Suffering is not God's will, is it? I often hear that. And that is true, it is man and not God who invented slavery, guns and bombs.
But then why does suffering exist? Then why does God allow it to exist? Because He loves us and has given us free will to choose between good and evil. Love is not real if it is enforced. Love is love only when someone loves of their own free will. Forced love does not exist.
After the Fall, couldn't God have removed the negative consequences by performing a miracle? That wouldn't work. He would have to do this a second and third time and ad infinitum again. Because of that constant supernatural intervention of God, making choices for us would no longer be necessary. We would have become completely different beings, at least not responsible people as we are today.
Suffering has a purpose
Yet God certainly does not accept the suffering in the world. He is resolving it in His way. How? He announced this right after the Fall, in Gen 3:15
"I will make enmity between you and the woman and between your offspring and hers. This will crush your head and her the heel."
It is the way of battle. This path involves the destruction of Satan after a long war.
Struggle for all humanity, in other words.
To this end, Paul uses the image of birth pains to explain the principle of suffering with a purpose: Rom.8:22 For we know that all creation groans and suffers from travail, still.
He compares the global suffering of creation to birth contractions.
The image makes it clear that struggle and suffering inevitably lead to the birth of new life. God's goal is: new life in a new world.
And we are already seeing a beginning of this!!! For the reign of God has already begun, not perfectly, but there is a beginning. Since the coming of Jesus.
"To Me is given all power in heaven and on earth" says Jesus (Mat. 28:18).
Already there are sick people who are healed by the power of God in the name of Jesus. And even now we see that suffering brings new life.
Who are the people who came to Jesus when he was on earth? Mainly the sick and the illiterate, who could not read and write and had burdens imposed on them by the Jewish leaders. It is the same way today. So many of us in a time of trouble have gone to seek God and received new life.
The cross central
From whatever side we look at pain and suffering, always we come to the cross.
On the cross we see the consequences of man's free will: Jesus is murdered. Because of our sins, this could happen. It would happen again today.
In the cross we see that God can make something good out of the bad of us. People kill the son of God, but He allows this to be for the forgiveness of our sins.
But most importantly, we see from the cross that God does not look at this world from a distance, but that He suffers with us and in us.
