Scripture Introduction
Who killed Jesus? The Apostles’ Creed says he “suffered under Pontius Pilate.” Or maybe the blame belongs to the soldiers who drove the nails? Or should we condemn the Jews who demanded freedom for the criminal Barabbas and death for this one called, “Christ,” and then sealed their guilt by saying, “His blood be on us and on our children!”? Many favorite devotional hymns and songs speak of our role. And Isaiah 53.5 agrees: “he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities….”
So Stuart Townend, sings: “Behold the Man upon a cross, my sin upon his shoulders; ashamed, I hear my mocking voice call out among the scoffers. It was my sin that held him there until it was accomplished; his dying breath has brought me life – I know that it is finished.” And from a previous generation, John Newton: “I saw one hanging on a tree, in agonies and blood; who fixed his languid eyes on me, as near his cross I stood. Alas! I knew not what I did, but now my tears are vain; where shall my trembling soul be hid? For I, the LORD have slain. A second look he gave, which said, “I freely all forgive; this blood is for your ransom paid; I die, that you may live.” Thus, while his death my sin displays, in all its blackest hue; (such is the mystery of grace) it seals my pardon too. With pleasing grief and mournful joy, my spirit now is filled; that I should such a life destroy, yet live by him I killed.”
There is truth in the statement: “I killed the Lord of glory. It was my sin that held him there.” But another, deeper truth must be owned. Isaiah 53.10 (NKJ) says: “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he has put him to grief…” leading John Piper to entitle a chapter in The Pleasures of God, “The Pleasure of God in Bruising the Son.”
The point is too clear: the Father killed the Son. “He has put him to grief…. The LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isaiah 53.10,6). Or as Peter says in Acts 2.23: Jesus was “delivered up according to the definite plan…of God.” And in John 13, the betrayal by Judas predicted in the Psalms and accepted by Jesus is the appointed means to magnify the glory of God. Deep thoughts to consider this morning. [Read John 13.18-38. Pray.]
Introduction
I learned a nifty new word this week: theodicy. It comes from two Greek words, theos meaning “God,” and dikae, “justice.” Theodicy is said to have been coined by the German philosopher Leibniz in the early 1700s as he wrote to justify the rightness of God in the face of evil in the world. Many people feel that the presence of so much and such terrible evil discredits belief in God.
Ronald Nash: “the most serious challenge to theism was, is, and will continue to be the problem of evil.”
Thomas Warren: “no charge has been made with a greater frequency or with more telling force against theism of the Judeo-Christian tradition than the existence of evil.”
David E. Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion: called the evil and suffering in the world, “evidence for the atheist.”
Richard Swinburne: “Anyone with any moral sensitivity must consider the fact of pain and suffering to constitute a prima facie objection to the existence of an all-powerful and all-good God.”
Most often such complaints come from those who have experienced great pain. In a debate in 1993 at the University of California, Edward Tabash said: “If the God of the Bible actually exists, I want to sue him for negligence for being asleep at the wheel of the universe when my grandfather and uncle were gassed to death in Auschwitz.”
British philosopher and atheist Bertrand Russell is reported to have said, “No one can believe in a good God if they’ve sat at the bedside of a dying child.”
In one of the most read books on theodicy, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, Rabbi Harold Kushner explains that “virtually every meaningful conversation I have ever had with people on the subject of God and religion has either started…or gotten around to this question: why do bad things happen to good people?” But Kushner admits that he only faced the question after his 3-year old son was diagnosed with a rare and fatal disease.
Although Biblical writers are not mired in antagonistic atheism, they also complain about the problem of evil. Habakkuk 1.13: “You who are of purer eyes than to see evil and cannot look at wrong, why do you idly look at traitors and remain silent when the wicked swallows up the man more righteous than he?” Judges 6.13: “Gideon said to him [an angel], ‘Please, sir, if the LORD is with us, why then has all this happened to us? And where are all his wonderful deeds that our fathers recounted to us?’”
The problem of evil is usually stated this way: “If there is a God, and if he is both all powerful and all good, then how can he allow such terrible evil to exist? How do we justify God’s allowing (or maybe even causing) suffering and pain?
Before I try for a Biblical answer, let’s go down a couple of side roads related to the text I have read.
1. Gospel Applications from John 13
First, keep in the front of your mind the astounding love which Jesus has for his people. It is everywhere in John 13, but note two things particularly. Verse 1: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Verse 19: “I am telling you this now, before it takes place, that when it does take place, you may believe that I am he.” Jesus knew his terrible future, yet refused to flinch. Instead, he washes feet, fulfills the scripture, finishes the work. In other words, he loves his own to the end. Most people avoid suffering when it is in their power to do so. Jesus stays. Why? Michael Card wrote a song with that title: “Why did it have to be a heavy cross he was made to bear? And why did they nail his feet and hands? His love would have held him there.” Jesus loves his people.
