2 Corinthians 4:8-10 God’s Perspective on Suffering

2 Corinthians 4:8-10 God’s Perspective on Suffering

A man who was rarely exempt from suffering wrote, “We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; [9] Persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; [10] Always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).

Why do the righteous suffer (Job 4:7)? Why is our pain perpetual and our wounds continual (Jeremiah 15:18)? Why do we ask why?

The great preacher Vance Havner was wrestling with the why’s and wherefore’s of life when he wrote these words in his book entitled The Lord of What’s Left. He wrote,

If you have visited a hospital for the crippled, handicapped, and abnormal children with their little bodies all twisted and sometimes hideous … if you have visited a home for the aged and beheld them in their sufferings … if you have walked in cemeteries where lie the bodies of countless soldiers (boys who have died, some of them in vain) … if you have looked on the victims of hurricanes, floods, and fires … if you have watched the haunting faces of alcoholics, drug addicts, and the terminally ill … if you have faced the ironic enigmas that add up to nothing in your arithmetic … if you have dreamed dreams that have been blasted or hoped hopes that have been both dashed and destroyed by the heartless law of cause and effect with no apparent answer from heaven, your heart may cry out with the biggest little word in your vocabulary: Why?

The answer to that question “Why” is always “Who” – especially when that Who is Jesus Christ our Lord.

A believer in India was so opposed by his Hindu neighbors that he was taken to a village courtyard, wrapped in a Yak skin, and commanded to recant his faith in Christ. A Yak skin is a painful means of torture because, when a Yak skin is left in the sun, it dries and then squeezes its victim, crushing his bones. After four days of suffering and four days of refusing to recant his faith in Christ, the believer cried out, “Please, give me enough room to release my hand.” Granting that believer’s request, the torturers gave that believer just enough room to release his hand. Using only his index finger on that hand, that believer reached out to the ground and scratched these words, “I thank God that I am worthy to suffer for Christ’s name sake.”

When squeezed and pressed by the persecutions and circumstances of our day, we need to remember the words of those who were persecuted before us, “O God, You have enlarged me during the times of my distress for you are my refuge and strength and a very present help in times of trouble/despair” (Psalm 4:1). People who oppose your faith want to break you down. But God transforms those circumstances and uses them to build you up. During times of suffering, identify with Jesus and be encouraged by the God Who loves your soul.