This morning I'd like to speak on the theme, "Is Pain a Punishment?" To deal with that, I'd like you to turn to Job 4. Job is a book which deals with the reality of human suffering. Job is pictured as a very righteous man, but a man who suffers immensely. One day he is told that all of his servants have been killed; later he is told that all his children have been killed. He loses all his property as his home is blown away by the wind.
Finally he loses even his health. The book is a series of dialogues between Job and his 3 friends, and between Job and God. And Job's friends take a particular view toward Job's suffering, which is still a typical explanation for human suffering, but which Job ultimately rejects and which Scripture as a whole rejects.
The impulse to be Eliphaz, that find "friend" of Job, is deep within all of us. The question, "What did I do wrong?" is a very real question in the face of pain and suffering. Back some time ago I so a patient in Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, who was suffering from several serious illnesses, including diabetes and heart disease. And she was overwhelmed with guilt and remorse because she was sure God was punishing her for the way she had treated a particular person in her past life.
On a less dramatic scale, I can remember myself being in high school and being convinced my acne was punishment for some sin I knew I was committing. And I can remember bargaining with God, telling Him I'd never do that again if He took my acne away. And I would be convinced that the next morning, or the next week, my face would just have to be clear. It never worked.
Back to a more serious example, I talked to a person who has been married for 20 years, and wakes up one day to find out her husband has left her. She concludes God is punishing her for her sins in the relationship. She doesn't even know what she did wrong, but she's convinced it must be God punishing her.
Yes, the impulse to be Eliphaz is deep within us. Eliphaz is more than willing to argue his case that all human pain and suffering is a punishment for specific sins we commit and comes to us in proportion to our sinfulness.
"What have you done wrong, Job?" is the reply of Eliphaz. Never mind that Job ends up rejecting this explanation as totally in error. Never mind that the author of the book of Job rules out from the outset such a mechanical, mathematical relationship between pain and punishment in the way he describes Job as such a man of virtue and integrity, but then describes his pain and suffering as the worst imaginable.
The incongruity between his virtue and his suffering pleads the uncertainty of Eliphaz's argument. Never mind all that. Eliphaz still articulates a view of the relationship between pain and punishment by God that has endured to this day.
Subtle variations of the same theme crop up everywhere we go. "If you had more faith, you could be healed." (Assumption: your sickness is due to your lack of faith). "If you believed in God more, you wouldn't have these problems." "Christians won't have problems." "Non-Christians have more problems than Christians."
Yes, there's something very attractive about this explanation, and that is why the author of Job works to put this explanation in the best possible light.
There are 3 things that make this argument attractive: (The argument being -- our suffering is punishment for specific sins in our lives."
1. We've all got enough sin that we can prove the argument with no problem. One we just accept the premise that our pain and misery is a punishment for specific sins, we can find all kinds of evidence for the premise.
Eliphaz tells the truth when he says in verse 19 that men "dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed before the moth." We are fragile and weak and sinful. There certainly is no problem finding evidence for the premise if you accept it in the first place.
2. In the second place, the argument is also attractive because it is safe to say something closely related to the argument: namely, that there is, in a general sense, a connection between human sin and the brokenness of our world. It certainly is true that if there were no sin in the world, there would be no pain and suffering in the world. We would still be in paradise.
3. And third, the argument is attractive because we can even go one step further and say that there is even a correlation between certain sins and certain pain and suffering.
There's a correlation between drunken driving and lying in a hospital bed with broken bones. There's a correlation between having an extramarital affair and losing the trust of your wife and the respect of your children. There's a correlation between smoking and lung cancer. There's a correlation between aimless adultery and syphilis. There's a correlation between the children of Israel going after other gods and getting wiped out in a battle.
But even though we can go THAT FAR, the question is: does Scripture teach that we can jump from that and argue IN REVERSE that everytime we have pain and suffering, it is a punishment for sin?
Some of you face living a lifetime with physical pain. Does that reflect a proportional amount of evil you have committed? My brother and I grew up in the same family and are cut out of the same stock. He lives pain free, I live in continual back pain. Is that because he is more spiritual than I.
