Most Christians would know – or should know – that our loving God is also a holy God who judges sin. Believers do recognise that the enemies of God and those who hate him have been and will be judged by him. But some Christians doubt that God would ever do similar sorts of things to his own people.
We do know that God is OUR wounded healer: “By HIS stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). But does God ever wound and afflict us? One recent social media exchange looked at this question. I had put up a quote by the famous missionary Helen Roseveare which said: “God never uses a person greatly until He has wounded him deeply. The privilege God offers you is greater than the price you have to pay. The privilege is greater than the price.”
One gal did not agree with that and said that this is why folks do not believe in God, since it makes him out to be cruel and sadistic. She asked me if God really wounds us. I replied this way:
Of course he does. You need to reread your Bible. The examples are many. Remember Jacob wrestling with God, with his hip put out of joint (Genesis 32); God allowing Job to be afflicted; David praising God for the afflictions he received from him (Psalm 119); Paul thanking God for the thorn in the flesh God allowed him to endure (2 Corinthians 12); and above all God afflicting and wounding his own son (Isaiah 53), etc. And throughout Scripture we hear about how believers share in Christ’s sufferings. In his love for his people, he often will deal harshly with them, be it in the form of chastisement or discipline, or even allowing persecution. All that has zippo to do with divine cruelty or sadism. You need to forget what the God-haters are saying, and stick to what the Bible clearly declares.
She then said that she reads the Bible differently, and asked, “But does He actually wound us deliberately?” I said this:
Yes he DOES deliberately do so. If there were no other verses in the entire Bible on this matter than Isaiah 53: 4, 10, that would prove it conclusively! Read them again! He did it deliberately to his own Son, and the servant is not above his master. He chastises and afflicts his children deliberately. Those whom he loves he will bless with the heavenly gift of suffering – see Philippians 1:29: “For it has been granted (gifted, graced) to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him.” As I say, forget the humanists and the atheists and stick to what God himself has said on this matter.
Sure, God allows secondary agents (be they Satan or Muslims or persecutors of Christians) to do this, but they are (as the book of Job conclusively demonstrates) ALL under the sovereign hand of God. He is calling the shots here. The texts speak quite clearly for themselves. It is NOT a matter of how you or I read them!
She replied: “I cannot just say ‘God is Sovereign’ although I know this is a popular protestant thing to say in the face of vile behaviour.” I then said this:
It is not just a Protestant thing to say that God is sovereign – it is a 100% biblical thing to say. No one claiming to be a Christian can ever deny this reality. And to affirm this while acknowledging evil in the world is also fully biblical. The most evil thing in the world was for the innocent Son of God to die a horrible death – but it was fully part of the sovereign plan of God. Sorry, but I MUST stick with what God has said – always.
Since I mentioned various biblical texts above, let me look at some in more detail. Consider Deuteronomy 28-30 and similar texts where we read about God’s covenantal relationship with his people, and blessings for obedience, and curses for disobedience. All believers would happily speak about blessings granted to us directly from the hand of God. Well, the very same chapters that speak of this truth also tell us about curses directly coming from God to a rebellious and disobedient people. Consider a few short portions of Scripture here:
Deuteronomy 28:20-24 “The Lord will send on you curses, confusion, and frustration in all that you undertake to do, until you are destroyed and perish quickly on account of the evil of your deeds, because you have forsaken me. The Lord will make the pestilence stick to you until he has consumed you off the land that you are entering to take possession of it. The Lord will strike you with wasting disease and with fever, inflammation and fiery heat, and with drought and with blight and with mildew. They shall pursue you until you perish. And the heavens over your head shall be bronze, and the earth under you shall be iron. The Lord will make the rain of your land powder. From heaven dust shall come down on you until you are destroyed.
Deuteronomy 29:20-28 also speaks about this: the curses of the book will come from God on a disobedient people.
