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The mystery of providence.

God is absolutely and utterly sovereign, but His sovereignty never functions to reduce human responsibility. Just because God is sovereign, it doesn’t mean that we become irresponsible entities, just instruments that have no responsibility. We’re not fatalists, even while we confess God’s sovereignty.

Human beings are morally responsible creatures. However, human responsibility never functions to reduce God’s sovereignty. We believe and disbelieve, obey and disobey. We choose, and we do all kinds of things that depict this reality. All of these things are choices connected to moral responsibility. Nevertheless, human responsibility never functions to reduce God’s oversight and sovereignty.

Genesis 50:19–20. Here, Joseph says to the brothers: yes, you did sell me into slavery. I know that. You intended it for evil, but God intended it for good. God was sovereign over the whole thing, with only good intentions. They were responsible for what they did in this whole thing, and it really was evil.

God is so sovereign that He stands behind both good and evil, but He stands behind good and evil asymmetrically. That is, He doesn’t stand behind good and evil in exactly the same way. Even with the rotten stuff that happens, God, in dealing with this fallen world, because He is good, can use it for good and for His own glory.

We are a morally responsible people, and we are held accountable. God is never outfoxed, never outmaneuvered, nor is He ever outplayed. He still remains in charge. God, then, uses suffering in our lives in a variety of ways. Sometimes we can see how this mystery of providence is working out for good.

Suffering can/can be:

A preparation for believers to help others. In 2 Corinthians especially, the apostle Paul speaks of the sufferings that he has endured, such that he has learned to be able to give comfort to others with the comfort that he himself has been comforted with. Suffering, granted that it is a fallen world, is sometimes used by God in His providence to prepare us to help others and to bring comfort with the comfort that we ourselves have been comforted

A temporal discipline. Suffering can be a part of God’s means of disciplining us. When the church is most holy, (not to be confused with legalistic) there is more temporal discipline. One of the marks that God is abandoning His people in judicial punishment is that there aren’t many temporal judgments. It’s as if God is saying, “Okay, go ahead, and do what you want. In fact, if God imposed Ananias and Sapphira-type discipline (death, on the spot) every time any person in our churches ever boasted falsely about spiritual realities in their lives and the good things they’ve done (a lie against the Holy Spirit), then how many of us would be left here next Sunday?

When we are suffering, we should at least ask the question of whether God is yelling at us through the megaphone of pain.

Give us authority in our witness. Sometimes, granted that this is a fallen and broken world, how we handle suffering (by still trusting God) gives us a voice of immense authority and impact in our witness.

Make us homesick for heaven. Sometimes, especially for those of us who have watched people die, we know that suffering can serve, in God’s good providence, to make us homesick for heaven. The older you get, with increasing physical problems, a resurrection body begins to look pretty good. The longer you walk with God, the more you long to be with Him, forever in His presence.

Suffering as an occasion to testify to God’s grace and goodness. In 2 Corinthians 12, Paul prays earnestly that God will take his suffering away, and in that instance God says,“Nope! My grace is sufficient for you.”In the mystery of God’s providence, even those things that we go through in life are all part of teaching us a certain kind of dependence on grace.

Suffering Might Help Us Better Understand a Fraction of the Suffering Of Christ to Remove God’s Wrath from Us Biblically speaking, God stands over against us in wrath because He is holy. but He stands over against us in love too. Christ is the one whom God has presented as the propitiating sacrifice so that God can justify those who trust Him. Theologically, all of our suffering comes directly or indirectly from the fall. All the way through to hell itself! There is a sense in which some temporal suffering here, whether war or disaster or the like, is biblically speaking, already a kind of pre-configuration of the ultimate suffering.

Christ comes and takes the ultimate suffering of those who place their trust in Him. Christ died for sinners, of whom I am chief. God demonstrates His love in this: that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

What it means to take up our cross. When you took up your cross in the ancient world, it was the crossbar, and there you died. We cannot readily separate the relief of suffering now from the ultimate relief of suffering. It’s all of a single piece until finally, the only thing that ultimately relieves suffering is the gospel of Jesus Christ itself. We proclaim Christ crucified.

Jesus, bring us back, again and again, to the cross. Help us to be willing to recognize our own blindness, our own smallness of understanding, so that even when we understand so little, we will understand, we will see, we will believe that You are great, sovereign, good, and trustworthy, even as we suffer.