Suffering and the Sovereignty of God

Why God appoints suffering for His servants is a chapter title in the book “Suffering and the Sovereignty of God,” edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor. It is an interesting Reformed perspective on the topic that I thought might stimulate our thinking.

“Why did God appoint for Paul to suffer so much as the prototype of the frontier missionary? He is sovereign. As every child knows he could toss satan into the pit today if He wanted to and all his terrorizing of the church would be over. But God wills that the mission of the church advance through storm and suffering.”

Piper list six reasons for the Christian to suffer, the first being SUFFERING DEEPENS FAITH AND HOLINESS.
He reminds us that God disciplines his children through suffering producing deeper faith and deeper holiness. Hebrews 12:10 For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how. But God’s discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.
Hebrews 5:8 tells us that Jesus experienced the same thing. Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered
Clarifying Christ’s role: Heb.4:15 This High Priest of ours understands our weaknesses, for he faced all of the same testings we do, yet he did not sin.

Piper says that the process through which Christ demonstared deeper and deeper obedience was the process of suffering. For us there is not only the need to have our obedience tested and proven deep, but also purified of all remnants of self reliance and entanglement with the world.

Paul describes his own experience in 2 Corinthians 1:8-9 We think you ought to know, dear brothers and sisters, about the trouble we went through in the province of Asia. We were crushed and overwhelmed beyond our ability to endure, and we thought we would never live through it. In fact, we expected to die. But as a result, we stopped relying on ourselves and learned to rely only on God, who raises the dead.

Suffering weans us from the world, sets our hope fully on God alone, and is the primary means of building compassion into the lives of His servants.

I don’t like the process of brokenness that comes from suffering but I sure enjoy the product!
More on suffering in our next post.