Suffering is a deep privilege. Paul said he longed to share in the sufferings of Christ (Phil. 3). There are many reasons why people suffer, and I don't believe (based on the book of Job) that we can look at someone and say which reason applies to what person:

1. We suffer because of sin. We reap what what we sow. If I go out and steal, I will pay the consequences, and my life will be more difficult, because I now carry the guilt and maybe the punishment. It will destroy me on the inside..
2. We may suffer because of the sin in the lives of people around us. If someone burns our house down, we will suffer of no fault of our own.
3. We suffer (as was already said) because we long to know Christ better. Suffering teaches us about deep of our sinfulness, it teaches us to trust God, it teaches us God's faithfulness. In short, suffering helps to complete our sanctification.
4. We suffer because sin is in the world, and that is the natural outcome of sin. No one, not even the believer completely escape the curse of sin until the day we are redeemed from this world.

Suffering is not something that we necessarily bring upon ourselves, but it is something that happens to everyone. Often when we look at people who seem to have great lives, but we don't know about their inner sufferings. So often God gives people an easy life on the outside, because they are dealing with other types of emotional suffering on the inside.

In short, all suffering (for the believer) is gift from God in this sense: Unlike the lost man whose suffering will come without remedy, God promises to the believer that He will cause ALL things to work together for good. One of the wonderful privileges of being God's child is that God never wastes our suffering. He will always take the painful, and if we let Him, He will (and always does) make beauty for ashes. That is why it is a privilege. When it comes, we can thank God for what He will do.

For the unbeliever this is not true; his suffering becomes his torment, while for us, our suffering becomes something we learn to appreciate and thank God for, because we find Him in the midst of it.

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J Baldwin
Keowee Presbyterian Church, PCA
Pickens, SC
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.” Luke 10:27

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