Suffering

Suffering is not an accident in Scripture, and it is never meaningless. It enters the world as a consequence of sin (Genesis 3), but Yahweh does not simply permit it and stand back. He governs it, uses it, and in the New Testament reveals that he himself has entered it in the person of his Son. The Bible does not offer a simple explanation for why any particular person suffers; it offers something larger: the assurance that the God who governs suffering is the God who redeems.

Does the Old Testament pretend suffering doesn’t hurt?

The Old Testament is honest about suffering in a way that is often uncomfortable. The lament Psalms do not sanitise grief. Job argues with God. Jeremiah describes the weight of the prophetic calling as wormwood. The suffering servant of Isaiah 53 is “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.” Scripture does not treat suffering as a spiritual problem to be quickly resolved; it sits with the reality and asks what God is doing in it.

How does the cross reframe suffering?

The New Testament reframes suffering in light of the cross. Christ’s suffering is not incidental to redemption; it is the means of it. Paul writes that believers share in Christ’s sufferings, and that “our momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory far beyond all comparison.” This is not minimising suffering but placing it within a framework that runs from creation through the cross to the resurrection of the dead. Follow how this theme develops through the Bible.