Granted to Suffer: The Whole Counsel of God on Suffering, from Genesis to Revelation

Suffering has a doctrine, and the doctrine has a thread. It runs from a protected garden to a sealed city, and no book of Scripture stands outside it. Genesis explains its entrance. Job dismantles its false explanations. The Psalms teach its songs. The prophets carry it into the Servant. The Gospels set it on one Man. The epistles distribute it to His body. Revelation seals its end. To exhaust the teaching is not to answer every "why" beside every grave. Deuteronomy closes that road: the secret things belong to Yahweh our God (Deut 29:29). To exhaust the teaching is to say the whole of what God has said — and God has said much. Hear it in order.

I. The Entrance: Suffering Enters Under Sentence

There was no suffering in the beginning. God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good (Gen 1:31). Pain enters the world through a door, and the door has a name: disobedience. God warned the man before the woman was taken from his side: in the day you eat of it, you shall surely die (Gen 2:17). The forbidden tree was eaten. Then came the sentences, and the sentences are the charter of every suffering since. To the woman: pain multiplied in childbearing (Gen 3:16). To the man: the ground cursed for his sake, thorns and thistles, bread by the sweat of the face — until you return to the ground, for dust you are, and to dust you shall return (Gen 3:17-19). Suffering is not an accident that befell a well-made machine. It is judgment announced by a Judge. Death itself entered by sin, and so death passed to all men, because all sinned (Rom 5:12). Death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sins were not like Adam's (Rom 5:14). No one negotiates his way out of Genesis 3. The whole creation was subjected to futility — not by its own will, but by the will of Him who subjected it, in hope (Rom 8:20). The whole creation groans and travails together until now (Rom 8:22). Groaning is the sound of this age, and God wrote that fact into the charter before any sufferer was born to endure it.

But the sentence was not the first word God spoke over the fallen pair, and it is not the whole word. Before the sentences, God cursed the serpent and promised the Seed: He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel (Gen 3:15). The Deliverer Himself would be bruised. Suffering stands inside the promise, not only inside the curse, from the third chapter of the Bible forward. And when the man and his wife stood naked in their sewn leaves, God made them tunics of skin and clothed them (Gen 3:21). Skins require a death. The covering of the guilty came at the price of a life not their own. The first suffering-bearer after the fall bore it in their place, silently, in a garden.

The first recorded suffering after Eden is not a sinner's punishment. It is a righteous man's murder. Abel offered the better sacrifice, and Cain rose against him in the field, and his blood cries to God from the ground (Gen 4:8-10). From the beginning, suffering divides into kinds, and any doctrine that melts them into one pot has already lied. There is the suffering of the guilty under sentence. There is the suffering of the righteous at the hands of the guilty. And there is the suffering of the whole creation groaning under a futility it did not choose. Scripture keeps the kinds distinct. So must we.

II. The Hand: Suffering Under the Rule of God

Jacob's favorite son went down into suffering by his brothers' hands: stripped, sold, falsely accused, forgotten in a prison, his feet hurt with fetters, his neck laid in irons (Ps 105:17-18). At the end of the road, exalted, Joseph named the doctrine over the men who sold him:

"As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to save many people alive, as is happening today." (Gen 50:20)

Two intentions. One event. The brothers' intention was evil, and it remains evil. God's intention was good, and it governed. The verse does not say God permitted the evil at a distance and later salvaged good from the wreckage. Joseph says God meant it. The suffering of the righteous is never orphaned. It is meant — by God, for good, toward the saving of many alive. This is the pattern the cross will fill to overflowing: hand and counsel determining beforehand (Acts 4:28).

Job is the classroom where false doctrine goes to die. Job was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned from evil (Job 1:1), and he suffered more than any man in the ancient record: wealth, children, health, reputation, all within chapters. The Accuser appears, and the bounds are set by God, not by Satan: all that he has is in your hand; only do not stretch out your hand against the man himself (Job 1:12); spare his life (Job 2:6). Satan is a lion on a chain, and the chain is in God's hand. Job blessed the name through the first blow: Yahweh gave, and Yahweh has taken away (Job 1:21). Through the second blow, boils from sole to crown, he answered his wife with the charter question of the suffering righteous: Shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive calamity? (Job 2:10). God did not rebuke those words. God did rebuke the counselors. Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar taught the arithmetic of retribution — suffering proves sin; repent and prosper — and God's verdict on their theology was wrath: you have not spoken of Me what is right, as My servant Job has (Job 42:7). The friends' doctrine sounds pious. It is the doctrine of Proverbs 1 misapplied to a man it was never describing. Wisdom's storm warning addresses those who refused her call. Job never refused. God says so Himself, twice, in the prologue (Job 1:8; 2:3). Hear the rule: suffering is not a measuring instrument for the sufferer's guilt. Jesus enforced the same rule twice — the Galileans whose blood Pilate mingled with sacrifices were not worse sinners; the eighteen crushed by the tower were not worse offenders; the man born blind was not blind for his parents' sin or his own (Luke 13:1-5; John 9:2-3) — and then He turned every such question back on the questioners: unless you repent, you will all perish likewise. The tower that fell on others is a summons to the living, not an explanation of the dead.

