Job 40:1–9; Romans 8:18–21, 28–30

Bible Studies for Life
Chair and Armstrong Professor of Religion, Department of Religion, Samford University

The Case for God’s Love
Job 40:1–9; Romans 8:18–21, 28–30
Where is God in the midst of life’s suffering? Where is God when terrorists blow themselves up and innocent people are killed? Where is God when a young mother is diagnosed with cancer? Where is God when a 50-year-old businessman becomes unemployable because of the economy? Has He gone on vacation? Is He asleep? The problem of evil and questions relating to God’s love and power are not just issues that philosophers grapple with in the classroom. They are the “nitty-gritty” issues of life that confront each and every one of us, and like Job, we are often perplexed, sometimes confronted with doubt, always anxious to be assured of God’s providence in the midst of pain.

God Is Greater Than Our Questions (Job 40:1–9)
One of the features of the latter chapters of Job, when God began to speak, is that rather than answering Job’s questions, He deliberately probed him with more searching questions. Job returned to an earlier declaration when he confessed, “Your wisdom is profound!” Sometimes silence is a far more appropriate response, certainly pastorally, to the enormity of suffering than feeble answers that desperately try to answer why. Anselm, an 11th-century theologian, reminds us that theological reflection is “faith seeking understanding.” Our knowledge of God is not exhaustive — we are faced with paradoxes and pain. This fact hits home for us with special forcefulness when we affirm our belief in God’s providence in the face of the reality of evil in the world. We live by faith and not sight — we cannot always see clearly or understand all that is happening to us. Yet it is not in manifestations of God’s power that we find resolution to our questions about suffering. At the center of God’s purposes for human history is the cross of Calvary, because it is through the cross that He reveals His plans for this world and we experience His presence in the midst of the perplexity of life with all its pain and problems. It is significant that Paul grappled with the problem of pain after he expounded the length, breadth, height and depth of the love of God revealed in and through the death of Jesus at Calvary.

Live in the Present in the Light of Eternity (Rom. 8:18–21)
Paul was convinced that our experience of life is often one-dimensional. We need to look at the issues we face on a day-to-day basis from the perspective of eternity and consider that “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory about to be revealed to us.” The New Testament speaks of God as the “God of hope,” and one of the earliest prayers, still retaining the Aramaic idiom, is maranatha — Our Lord, come (1 Cor. 16:22)!  It is only in the light of eternity that we will begin to see a purpose in the midst of pain and that eventually we will hear our Lord declare, “Well done, good and faithful servant, enter into the joy of your reward.” It will be worth it all when we see Jesus, Life’s trials will seem so small when we see Christ; One glimpse of His dear face all sorrow will erase, So bravely run the race till we see Christ.

Discern God’s Purposes in the Midst of Suffering (Rom. 8:28–30)
British writer C.S. Lewis declared, “God whispers to us through our happiness — He shouts to us through pain — it is His megaphone to wake a sleeping world.” In the midst of World War II when Hitler’s forces were being felt throughout Europe, one German theologian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, wrote, “Only a suffering God can help us.” In God’s suffering in and through the person of Jesus Christ, we discern that there is purpose in the midst of pain, that God has entered into our experience of suffering with us. He has become Immanuel — God with us in our physical, emotional and even spiritual pain — and through His suffering on our behalf, has triumphed over the power of evil. For that reason, Paul could declare, “Nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”