We continue to look at 10 biblical truths to encourage and equip you to both endure afflictions, and to offer comfort to those around you who are persevering through difficult times and experiences. In the last post, we covered that:
1) God is Sovereign
2) God's aim in everything is His own glory
3) God has compassion on the afflicted
4) Affliction is always the result of sin
5) Your understanding of affliction is always distorted by sin
Today, we look at 5 more important truths that will serve us well in the midst of pain.
6) Your Affliction is not God’s Punishment
I talk to so many people who question if God is punishing their past sin with current heartache and difficulties. This line of thinking is a fundamental misunderstanding of the gospel. God is absolutely angry at sin. The penalty for sin is death and God, in his justice, punishes all sin. At the cross, Jesus satisfied God’s wrath against the sin by paying the penalty that sin demands. He took upon himself the punishment that our sin deserves. Therefore, for all who receive forgiveness of sin through repentance and faith in Christ, and who receive his perfect record of righteousness, no further punishment is forthcoming. Our identification and union with Christ includes our identification with him in his death and resurrection. (Rom. 6:5-7) For God to punish a Christian for their sin would violate His justice because Christ has already received that punishment. God is not a petty father who punishes our every mistake, he is a loving Father who disciplines us as His sons. While there may natural consequences for ongoing sin in the life of a believer, God is not out to make His children pay. If you are in Christ, whatever affliction you may encounter you can be sure that it is not punitive.
7) Affliction is Sometimes the Right Response to Sin and its Effects
James tells us, “Be afflicted and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom.” When you survey the landscape of the world and see the effects of the sinfulness of humanity, it should arrest us and afflict us. When we confront our own sin which grieves the heart of God and harms others, we should be afflicted. We live in a world that foolishly seeks to avoid “feeling bad” at all costs. We use a range of things such as alcohol, illegal narcotics, prescription drugs, pornography, video games, movies and television, clinical counselors and self-help books all to numb our emotions, lift our spirits, escape our reality, feel good about ourselves and medicate our pain. Solomon in all his wisdom said that, “Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.” Nothing makes you appreciate life and puts things in perspective like being confronted with death. Nothing makes you appreciate health like being sick. No Christian should be in a perpetual state of affliction but all Christians should experience a measure of affliction when they are faced with both the general and particular effects of sin. Ecclesiastes and Lamentations are both biblical books dedicated to honest assessments of life in a fallen world. All is not right in us or in the world and while we should never give way to hopelessness, neither should we ever hide from reality.
8) God Uses Afflictions to Reveal our Affections
John Piper is known for his often repeated statement “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.” The unfortunate truth is that most of us struggle to be satisfied in Christ alone. Instead, we seek to be satisfied by the approval of man, the accumulation of wealth, the attainment of status or the acquisition of influence. We are more satisfied by worldly comfort than our union with Christ and that becomes obvious when we despair in losing comforts even though we gain Christ. When Paul considers having gained Christ, he all of his massive worldly successes are rubbish, trash and dung. For some of us, our afflictions reveal that we have been satisfied with rolling around in the manure. That’s why C.S. Lewis rightly says that “we are far too easily pleased.” God’s goal is that He would be uppermost in our affections and he uses our afflictions to show the futility of hoping in anything else.
It’s worth noting that in Hosea 6:1-3, referenced earlier, God is said to have “torn” his people that He might heal them; He has struck them down that He might bind them up. This idea is like medical surgery, when a doctor might cut open your chest cavity, which hurts you, but he is doing so to remove a deadly disease, which would kill you. God’s expressed intention for us in our injured state, is that we would “press on to know the Lord.” God is drawing us to Himself through our afflictions. J.I. Packer writes that "He seeks the fellowship of His people and sends them both sorrows and joys to detach their love from other things and attach it to Himself." God deeply desires for the longings of our hearts to be met. As our Creator, those desires were placed there by Him to point us to Him because they can only ultimately be satisfied in Him.
9) Afflictions Conform us into the Image of Christ
Romans 8:29 says, “For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son...” All Christians are somewhere on the continuum between being made alive in Christ and being conformed into the image of Christ. As we consider our own afflictions it’s important to remember the most afflicted of all men was the man we trust in as Savior, submit to as Lord and worship as God. To be his disciples we must take seriously his invitation. “If any one would come after me, he must deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.” Affliction is in the job description. The Apostle Peter heard that invitation in person and accepted it with the same naivete that many of us do. He later wrote to scattered Christians who were afflicted on account of their faith in Christ, saying “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings...” (1 Pet. 3:12-13). He knew that ultimate joy was in union with Christ and that union with Christ meant sharing in Christ’s afflictions.
10) Afflictions Do Not Get the Last Word
Romans 6:5 says “if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his.” Our union with Christ may take us on a road of affliction but the destination is glorification. How can a God of love let so much pain and suffering and affliction endure? How can God stand by and not deal with all the chaos and turmoil around us? The answer is clear, simple and certain. He will. The day is coming very soon when sin and unrepentant sinners will be judged, when God will put all things right, when everything sad comes untrue. On that day all forms of affliction will suffocate, breathe their last and the resurrected and ascended Lord will return “with healing in His wings,” to remove the sting of sin and death once and for all. We find our hope and our rest in the promise of God that He will get the last word. Affliction will be swallowed up by joy. Isolation will be swallowed up by intimacy. Brokenness will be swallowed up by restoration. Pain will be swallowed up by peace. The old will give way to the new and death will be swallowed up by life.
In conclusion, Romans 5 says that, “we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.” It’s only after that that Paul declares “we also rejoice in our sufferings.” That’s because joy amidst suffering is only possible if we leave the shallow wells of worldly wisdom and drink deeply from the reservoirs of grace made available through the gospel and fix our gaze on the glory of God which will one day fill the whole earth like the waters cover the sea. There is no joy in afflictions apart from seeing through the lens of eternity. Church, we must recover the eternal perspective of the early church in order to recover our joy. Until He returns, may you know and experience intimately “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” (2 Cor. 1:3-4)
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