Above the kinds stands the Actor. God is not a spectator of calamity. He forms light and creates darkness; He makes peace and creates calamity; He kills and makes alive; He wounds and He heals, and no one delivers out of His hand (Isa 45:7; Deut 32:39). Who has commanded and it came to pass, unless the Lord ordained it — is it not from the mouth of the Most High that good and calamity proceed? (Lam 3:37-38). If a trumpet sounds in a city, are the people not afraid — and if calamity comes to a city, has Yahweh not done it? (Amos 3:6). Yet God never commits moral evil. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). God tempts no one (Jas 1:13). He inflicts calamity as Judge, and judgment presupposes guilt: the world He judges is the world that fell in Adam. The same will works two operations across Scripture — mercy on whom He desires, hardening on whom He desires (Rom 9:18) — and both are just, because the Judge of all the earth does right (Gen 18:25).

David sings the school's other half. Before I was afflicted I went astray, but now I keep Your word. It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I may learn Your statutes. I know, Yahweh, that Your judgments are righteous, and that in faithfulness You have afflicted me (Ps 119:67, 71, 75). Affliction in the psalm is a teacher assigned by faithfulness, not a penalty assigned by anger. The righteous suffer many afflictions — and Yahweh delivers him out of them all (Ps 34:19). Deliverance and affliction stand together in the same verse. God does not promise His own an exemption. He promises them a Deliverer.

III. The Kinds: Testing, Discipline, Consequence, Persecution

Scripture names the kinds so that no sufferer misreads his own case, and no observer misreads his brother's.

Testing. God tested Abraham on Moriah with the son of promise on the wood, and stayed the knife at the end of faith's obedience (Gen 22:1-12). Yahweh led Israel forty years in the wilderness to humble them, to test them, to know what was in their hearts, feeding them with manna they did not know — that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word from the mouth of Yahweh (Deut 8:2-3). You have tried us, O God; You have refined us as silver is refined; You brought us into the net; we went through fire and through water — and You brought us out to abundance (Ps 66:10-12). James opens his letter with the command to count varied trials all joy, because the testing of faith produces perseverance, and perseverance finishes its work in a man made complete, lacking nothing (Jas 1:2-4). Peter writes the same doctrine to scattered exiles: the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though tested by fire, will be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ (1 Pet 1:6-7). The furnace is not proof of abandonment. Gold is not put in the fire because it is worthless.

Discipline. Whom Yahweh loves He reproves, as a father the son in whom he delights (Prov 3:11-12). Hebrews takes the proverb up and makes it a birthright: God deals with you as with sons, for what son is there whom his father does not discipline? If you are without the discipline of which all true sons have shared, you are illegitimate children, not sons (Heb 12:7-8). The discipline of the moment yields nothing joyful — it is sorrowful — yet afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those trained by it (Heb 12:11). The Lord even writes the severity of it plainly: some among the Corinthians were weak and ill, and some had died, because they ate the Supper unworthily — but when we are judged by the Lord, we are disciplined, so that we may not be condemned with the world (1 Cor 11:30-32). Judgment that disciplines is mercy wearing severity. Condemnation is the road not taken. And the risen Christ states His own discipline in the first person: those whom I love, I reprove and discipline; so be zealous, and repent (Rev 3:19).

Consequence. A man reaps what he sows (Gal 6:7-8). The simple who refused Wisdom's outstretched hand meet the storm they were warned of (Prov 1:24-28). Haman hangs on his own gallows (Esth 7:10). This kind is real, and no doctrine of suffering is honest that deletes it. But it is one kind among several, and it becomes poison in the mouth of an observer: the friends of Job were rebuked for preaching consequence at a tested man. Apply consequence to your own case in repentance when the Word joins them. Never apply it to your brother's case as a verdict. That audit belongs to God.

