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The Suffering God
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Isaiah 53:3 People made fun of him, and even his friends left him. He was a man who suffered a lot of pain and sickness. We treated him like someone of no importance, like someone people will not even look at but turn away from in disgust … 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.
Listen to the radio broadcast of The Suffering God
Download audio fileWhen you and I find ourselves in a time of suffering – especially you know, when it’s clearly not our fault, when the suffering seems so manifestly unfair – we find ourselves asking How can God let this happen? How can He let it go on like this?
Suffering is something that seems to disprove the existence of some all-loving, all-powerful God. Clearly, if He were all-loving AND all-powerful, He’d stop the suffering … at least the unfair sort of suffering – you know, kids with cancer and women in slavery – wouldn’t He?
I don’t have all the answers, but what really hits me between the eyes is that Jesus came into this world, yes, to show us what God’s really like, but principally to suffer terribly, to take the punishment of your sin and mine on His shoulders so that we could be forgiven; so that we could have the free gift of eternal life.
Isaiah prophesied that very thing centuries before:
Isaiah 53:3,5 People made fun of him, and even his friends left him. He was a man who suffered a lot of pain and sickness. We treated him like someone of no importance, like someone people will not even look at but turn away from in disgust … 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.
As much as we wish it wasn’t, suffering is simply part of life. No, I don’t know why God created a universe that included suffering. But what I do know is that He Himself is no stranger to it.
Jesus was beaten, brutalised and nailed hands and feet to a cross, where He suffocated slowly in excruciating pain.
The God I know is the God who suffers with us.
That’s His Word. Fresh … for you … today.
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