created by God to be and knowing it will not happen until the glorious manifestation of the children of God at the final eternal state. All creation is waiting for a better future.
And God is protecting us now through the work of the Holy Spirit. God is doing that, not by walking with us, but by living in us and it’s the Holy Spirit who sanctifies us in the midst of this corrupt world. That’s the ministry of the Holy Spirit.
How is this all going to happen? This is described in detail in 2 Peter 3:10, “The day of the Lord will come like a thief in which the heavens will pass away with a roar and the elements will be destroyed with intense heat and the earth and its works will be burned up.”
And it tells us even further in verse 12, “The heavens will be destroyed by burning and the elements will melt with intense heat.” And the earth and heavens, as we know it, will go out of existence. John McArthur calls it the reverse of creation, namely the uncreation. And verse 13, “But according to his promise we are waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells.”
Verse 22 sums it up, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now.” A verb that means pains of childbirth is a positive pain, right? Childbirth pain basically is the kind of pain that anticipates something wonderful, like great events, something blessed, and that’s the kind of pain that the creation feels.
You don’t need to protect the creation. It’s here for you. You don’t need to be evil about it, but you have to understand, this is a cursed creation. It still is allowed to yield riches and blessing for us. God’s going to take care of His creation until the time when He destroys the entire thing. Okay?
Secondly, believers groan for glory, verse 23, “Not only this but we also ourselves, we ourselves groan within ourselves waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, namely the redemption of our body.” Yes, we have been adopted but we don’t have our inheritance yet. True? End of verse 23, the redemption of our eternal body.
Do you remember 1 Peter 1:3-4? We groan for the day when this mortal shall put on immortality, when this corruptible shall put on incorruption, when death shall be swallowed up with life, right? Verse 23 says, “Because we have already the first fruits of the Spirit.”
The Spirit in us is the first fruits of the Holy Spirit. He is the first installment. First fruits was the little bit of the crop that the farmer pulled first, the first part that came in while the rest was still reaching its full bloom. He would pull in the first so he would know what the future crop would be like by the first that came.
We then groan until that is fulfilled. And the older you get, the more you groan, right? Really, you groan more because you have more to groan about. Not only personally in your own body, but things are going on around you that make you groan.
What keeps our perseverance strong when we suffer? It’s the ministry of the Spirit of God in us, the first fruit deposited. The Holy Spirit, He is the one leading us, He is the one confirming our adoption, He is the one testifying with our spirit that we’re the children of God, Amen?