The Problem & Abolition of Suffering (John 9:1-12)

The Problem & Abolition of Suffering (John 9:1-12)

“No one ever told me about the laziness of grief. Except at my job—where the machine seems to run on much as usual—I loathe the slightest effort. Not only writing but even reading a letter is too much. Even shaving. What does it matter now whether my cheek is rough or smooth? They say an unhappy man wants distractions—something to take him out of himself. Only as a dog-tired man wants an extra blanket on a cold night; he’d rather lie there shivering than get up and find one. It’s easy to see why the lonely become untidy, finally, dirty and disgusting. Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquieting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be—or so it feels—welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence.”

These are the words of C.S. Lewis, no more than a few weeks after the death of his wife, Joy in 1960.  He would publish these words in a book aptly titled, A Grief Observed, where he would detail his unfiltered grief and suffering of losing his wife, whom he was married to for only about four years.  He even published it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk because he did not want to be associated with the work when it was published.

But, while we are not all prolific writers like Lewis and our suffering will not be published for the world to see, his words resonate with us because we all suffer and it is difficult to wrap our minds around our suffering.  We struggle to put words to it.  We ask questions like “Why? How long?”  Maybe we even wonder if our suffering is disproportional to the event that caused it.

As we come to John 9, we meet a man born blind, and while this whole chapter centers around this one man’s healing and the controversy that follows, I want to focus on the problem of suffering that Jesus’s disciples raise when they ask who is responsible for this man’s ailment and Jesus’s subsequent response to his disciples and healing of the man.

Part 1: Suffering First, we will look at suffering.  What it is, what causes it, how it manifests itself, what lies we can believe about it. Now, I am going to combine my first two points into one statement because I don’t want to lose you or hold you in suspense. All suffering is caused by sin; but... Not all suffering is caused by your personal sin

I think it is important to put both of those out there first because I don’t want to start off this sermon with you thinking how all of your suffering is your fault, because that is not what I am trying to say at all. All suffering is caused by sin. The disciples, to their credit, were not far off when they connected this man who was born blind and sin.  They knew that sin, somehow and someway, was the reason why this man was blind, and that is because they, to some extent, knew that suffering is caused by sin. When Adam and Eve fell into sin, they brought all of creation down with it.  In Genesis 3:16-19, look at the punishments that God doles out to them: To the woman he said, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children.”  They were called to “be fruitful and multiply, and now that will cause Eve physical pain.

“Your desire shall be contrary to your husband, but he shall rule over you.”   There is marital and relational strain.

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you.”  Creation itself is cursed.  It does not yield fruit, and now it is prone to natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, etc.

“In pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field.  By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread...”  Now it is hard to feed your family.  Working the cursed ground is difficult

“...till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”  And, last and most devastating of all, human beings are now prone to decay and death.

Every aspect of the life that Adam and Eve had in the garden—bring married, having children, working the garden, walking with God, and so on—became marred with sin and brought suffering to themselves, to their race, and to us.  Don’t you have struggles in your marriage, in your family, in your vocation, in this world?  Adam and Eve’s sin pushed the first domino over and they are going to keep falling until Jesus comes back.  All suffering is caused by sin because suffering entered into the world through the first/original sin.  But, while you can trace your suffering back to Adam’s sin, you may not be able to trace your suffering back to your personal sin.

Not all suffering is caused by your personal sin. Sometimes it is, but it would be false to say that all of our sin is caused by our own personal sin.  This is the main premise of the Book of Job.  Job was a faithful worshipper of the Lord, when all of a sudden (at least from his perspective it was “all of a sudden”) Job’s property is burned up, his children die, and he is struck with a painful skin disease.  The only thing he has left is the breath in his lungs, his insufferable wife, and his three friends who try to convince Job that he sinned and this calamity that has fallen on him is God punishing him for his sin.  But, we know that this was an attack from Satan that caused Jobs suffering and not his own personal sin. There are three ways sin causes suffering: 1.  Suffering is caused by our own personal sin.  Our sin has consequences.  Sometimes those consequences are immediate and sometimes they are delayed.  Sometimes the suffering is directly related to the sin (i.e. Adultery leading to divorce; stealing from your job gets you fired and maybe even landing in jail) or sometimes God disciplines us in one area to awaken us to the sin in another area (I am thinking of 1 Peter 3:7 where a man’s prayers are hindered for the way he is dishonoring his wife). 2.  Suffering is caused by the sin of another.  Like I said, our suffering is not always directly connected to our personal sin.  We live in a world where 100% of the population are sinners; we live in households where 100% of children and 100% of parents and 100% of spouses are sinners.  Sinners are going to sin and quite often they are going to have someone in their crosshairs.  I don’t think it’s very fair to blame someone for ending up in someone else’s crosshairs.  I don’t think it is very fair to blame the victim.  If you are honest with yourself, you should be able to think of time where you were the victim and when you were the perpetrator; when you put someone in your crosshairs and when you were the one in the crosshairs.

But, it is here where we need to realize that, sometimes, when it comes to suffering, there is no one necessarily at blame.  Sometimes we are to blame, and sometimes someone else is to blame.  But, who is to blame when a perfectly healthy person gets cancer?  Whose fault is it when a freak car accident leaves someone injured or worse [even if someone is legally at fault, was what they did sinful]?