Second, remember the devices and dangers of the Devil. While we do not excuse Judas’ sin (or our own), it was Satan who put in the heart of Judas the thought of betrayal. The Apostle Paul warns the Corinthians about being “outwitted by Satan,” and his solution is that we “not [be] ignorant of his designs.” Do not discount the power of the evil one; he is a terrible enemy. Those who toy with sin and trifle with temptations eventually are destroyed. Watch and pray daily against his devices.
Third, be wary of the deadening effects of unconfessed sins. The word “Judas” is sometimes used in literature as a title, another word for a “traitor,” so notorious is his kiss. But we do well to remember that he was first a trusted disciple, allowed to carry the money. We do not know all the steps he descended in falling from “chosen by Christ” to “conspirator,” but we know this: one day he rationalized stealing a few coins. It was not much, nothing we would call particularly heinous. But a small step led to another, and in the end, even though Jesus washed his feet, even after taking communion from God’s hand, even though Jesus looked him in the eye as he handed him the bread, as if to say, “I know what you are about to do. This is your last chance for repentance” – even with all that, Judas’ was deaf to grace and mercy.
J. C. Ryle, 36: “The extent to which we may harden ourselves by resisting light and knowledge is one of the most fearful facts in our nature. We may become past feeling, like those whose limbs are mortified before they die. We may lose entirely all sense of fear, or shame, or remorse, and have a heart as hard as a millstone, blind to every warning, deaf to every appeal…. Let us watch jealously over our hearts, and beware of giving way to the beginning of sin.”
With those critical gospel observations on the text, let us consider for a moment the question of a theodicy. Some observations:
2. Observations On Theodicy
First, there is a difference between experiential helps and “cold doctrines.”
I recently heard the heart-wrenching account of a pastor whose wife of 20 years abandoned the faith and left him and their three children for another man. He, along with family, friends, the church, and various counselors tried everything to bring her back – she accepted excommunication with this bold statement: “I am not a Christian and I never loved him.” I assure you, this brother knows his theology and Bible. But his testimony is: Jesus has walked with me.
A careful, Biblical, systematic analysis of the doctrines of suffering and evil are essential to a solid foundation for the storms of life. Those who build on the sand of sentimentality or soft answers find their souls quickly drained by the drying effects of trials and tribulations. At the same time, we must be careful of preaching pre-packaged answers at real suffering. Job’s counselors failed, at least in part, precisely here. There is a time to sit and weep with the suffering.
If you are in a valley, God can and does comfort. I do not want you to imagine that I think these comments are the full answer or are a replacement for the presence of personal compassion. I agree completely with C. S. Lewis, who wrote in the Preface to The Problem of Pain that he was “never fool enough to suppose [himself] qualified” to teach on “fortitude and patience.” The only thing in that way he could offer is: “my conviction that when pain is to be borne, a little courage helps more than much knowledge, a little human sympathy more than much courage, and the least tincture of the love of God more than all.”
Second, while we admit the difficulty of the question, we insist on the bankruptcy of non-Biblical answers.
Many people protest the evil in the world, yet fail to realize that their definition of good and evil depends on God and the Bible. Many complain about suffering, yet offer no explanation for why we should not suffer. Hinduism says misery is working off the failures of a previous life, but has no reason why that is fair, nor a universal standard by which to measure goodness. Islam claims we suffer because we are not Muslim, but cannot explain why the innocent suffer. Some philosophies call evil an illusion; others say the evil results from not thinking rightly about the good. Before we condemn God’s answer, make sure you realize that there is no other solution.
Third, the Biblical answer requires humility to accept. Oh how hard it is for strong-willed sinners to swallow.
Idelette Calvin was pregnant three times, but none of the children lived beyond infancy. Soon after coming to Geneva, Idelette gave birth to Jacques, but he lived only two weeks. John Calvin wrote to a friend, “The Lord has certainly inflicted a severe and bitter wound in the death of our infant son.” They were only married nine years when Idelette died. John described the deathbed: “She suddenly cried out in such a way that all could see that her spirit had risen far above this world. These were her words, ‘O glorious resurrection! O God of Abraham and of all our fathers, the believers of all the ages have trusted on you and none of them have hoped in vain. And now I fix my hope on you.’” After her death, he wrote: “I have been bereaved of the best companion of my life, who, if our lot had been harsher, would have been not only the willing sharer of exile and poverty, but even of death. While she lived she was the faithful helper of my ministry. From her I never experienced the slightest hindrance.” And when he sought to explain God’s will in suffering, John Calvin wrote: “Through trials and tribulations, God weans us of excessive love of this world.”