The Lord will not be willing to forgive him, but rather the anger of the Lord and his jealousy will smoke against that man, and the curses written in this book will settle upon him, and the Lord will blot out his name from under heaven. And the Lord will single him out from all the tribes of Israel for calamity, in accordance with all the curses of the covenant written in this Book of the Law. And the next generation, your children who rise up after you, and the foreigner who comes from a far land, will say, when they see the afflictions of that land and the sicknesses with which the Lord has made it sick— the whole land burned out with brimstone and salt, nothing sown and nothing growing, where no plant can sprout, an overthrow like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah, and Zeboiim, which the Lord overthrew in his anger and wrath— all the nations will say, ‘Why has the Lord done thus to this land? What caused the heat of this great anger?’ Then people will say, ‘It is because they abandoned the covenant of the Lord, the God of their fathers, which he made with them when he brought them out of the land of Egypt, and went and served other gods and worshiped them, gods whom they had not known and whom he had not allotted to them. Therefore the anger of the Lord was kindled against this land, bringing upon it all the curses written in this book, and the Lord uprooted them from their land in anger and fury and great wrath, and cast them into another land, as they are this day.’
As can be seen, yes, God can use secondary means to achieve his purposes, but they are his purposes nonetheless. Thus he might use Israel’s enemies to judge his people. While God is behind all this, those doing these things also remain fully responsible and morally accountable for their actions.
And the prophets, when discussing the fate of Israel, make it very clear that it was God who chastised and punished his people (all with a view to having them turn back to him). Here is just one such passage:
Amos 4:6-12 “I gave you cleanness of teeth in all your cities,
and lack of bread in all your places,
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“I also withheld the rain from you
when there were yet three months to the harvest;
I would send rain on one city,
and send no rain on another city;
one field would have rain,
and the field on which it did not rain would wither;
so two or three cities would wander to another city
to drink water, and would not be satisfied;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“I struck you with blight and mildew;
your many gardens and your vineyards,
your fig trees and your olive trees the locust devoured;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“I sent among you a pestilence after the manner of Egypt;
I killed your young men with the sword,
and carried away your horses,
and I made the stench of your camp go up into your nostrils;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“I overthrew some of you,
as when God overthrew Sodom and Gomorrah,
and you were as a brand, plucked out of the burning;
yet you did not return to me,”
declares the Lord.
“Therefore thus I will do to you, O Israel;
because I will do this to you,
prepare to meet your God, O Israel!”
Also, the Bible often speaks about how God both wounds and heals.
Deuteronomy 32:39 See now that I, even I, am he,
and there is no god beside me;
I kill and I make alive;
I wound and I heal;
and there is none that can deliver out of my hand.
Job 5:18For he wounds, but he binds up;
he shatters, but his hands heal.
Job 9:17 For he crushes me with a tempest
and multiplies my wounds without cause;
Job 13:15 Though he slay me, I will hope in him;
yet I will argue my ways to his face.
Isaiah 19:22 The Lord will strike Egypt, striking and healing, and they will return to the Lord, and he will listen to their pleas for mercy and heal them
Isaiah 30:20 And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher.
Lamentations 3:31-32 For the Lord will not
cast off forever,
but, though he cause grief, he will have compassion
according to the abundance of his steadfast love;
Hosea 6:1 “Come, let us return to the Lord; for he has torn us, that he may heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up”
And David could rejoice in the afflictions that he receives – viewing them as a gift from God:
Psalm 119:50 This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.
Psalm 119:67 Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I obey your word.
Psalm 119:71 It was good for me to be afflicted so that I might learn your decrees.
Psalm 119:75 I know, O LORD, that your laws are righteous, and in faithfulness you have afflicted me.
That God will deliberately chastise and discipline his people is clearly taught in Scripture. As Hebrews 12:5–6 says, “My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor be weary when reproved by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives.” This is a quote from Proverbs 3:11.
And as I said, Isaiah 53 could not be any clearer on this:
Isaiah 53:4 Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
Isaiah 53:10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
If he could do this, in love, to his own Son, for our benefit, he can send affliction and hardship on us, again in love, and again for good purposes. We may not always know why such adversities and trials befall us, but we can know that a good and wise God is behind it all.
I close with two summary passages:
“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you…” (Deut. 30:1)
“I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, that you and your offspring may live…” (Deut. 30:19)