Persecution and suffering for righteousness. The prophets were killed by the fathers of those who praised them (Matt 23:29-35), from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah. Hebrews' hall of faith ends not with escapes only, but with those who were stoned, sawn in two, killed with the sword, wandering in deserts and mountains, of whom the world was not worthy (Heb 11:35-38). Jesus states the law of this age without softening: if the world hates you, know that it hated Me before it hated you; a servant is not greater than his master; if they persecuted Me, they will persecute you (John 15:18, 20). All who desire to live godly in Christ Jesus will be persecuted (2 Tim 3:12). The apostles left the Sanhedrin rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonor for the Name (Acts 5:41). And Peter draws the line inside the kind itself: there is no credit for endurance when you are beaten for your faults — but if, when you do good and suffer for it, you endure, this is gracious in God's sight (1 Pet 2:20). Let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a wrongdoer, or a meddler — yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but glorify God in that name (1 Pet 4:15-16). Suffering's honor depends entirely on its cause.

IV. The Center: The Suffering of Christ

All of it — entrance, kinds, purposes — converges on one Man, and apart from Him the doctrine has no center and no end.

He was promised as a sufferer before He was promised as a King. The Seed's heel is bruised in the victory sentence itself (Gen 3:15). David, a thousand years early, cries with His cries: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me — pierced hands and feet, bones counted, garments divided, lots cast (Ps 22:1, 16-18). Isaiah sets the full portrait: despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief; surely He bore our sicknesses and carried our sorrows; wounded for our transgressions, bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement that brought us peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned, every one, to his own way — and Yahweh has laid on Him the iniquity of us all (Isa 53:3-6). It pleased Yahweh to crush Him; He made His soul an offering for sin — and the Servant justifies many, because He bore their iniquities, pouring out His soul to death, numbered with the transgressors, making intercession for them (Isa 53:10-12). Daniel's vision numbers the same event in the calendar of redemption: the Anointed One shall be cut off and shall have nothing (Dan 9:26). Strike the Shepherd, and the sheep scatter (Zech 13:7).

He came into suffering, not merely to it. In the days of His flesh He offered prayers with loud cries and tears to Him who could save Him from death, and He was heard for His reverence. Though He was a Son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him (Heb 5:7-9). The Author of salvation was made perfect through sufferings, and because the children share in flesh and blood, He partook of the same, that through death He might destroy the one who holds the power of death, and deliver those who by fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery. He had to be made like His brothers in every respect, to become a merciful and faithful High Priest — for because He Himself suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are tempted (Heb 2:10, 14-15, 17-18). We do not have a High Priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One tempted in every respect as we are, yet without sin (Heb 4:15). The cross is the doctrine's hinge: delivered up by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, crucified by lawless hands (Acts 2:23) — men's evil meant for evil; God's counsel meant for the salvation of many alive. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree. Christ suffered once for sins — the righteous for the unrighteous — that He might bring us to God (1 Pet 2:24; 3:18). God made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21). Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us (Gal 3:13). This suffering is not an example only, though it is an example (1 Pet 2:21). It is a substitution. No other suffering in the Bible carries sins. His alone does. Hold that line without trembling: our sufferings fill up afflictions appointed to the body and the witness (Col 1:24); they redeem nothing, they atone for nothing, they finish nothing that He left unfinished. It is finished (John 19:30) was spoken from the cross, not from a hospital bed in Thessalonica.

And His suffering ends where the whole doctrine ends: in glory. For the joy set before Him He endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God (Heb 12:2). He humbled Himself to death on a cross; therefore God highly exalted Him (Phil 2:8-9). The Lamb standing in heaven stands as though slain — and is worthy precisely because He was slain and by His blood ransomed people for God from every tribe and tongue (Rev 5:6, 9, 12). Cross first. Crown after. Never reversed, never separated.

V. The Body: The Believer's Portion

Now the epistles hand the doctrine to the church, and they hand it over in the grammar of gift:

"Because it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ, not only to believe in him, but also to suffer on his behalf," (Phil 1:29)

Echaristhē — it was granted as grace. Faith is granted. Suffering for Christ is granted. Paul places both under the one verb of giving, and the verb forbids us to receive the first as privilege and resent the second as intrusion. If we are children, we are heirs — heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with Him, in order that we may also be glorified with Him (Rom 8:17). Union is the logic of the whole portion: in Christ for the gift, with Christ in the road, with Christ in the glory. Paul presses to know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death (Phil 3:10). The sufferings of Christ abound in us, and so through Christ our comfort abounds also (2 Cor 1:5). Paul bears in his body the marks of Jesus (Gal 6:17), carries in his body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may be manifested (2 Cor 4:10), and recites his catalogue without complaint as a credential: labors, imprisonments, beatings, shipwrecks, hunger, cold, sleepless nights (2 Cor 11:23-28). His thorn — a messenger of Satan to buffet him — was prayed against three times and answered with a sentence that has carried the church ever since: My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness. Therefore, Paul concludes, I boast in weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities — for when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Cor 12:7-10). Suffering is the apostle's pulpit, not his interruption.

