In the previous entry I discussed the reality of God suffering with his people. Having talked with a few individuals about this, I’ve come to recognize a concern, if not a problem, some people have with identifying God as a Being who suffers. This issue concerns God’s Sovereignty. In our minds it seems illogical for a God who maintains control over all things to be susceptible to suffering. Why would a Being with ultimate power and authority ever be subjected to suffering? This threatens some people’s understanding of the sovereignty of God.
This response may be simplistic but I do not mean for it to be so. Why could God not be Sovereign and still will suffering upon God’s self? Again, this sounds illogical and also masochistic. But what does it mean for God to will Himself to suffer? We must begin with what we know about God.
God is a God of revelation. Why does God seek to reveal God’s self? God is the greatest good, and included in that goodness is the desire to share goodness within community. Being sufficient in the Trinity, God nevertheless desired or willed to share God’s goodness with humanity. With this in mind, God created all material reality and revealed God’s goodness through the prophets, Holy Scripture, and ultimately through the Incarnation. Now those who argue that the suffering of God does not follow with the theology of God’s Sovereignty have a very difficult time in explaining the Passion of our Lord. If God’s Sovereignty simply served to protect God from any and all suffering, then why did God not simply ‘snap his fingers’ and fix the soteriological mess within which humanity finds itself? God willed the life, death, and resurrection of Himself in the fullness of Jesus Christ the God-Man. So before we even discuss the implications of a God who suffers alongside humanity, there is the problem of a Sovereign God who utilized suffering as one of the greatest acts of love ever known throughout human history. God suffered on a Cross because God willed Himself to suffer on a Cross, for the sake of His glory and the redemption of the world through our Lord Jesus Christ. This is Gospel.
So what do we say now in the post-crucifixion world? God continues to be a God of revelation. How do we see God today? We see God the same way as before, namely in the prophets, Scriptures, and the Incarnation. But now we have the Holy Spirit, operating in and through and under the work of the Church and her saints. In this truth we notice something else. In love towards one another, in and through the suffering of this world, God reveals God’s self in the work of God’s saints. Loving the sick, caring for the helpless, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting the lonely, and every other act of love engaged with the world is Incarnational ministry. Immanuel, God with Us, is still the greatest of things. If God is with us then God suffers with us. The Father is not removed from the nature of His children, and God’s omniscience demands that God know all things, especially the painful, excruciating atrocities of human suffering. God knows us in all our suffering; God knows us intimately. Therefore, God knows our suffering. In this truth, God’s Sovereignty means that God chooses to suffer for love’s sake and for the sake of God’s name. God loves us. Let us then love one another.
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This problem of suffering is a troublesome one indeed, and you have uncovered, for me, a new element of that problem. Assuming Christ's divinity, does his suffering call into question the sovereignty of God?
ReplyDeleteC.S. Lewis famously argued that a world without suffering seems to necessitate a lack of moral freedom, where you and I are not free to cause suffering to one another. This, he says, also disallows the concept of love, because to truly love we must have the ability to chose how we behave towards one another.
The practical challenge, however, is to remind ourselves what we would be missing in a world without suffering. We witness suffering of all kinds and degrees daily and our compassion and fear lead us to cry out to God to relieve the suffering, and condemn him when he does not. The notion that God has and does suffer with us through the person of Christ does not always offer comfort, and, indeed makes us wonder why God chose that method of salvation instead of simply "snapping his fingers."
This morning I was astounded to find something new in a passage of scripture that I have been fond of for years. Romans 5:3-5 tells us to "rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been poured into our hearts throught the Holy Spirit..." Somehow, I managed to read those words all this time and never connect the first part of the chain (suffering) with the last (hope). Suffering leads to hope. Hope for what? Verse 2 tells us: "hope of the glory of God." Our suffering in this world gently leads us to hope for the riches and glory of a heavenly kingdom where there is no suffering and to search for how we might one day be found there. At the end of this search no other answer can be found but God's mercy offered through precious gift of the sacrifice of Christ.
Through the lens of this truth we see God's love for us in his work in our lives, in our love for one another, and most importantly in the person, death, and glorious resurrection of Christ, all in the midst of a world filled with evil and suffering. As you say, then, the will and capacity of God to suffer does not challenge his sovereignty but proves it, for throuh our sufferings he provided us both the hope of an answer and the answer itself. Ravi Zacharias says it this way: "Christ did not conquer in spite of the dark mystery of evil. He conquered through it."