One of the reasons our churches are so weak and divided is that our comfort protects from learning humility in suffering. Without affliction we are not humbled, and without humility we refuse to receive God’s word: Psalm 119.71: “It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes.
Fourth, evil comes from sin. God made all things good, so he is neither the author of sin nor the blame for evil. Sin first entered creation through the angels who rebelled, then into humanity through one man, Adam.
Fifth, God planned and purposed evil. God “works all things according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1.11), and he “can do all things,” and “no purpose of [his] can be thwarted” (Job 42.2). It simply will not do to posit a god too weak to act or too timid to accept responsibility for his world. Amos 3.6: “Does disaster come to a city, unless the LORD has done it?” Those who say that a loving God could not allow evil fail to think deeply enough. A loving God does allow evil, though not a permanent evil.
Sixth, evil is used by God to magnify his goodness and glory. God loves his chosen to the fullest possible extent and to the absolute, complete end. Since seeing and savoring God’s glory is of the greatest privilege that could exist, God is right to use evil to show more clearly and brightly that glory. How does evil serve that purpose? To understand, we must imagine a good so wonderful that it must be experienced, even if it is a trouble to do so. This is the glory of God. (Scouts and Fern Lake illustration: “It was worth it.”)
The glory of God in mercy is magnified by the presence and power of sin. Where there is no sin, no one needs mercy. So our sin allows us to experience and enjoy God’s mercy.
The glory of God is magnified in the effect of mercy. Since sin deserves wrath and damnation, salvation shows how great is God’s mercy.
The glory of God in his holiness is magnified through evil and sin. Because sin is eternally punished in hell, God’s justice is vindicated, his burning purity revealed, his hatred of sin is shown.
Others could listed. But the ultimate answer is the cross: “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in him.”
The Bible says that God the Father loves his Son: “This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.” Yet the Bible also says that God was pleased to bruise his Son. Together those insist that we ask, “Could there be something so beautiful, so wonderful, so perfect, so magnificent, so fantastic, that it must be revealed?” Jesus says, “Yes, there is. I have known the glory of God, and it must be displayed. If it takes climbing on that cross to save a people and so reveal the glory of God, let me do it, Father. Lay their iniquity on me. Bruise me for their sin. Let the universe know that the glory of God is of far greater worth than comfort and ease. And let the redeemed forever delight in your glory because I have saved them for this purpose.
3. Conclusion
What I have just presented in a very abbreviated form is a teaching that is much hated by non-Christians (of course) but also in the church. Though it is eminently Biblical, many find themselves demanding of God a better answer. I read to you earlier of John Calvin’s palpable grief at the death of his children and wife. Now hear his plea for godly reserve in evaluating God’s purposes:
John Calvin: “But we must so cherish moderation that we do not try to make God render account to us, but so reverence his secret judgments as to consider his will the truly just cause of all things. When dense clouds darken the sky, and a violent tempest arises, because a gloomy mist is cast over our eyes, thunder strikes our ears and all our senses are benumbed with fright, everything seems to us to be confused and mixed up; but all the while a constant quiet and serenity ever remain in heaven. So must we infer that, while the disturbances in the world deprive us of judgment, God out of the pure light of his justice and wisdom tempers and directs these very movements in the best-conceived order to a right end. And surely on this point it is sheer folly that many dare with greater license to call God’s works to account, and to examine his secret plans, and to pass as rash a sentence on matters unknown as they would on the deeds of mortal men. For what is more absurd than to use this moderation toward our equals, that we prefer to suspend judgment rather than be charged with rashness; yet haughtily revile the hidden judgments of God, which we ought to hold in reverence?” (Institutes, 1.211-212).
Humility is required. Yet we end our search, not with simply humility, but with poetry.
Michael Card: “Why did it have to be a friend / Who chose to betray the Lord / Why did he use a kiss to show them / That’s not what a kiss is for / Only a friend can betray a friend / A stranger has nothing to gain / And only a friend comes close enough / To ever cause so much pain.
And why did there have to be thorny / Crown pressed upon His head / It should have been the royal one / Made of jewels and gold instead / It had to be a crown of thorns / Because in this life that we live / For all who seek to love / A thorn is all the world has to give.
And why did it have to be / A heavy cross He was made to bear / And why did they nail His feet and hands / His love would have held Him there / It was a cross for on a cross / A thief was supposed to pay / And Jesus had come into the world / To steal every heart away / Yes, Jesus had come into the world / To steal every heart away.”
The problem of evil presents you with the passion of redemption. Please do not steal your heart against the love of God revealed in the glory of the cross.