What of those tornados that devastated people and property? Did God bunch up all the bad people in the area and get them into the path of the tornado? Were the millions of Jews persecuted and exterminated in the Holocaust more evil people than we? Are the millions who will be malnourished around the world today more deserving of their lot than we?
Even though the argument is attractive, Job later rejects the advice of his friend. "NO", he says, "Don't tell me that my calamity is because of my sin...not because I'm not a sinner, but because THAT'S JUST NOT THE WAY GOD OPERATES. Don't aggravate my pain by suggesting that God is punishing me for some sin."
Jesus resists the very same explanation for human suffering. The Pharisees corner Jesus in John 9 and bring a blind man to Him, and they say to Him, "Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?" (In other words, whose sins are being punished here by his blindness?" Jesus answered, "It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be made manifest in him."
We'll deal more with that incident in a future sermon, but the point here is: Jesus specifically rejects the premise of Eliphaz with which these Pharisees were also operating, namely, that pain and suffering can be linked with some sin as punishment for that sin.
The Psalmist gives us a different perspective on the problem. He says,
"The LORD is merciful and gracious, Slow to anger, and abounding in mercy. He will not always strive with us, Nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, Nor punished us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, So great is His mercy toward those who fear Him; As far as the east is from the west, So far has He removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities his children, So the LORD pities those who fear Him. For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust." (Psa 103:8-14)
It's interesting to compare the way Eliphaz & David reason.
Both begin with the fact that we are sinful.
They both use the word "dust" to describe how fragile and weak we are. Eliphaz uses that for the evidence that our suffering is God's punishment for that sinfulness: David uses our weakness, our "dustiness", as the proof that God can't possibly "deal with us" (to use his words) according to our sins: otherwise we would all live in perpetual pain.
THE SAME REALITY OF SIN LEADS DAVID TO A TOTALLY DIFFERENT CONCLUSION. "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love...HE DOES NOT DEAL WITH US ACCORDING TO OUR SINS, NOR REQUITE US ACCORDING TO OUR INIQUITIES." We are so weak that God has to adopt another way of "dealing with" us. And that is according to His mercy, His steadfast love!
You see, ultimately Eliphaz denies the reality of grace. Turn him over and Eliphaz is really saying that we earn the relative peace and well- being we have and that we forfeit it or earn it according to our works. He is saying, we determine how God will relate to us.
But that makes Christian living a bargain, not the freely chosen response of gratitude that Scripture describes the Christian life as being. Morality becomes a coin with which we buy peace from God.
We obey so God doesn't get us! Morality becomes a selfish proposition. And it loses totally that quality of love freely given back to God because of His love freely given to us.
And the irony is that it's often Christians, of all people (the people who supposedly know what grace is), who operate most out of a "theology of works" when they (consciously or unconsciously) obey so God won't "get them", and believe that when they do experience tragedy, it's God's punishment of them. That exposes our misunderstanding of grace.
And what's more, we put other people and ourselves under the tyranny of guilt that God is punishing us for our inadequacies, which simply reinforces our sense of inadequacy and which makes our pain and suffering all the worse.
And moreover, in conclusion, such misunderstanding of grace and the way that God has freely chosen to deal with us exposes our misunderstanding of Christ's suffering and death. Christ, in His suffering and death, took on the pain and punishment due all humanity because of their sin.
Is pain a punishment? There is one person for whom we can unequivocally say "Yes, His pain was punishment by God; it was the wrath of God against sin." But it wasn't even His own sin; it was ours.
And the good news of the gospel is that because of that cross of pain and suffering, with us He can now be merciful and gracious, and He does not have to "deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities." Christ has absorbed the wrath of God. We live in grace -- total unconditional grace.
By answering the question of the morning in the negative, we have not yet given an explanation of why then we DO suffer. We'll return to that, and the book of Job, next week.
But, for today, has God in all His grace and mercy spoken to your heart? Would you like Him as Lord and Savior? Would you like to come back to Him? Would you like to join this fellowship of Christian believers? Would you like peace of mind? You can have all these or any of these today, by simply coming as we extend the invitation. Would you now Come.