The purposes are declared, not hidden. We suffer with Him for the glory to come, and Paul reckons the sufferings of this present time not worth comparing with the glory to be revealed (Rom 8:18). Suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; character, hope — and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts (Rom 5:3-5). Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory (2 Cor 4:17). The God of all grace, who called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you — after you have suffered a little while (1 Pet 5:10). Comfort received becomes comfort carried: the Father of mercies and God of all comfort comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those in any affliction with the comfort we ourselves received (2 Cor 1:3-4). And the body suffers together, not alone: if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it (1 Cor 12:26). Weep with those who weep (Rom 12:15). Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). Remember those in prison as though chained with them, and those mistreated, since you also are in the body (Heb 13:3). God has not called isolated sufferers. He has called a body, and suffering is one of its sacraments of unity.

The commanded response is as plain as the doctrine. Count it all joy (Jas 1:2). Rejoice in hope, be patient in tribulation, continue steadfastly in prayer (Rom 12:12). Is anyone among you suffering? Let him pray (Jas 5:13). Endure suffering as discipline and as war: consider Him who endured from sinners such hostility, so that you do not grow weary or fainthearted (Heb 12:3). Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, casting all your anxieties on Him, because He cares for you; resist the devil firm in the faith, knowing that the same kinds of suffering are being experienced by your brotherhood throughout the world (1 Pet 5:6-9). Let those who suffer according to God's will entrust their souls to a faithful Creator while doing good (1 Pet 4:19). Entrust — that is the verb of the portion. The sufferer is not asked to understand the whole counsel. He is asked to hand his soul to the One who made it and keeps it.

VI. The End: Suffering Abolished

The thread that opened with thorns ends with a city where the accuser is thrown down, the curse is gone, and the tears are wiped away by God's own hand. The martyrs under the altar cry, How long? — and they are given white robes and told to rest a little longer (Rev 6:9-11). God does not scold the cry. He answers it with a robe and a promise. The great multitude comes out of the great tribulation, having washed their robes in the blood of the Lamb; they shall hunger no more, neither thirst anymore; the Lamb in the midst of the throne will be their Shepherd and will guide them to springs of living water, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes (Rev 7:14-17). Isaiah saw the same day at a distance: He will swallow up death forever, and the Lord Yahweh will wipe away tears from all faces (Isa 25:8). No more shall be heard in her the sound of weeping (Isa 65:19). Luke wrote the down payment into a parable of reversal: Lazarus, who suffered at the gate, is comforted; the rich man, who feasted, is in anguish (Luke 16:25). This age's inequalities are not the last word. They are evidence awaiting a verdict.

And then the final sentence of the doctrine, spoken over a new heaven and a new earth:

"He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; neither will there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain any more. The first things have passed away." (Rev 21:4)

No more curse (Rev 22:3). The last enemy, death, destroyed (1 Cor 15:26, 54-55). The redemption of the body, for which the whole creation's groaning has been labor pains, arrives (Rom 8:23). Suffering is therefore a temporary doctrine with an eternal conclusion. It entered by a sentence at a tree in Eden. It was borne by the Son at a tree outside Jerusalem. It is abolished forever at the tree of life in the city of God (Rev 22:2).

So hear the whole counsel in one breath. Suffering is real, and it is not many unrelated accidents: it entered under judgment, it is governed under sovereignty, it is sorted under kinds that must not be confused — consequence is not testing, persecution is not discipline, and the righteous sufferer is not a rebuke to the doctrine but one of its first exhibits. It centers on Christ, whose suffering alone atones, whose example alone defines endurance, whose sympathy alone fits Him to help the tempted. It extends to His body by grant, not by misfortune, and it works glory, character, comfort, and conformity while it lasts. And it ends — wholly, finally, by the hand of God Himself wiping the tears He permitted. Therefore: be faithful unto death, and He will give the crown of life (Rev 2:10). Let the sufferer take the prophets and Job as his example of patience, and remember the end of the Lord — that the Lord is compassionate and merciful (Jas 5:10-11). Cross first. Crown after. The thread runs from Genesis to Revelation, and it does not run out.