Before, After

Happy Easter!

This is the most important day of the year for all who wish to understand the magnificent goodness of God in the midst of pain, suffering, and death.

The world is a very sad place. A place of heartbreaks, heart attacks, and heartless attackers preying on the weak and innocent everywhere, all the time.  Could it be that God, if he ever existed, has walked away, perhaps in disgust?

Many people believe this.

That’s how they explain the problem of pain and suffering.

The basic question is this: How can there be a good God with so much suffering in the world?

If God truly exists, the argument goes, he wouldn’t let babies die. Cancer would not exist. Marriages would always work. Wars would never happen. And yet, the fact is that all of this does exist in abundance.

At the same time, where is God?

He seems silent and invisible like a made-up fairytale.

Suffering and pain are Exhibit A for the argument

There is no God,

or

God is not good.

To try and explain a good God’s relationship to pain, suffering, and death, we have to look at the life and death of Jesus Christ.

If you question his existence or significance then I would refer you to the subjects of history, music, and art. Over two millennia since his death on a Roman cross he has been of interest to billions of people around the world. This includes many who follow his teachings as well as those his life and words trigger. Also note that Jesus’s life is the focal point of the International Calendar in use today, the Gregorian Calendar.

So, yes, Jesus was real and it isn’t stretching the truth in the slightest to state that he Is God’s unique representative to-and for- mankind. He bridges the separation between man and God.

So what is important to know about pain, suffering, and death that we can learn from the life of Christ?

To begin with Jesus identifies with our sorrow. This was true even long before his birth.

How can this be?

I would love to tell you I totally get this.  Don’t we all have prophecies spoken about us before we are born? And I don’t know about you but hasn’t your career path always been obvious all along?  Of course not.

Chapter 53 in the book of Isaiah is, I believe, a prophetic statement about Jesus written seven hundred years before his birth in Bethlehem.

Who has believed what he has heard from us?

And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?

For he grew up before him like a young plant, and like a root out of dry ground; he had no form or majesty that we should look at him, and no beauty that we should desire him.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his wounds we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned—every one—to his own way; and the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before its shearers is silent, so he opened not his mouth.

By oppression and judgment he was taken away; and as for his generation, who considered that he was cut off out of the land of the living, stricken for the transgression of my people?

And they made his grave with the wicked and with a rich man in his death, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

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; the will of the LORD shall prosper in his hand.

Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities.

Therefore I will divide him a portion with the many, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong, because he poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53 (ESV)

Another way we see Jesus identifying with our pain involves suffering while not really understanding why. Take for example Jesus’s perplexing question from the cross.

And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, “Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” that is, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Matthew 27:46 (ESV)

Now catch this. When Jesus asks this question, he was referencing back to the first verse of a psalm penned by King David 1000 years earlier.

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning?

Psalms 22:1 (ESV)

Jesus groaned and asked why just like we do.

One more before we look at Jesus after the resurrection.

When Jesus saw [Mary, the sister of Lazarus] weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. And he said, “Where have you laid him?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.”

Jesus wept.

John 11:33-35 (ESV)

In case you are not familiar with this story. Jesus’s good friend Lazarus died and was placed in a tomb for three days. Jesus went planning to raise him from the dead, but he still wept?

Why?

He is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief - even though he also claims to be The Resurrection and The Life. He understands the depth of our sorrow now as well as what is to come that will remove our pain and sorrow permanently. It will be through his work on the cross, giving himself as a sin offering for us. And it only worked because he had no sin himself. He did not have to lose his life for his own sin.

Now the best part.

Jesus was resurrected because his Heavenly Father was well pleased with what he had done on our behalf. Jesus and his Father are one toward us in their love and delight.

Your pain, sorrows, and death, should you die before he returns at the end of the age are on just one side of a doorway that enters into a feast I have written about before. It is the Marriage Supper of the Lamb.

Somewhere around that time God will wipe every tear from your eye.

Photo by Fabio Sangregorio on Unsplash