R.C. Sproul on Suffering

In our age we think in terms of public relations.  We are afraid people might not care for God if the truth were known about his relationship to suffering.  Better to shield God from accusations that he is not loving and kind by making him impotent in the face of suffering. Better to comfort the afflicted with the idea that God is in his heaven full of sympathy, wishing the suffering would just go away but unable to make it happen.

The Puritans understood what we so often miss in our suffering, that the route to comfort (and , of course, the route to truth) is not to separate the suffering from the sovereignty of God but to recognize just how tightly bound they are.

The goodness of God does not preclude him from allowing suffering or pain.  If anything, the difficult question is not how God could allow us to suffer but how he could allow us, who rebel against his majestic authority every day, who repay our Maker with incessant revolt, ever to experience pleasure. There is no logical problem of pain for sinners, only a problem of pleasure. The puzzler is why God would allow pleasure in the lives of we who hate him and do not obey his commands.

Suffering doesn't just come because God sends it after we sin, but sin will always lead to suffering, because to sin is to act against our best interests. But we mustn't conclude we can measure the sinfulness of a person by the degree of his or her suffering. Did Job deserve what he went through? No, he didn't. Job deserved far worse. Job's plight fell well short of what was due him, eternal damnation. Job was a sinner in the sense that all but Jesus are sinners. And all sinners deserve eternal damnation.

So as we look at the problem of suffering, we must keep in mind not only that we never suffer more than we deserve but also that our suffering does not serve as a barometer of sin.

excerpts from Almighty Over All, R.C. Sproul

Exposed

The enemy has done an excellent job - not just in the world - but also in the Church.  He has convinced us that political correctness should permeate the message we proclaim to the world and each other.  That we should be careful not to appear harsh or judgmental and if we do, we are not showing love.  But I ask, how loving is it to suspect someone might be on the path to eternal damnation and say nothing to them about it?


from MacArthur's book The Gospel According to Jesus.....................

One of the most malignant by-products of the debacle in contemporary evangelism is a gospel that fails to confront individuals with the reality of their sin.  Contemporary Christians have been conditioned never to question anyone's salvation.  If a person declares he has trusted Christ as Savior, no one challenges his testimony, regardless of how inconsistent his life-style may be with God's Word.

The contemporary church has the idea that salvation is only the granting of eternal life, not necessarily the liberation of a sinner from the bondage of his iniquity.  We tell people that God loves them and has a wonderful plan for their lives, but that is only half the truth.  God also hates sin and will punish unrepentant sinners with eternal torment.  No gospel presentation is complete if it avoids or conceals those facts.  Any message that fails to define and confront the severity of personal sin is a deficient gospel.  And any "salvation" that does not alter a life-style of sin and transform the heart of the sinner is not a genuine salvation.

Sin is no peripheral issue as far as salvation is concerned; it is the issue.  In fact, the distinctive element of the Christian message is the power of Jesus Christ to forgive and conquer our sin.  Of all the realities of the gospel, none is more wonderful than the news that the enslaving grasp of sin has been broken.  This truth is the heart and the very lifeblood of the Christian message.   No message that excludes it can purport to represent the gospel according to Jesus.

Unless people realize they have a sin problem, they will not come to Christ for a solution.  People don't come for healing unless they know they have a disease; they don't come for life unless they are conscious that they are under the penalty of death; they don't come for salvation unless they are weary of the bondage of sin.

Thus Jesus came to expose us all as sinners.  That is why His message was so penetrating, so forceful.  It tore our self-righteousness away and exposed our evil hearts, so we might see ourselves as sinners.