Why Do Innocent People Suffer (4)
Friday February 28, 2014
God created human beings to live forever in loving relationship with Him. The Garden of Eden was a perfect place to live and yet they chose to disobey God’s instructions. We could say “why did God not create us as robots who would obey”? If he did that then we would not have been made in His glorious image. Satan deceived the first humans by telling them they could be like God having the knowledge of good and evil. As a result, they made choices that harmed themselves and their descendants.
Live no longer as the Gentiles do, for they are hopelessly confused. Their minds are full of darkness; they wander far from the life God gives because they have closed their minds and hardened their hearts against him. They have no sense of shame. They live for lustful pleasure and eagerly practice every kind of impurity. (Ephesians 4:17-19
Where is God in all this? Is He standing helplessly by while life around us spins more and more out of control and suffering increases?
From before the beginning of time, God knew the poor choices humans would make. With this foreknowledge God, in His infinite wisdom, prepared a plan to deal with sin and suffering. He had that plan in place even before the deception of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23 NLT)
Jesus was God’s plan. Jesus died on the cross for the sin and suffering and consequences of all the wrong choices of human kind. Through His resurrection and ascension into heaven He ever lives to intercede for us before God’s throne of grace.
The fact is, it was our suffering he took on himself; he bore our pain. But we thought that God was punishing him, that God was beating him for something he did. But he was being punished for what we did. He was crushed because of our guilt. He took the punishment we deserved, and this brought us peace. We were healed because of his pain. We had all wandered away like sheep. We had gone our own way. And yet the Lord put all our guilt on him. (Isaiah 53:4-6 ERV)Through Jesus, God has made a way for each of us to have eternal life with Him, starting right here on earth. He has plans for us, plans for good and not for evil, to give us hope and a future. Dependence on Him and obedience to His word will bring us the fullness of life we have always desired.
Does this mean that followers of Jesus Christ never experience trouble and suffering in this life? Jesus told us in advance that in this world we would have trouble but we were never to fear for He had overcome this world. God has put eternity in our hearts and that is where we should keep our focus.
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