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Why Suffering for Christ Is More Than Just a “Necessary Evil”
Theodicy
You won’t go far in evangelistic conversations in the West today before someone asks you to explain the problem of theodicy: how it is that a good God could allow suffering in the world. Nor can you sit long in churches without hearing the topic addressed in some form. But it hasn’t always been that way. People in other parts of the world—in Muslim North Africa, for example, where my wife and I work—don’t share the West’s current preoccupation with questions of theodicy, nor have most people throughout history. Certainly, the Scriptures don’t give theodicy nearly the emphasis that Christian writers do today.
In part, our modern focus on theodicy is appropriate, as it helps us respond to the questions of unbelievers around us. But we mustn’t forget that questions can be loaded. Ask a defendant in court, “Have you stopped beating your wife yet?” and his lawyer is sure to object, “Your honor, the question presupposes my client has beaten his wife.” The question needs to be reframed, not responded to. Questions about how a good God could allow suffering are loaded in the same way. They begin by presupposing God’s guilt and demand that we prove otherwise. This leaves room, at best, for him to be reluctantly acquitted. There’s little room left in such conversations to argue proactively for his goodness.
Persecution in Missions
Matt Rhodes
Sharing more than a decade of experience serving unreached people groups, Matt Rhodes helps Christians endure suffering with joy by offering a scriptural view of its role in the Christian life and in the missionary task.
Reframing the Question
So how do the scriptures reframe questions of theodicy? They begin by reminding us how little we know. Rather than answering Job’s questions about his goodness, God responds with his own questions:
“Have the gates of death been revealed to you,
or have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Have you comprehended the expanse of the earth?
Declare, if you know all this.” (Job 38:17)
God is pointing out that his knowledge stretches infinitely past Job’s minuscule understanding. Job isn’t capable of understanding God’s actions. In the same way, when my three-year-old wanted to drink detergent this week, I didn’t answer his drawn-out “Why-y-y-y?” He doesn’t know what poison is, or an emergency room, or death; he isn’t capable of understanding my decision. And “Why-y-y-y?” is a loaded question. It’s toddler-level theodicy: “How could a good dad stop me from drinking that yummy-looking stuff?”
Now, the Scriptures may not detail for us why God ordained for there to be suffering in the world, but they don’t avoid the subject altogether. Instead, they continue reframing the problem by focusing the discussion on what we can understand. They tell us a story about how suffering entered the world and how God is responding to it.
There are multiple characters in this story and multiple levels of causation. The Scriptures remind us that God created the world without suffering and that suffering only appeared in the world after humanity rebelled against him and gave in to the devil’s lies. The devil has his own agenda in our suffering, and it couldn’t be more different than God’s. God’s agenda is to lead people to a promised land beyond suffering where he “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore” (Rev. 21:4). The devil’s agenda, on the other hand, is to trap us in death and suffering forever.
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Suffering as Satan’s Tool
Importantly, the devil not only wants death and suffering to be our eternal destiny, he also works through death and suffering to lead us there. Why does Satan want Job to suffer? Certainly, he finds malicious delight in Job’s pain, but he has a bigger prize at stake. “Stretch out your hand,” he says to God, “and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face” (Job 2:5). Satan hopes Job’s pain will make him think God has forsaken him. He hopes suffering will make Job lose his faith.
When we suffer for our faith, this temptation is even more direct: “You’re all alone. Jesus can’t save you. If you hadn’t trusted him you wouldn’t be suffering right now.” That’s why Jesus warns Peter, “Simon, Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like wheat, but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail” (Luke 22:31). Jesus knows Satan is coming for Peter’s faith. In the terror of the crucifixion, Peter will be tempted to believe that Jesus’s enemies have won. Rather than trusting God for deliverance, Peter will lie to save himself. Satan hopes that when the chaff of Peter’s faith is sifted away, no wheat will be left. We repeatedly see Satan at work in this way in the New Testament. It's through the church’s “suffering . . . throughout the world” that “the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Pet. 5:8–9). And the author of Hebrews tells his persecuted readers that it’s “through fear of death” that the devil subjects people “to lifelong slavery” (Heb. 2:14–15).
The fear of death still holds people in slavery today. In the parts of the world that remain least reached by the gospel, it’s not only false teaching but the threat of suffering that enslaves people. People are afraid to speak of Christ, afraid to hear his word, and afraid to believe. And even where the gospel is widely proclaimed, the fear of death—the gnawing worry that this short life is all there is, and has no point aside whatever brief pleasures we experience before it ends—stops many people from believing in Jesus.
Suffering for Christ to Bless Others
Thankfully, God doesn’t let the devil get the last word. God is at work in our sufferings too, as he is in all evils in the world, and he’s at work in them for good. Today, when Christians speak of how God brings good out of suffering, we tend to focus on the ways he uses it to refine our character. God certainly uses suffering to this end, but the New Testament describes our sufferings far more often as a sacrifice than it does as an exercise in character growth (see, e.g., Phil. 2:17; Col. 1:24; 1 Tim. 4:6). It often paints our sufferings as being offered to God for the sake of others (see, e.g., John 12:24, 15:13, Col. 1:24).
How, then, do others benefit as we suffer for Christ? Paul explains, “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our bodies” (2 Cor. 4:8–10).
It’s through Paul’s sufferings that the power of Jesus’s resurrection life to sustain him is “manifested in [his] mortal flesh” for others to see. Paul’s sufferings enable him not only to tell people about Jesus’s power but also to show them his power. What could be more important? Where Satan uses suffering and the fear of death to undermine people’s faith and enslave them, our sufferings illumine the hope of resurrection and eternal reward that can set them free.
Where Satan uses suffering and the fear of death to undermine people’s faith and enslave them, our sufferings illumine the hope of resurrection and eternal reward that can set them free.
Moreover, Paul describes the Philippians, on whose faith he is being “poured out as a drink offering” (Phil 2:17), as “my joy and crown” (Phil 4:1). The brothers and sisters who are strengthened by our sufferings are a part of the eternal reward—the “crown” that gives us courage to suffer for Christ. It’s not only the hope of eternal life but of eternal life together with Jesus and these brothers and sisters that drives us onward when suffering would otherwise be too much to bear.
Your sufferings need not be especially great or heroic for Christ’s power to be seen in them. God’s power was not only revealed in Paul’s “extraordinary” sufferings—shipwrecks, beatings, and stonings—but also through an ostensibly far more “ordinary” physical ailment (2 Cor. 12:7–10). Whatever difficulties we bear in faith as we follow Christ are acceptable sacrifices to God, and he will use them for his purposes.
Conclusion
This side of eternity, we can’t know completely why suffering in the world was a part of God’s plan. But we can know that suffering isn’t merely a necessary evil. It’s an evil that Jesus has promised to redeem and through which he works to bring that redemption. It’s through his suffering and death that suffering and death will be swallowed up one day, for all God’s people, forever. And he’s at work in our sufferings to help others know that freedom, too. The redemption of our suffering isn’t yet complete. Sometimes, in our weakness, suffering is far heavier than we can bear. But one day, when sufferings are over, we’ll taste Christ’s infinite joy. There will be no room left on that day to doubt that God was good to lead us through suffering, or that the road was worth it.
Matt Rhodes is the author of Persecution in Missions: A Practical Theology.
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