3.  Suffering is caused by living in a sinful world.  Suffering is unavoidable.  Our bodies are fragile and prone to decay, sickness, and death.  Creation is cursed, prone to natural disasters.  Circumstances are tumultuous.  If we are broken and the world is broken, we are going to experience that brokenness in profound ways everyday of our lives—even if no one is at fault.

Look at the man born blind.  The disciples ask, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”  They thought it was someone’s personal sin that made him blind since birth.  Either his mom or dad (or both) sinned so bad that their punishment was their baby boy coming out of the womb blind.  This was a popular thought back in the day.  They had a proverb that is quoted in both Jeremiah and Ezekiel, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.”  Or, maybe to make it contemporary, “The fathers eat candy and drink soda, and their children get cavities.”  They think the Lord punishes the children for the sin of their parents, but that is not the case because the Lord tells Jeremiah and Ezekiel to tell the people to stop using that proverb.

Or, on the other hand, maybe this baby sinned so bad in his mother’s womb that the Lord made him blind.  That was also an idea that ancient rabbis floated around.  But, it could be, that this child had a congenital birth defect that left him blind, and it was no one’s fault (except Adam’s).

Now, let me ask this question: in the case of the man born blind, was his suffering physical or was it spiritual?  You would want to say physical because he is blind, that is a physical ailment, something is wrong with this body.  But, would you say that this man never struggled spiritually?  First off, I think it is safe to assume that this man had some internal, spiritual struggles with the fact that he was born blind.  Second, we see in v. 8 that he was a beggar, so he had some socioeconomic struggles stemming from the fact that he was a beggar and could not really work, which brings its own set of pains to the table.

But here is the point I am trying to make about suffering: When we suffer, we suffer physically and spiritually (not either/or; but both/and) Human beings are “dichotomous” beings, made up of two parts: a material body and an immaterial soul/spirit.  A seminary prof of mine calls us psychosomatic beings (from the Greek words ψυχη (psyche, “soul” and σωμα (soma, “body”).  But, here is the thing about us as psychosomatic beings—our bodies and our souls are so connected to each other that our suffering is felt in both our bodies and our souls, in spite of whatever caused the suffering.  Your physical ailments will be felt in your spirit and your spiritual ailments will be felt in your body. For example, take cancer.  Cancer is physical ailment; your body is hurting.  But there is a spiritual suffering along with it.  Depression, anxiety, fear, facing your own mortality.  These are spiritual afflictions that stem from the physical affliction. And, it is not just cancer, but think of the most physical pain you ever had in your life.  Mine was a herniated disc in my back.  I was stretching before I played hockey, and I sent my shoulders clockwise and my knees counterclockwise and I corkscrewed my lower back so bad I herniated a disc, then played 90 minutes of hockey on it.

The next morning, I couldn’t sit up to get out of bed because of the pain.  I had to roll on my stomach, push myself off the foot of the bed, and pull myself to my feet by my bedframe.  But, not only was I in pain, I was scared.  I had never felt that sort of pain, I didn’t know what I did, and I didn’t know how it was going to get fixed.  Our physical ailments are felt spiritually.

And, likewise, our spiritual ailments are felt bodily.  Think of spiritual or mental health struggles—depression, anxiety, grief, PTSD, etc.  Most of the time, these have no physical/bodily cause.  But, do they have physical/bodily reactions?  When you’re depressed, you have no energy, no desire, you’re lethargic.  Lewis felt this as he was grieving his wife’s death in the quote at the beginning.  He felt lazy—too lazy to read or write letters, too lazy to shave because the one person in the world who really cared if his cheek was rough or smooth was gone.

And, what about this man born blind?  His physical ailment did not necessarily cause him pain, but he woke up every day to darkness.  He probably wondered if it was his fault or his parents’ fault that he was blind.  He probably wondered why God made him blind.  He probably was embittered not that he was blind but that he was relegated to beg on the streets.

What about you?  How have you suffered?  How are you suffering?  How is your body suffering?  How is your soul suffering?  What is afflicting you?  You may not have a physical ailment like cancer and you may not have a debilitating mental illness, your life may be going “pretty good” at the moment, but I think it is pretty safe to say that you have suffered and that you will suffer in the future, if you aren’t currently.  But, if you are, ask, what is causing you to be anxious, depressed, sleepless, angry?  Is the pain intense, or is it this low-grade struggle that slowly but surely syphons joy and hope out of you?  Do you hide the pain or lash out in anger in frustration?

And, to ask C.S. Lewis’ question, where is God in all of this?  Do you hear him double-bolt the door then silence?  Do you cry out with David(!), “How long, O Lord?  Will you forget me forever?  How long will you hide your face from me?  How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day?  How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?”

Suffering is something that causes so much confusion in the heart of man.  We don’t know why, we don’t know how long, we don’t know how bad, and suffering even causes people to disbelieve that there is a God.  They ask, “If God is all-good and all-powerful, then why is there suffering?  If he allows or even causes it to happen, then how can he be all-good?  Or, if he is incapable of stopping it, then how can he be all powerful?” When we look at suffering, when we look at the pain that it causes in the midst of it, the anxiety it causes when it seems like it’s around the corner, and the scars it leaves when it is in the past, there is one more aspect of suffering that we need to define.  One word that describes it if we are truly going to understand it biblically. Suffering is Foreign Suffering does not belong here.  Suffering was never intended to be here.  Suffering was not a part of Eden.  Suffering is not the way it is supposed to be.  We have such an adverse reaction to suffering because it is foreign.  Sin is foreign.  Pain is foreign.  Sickness is foreign.  Death is foreign.  And what we need is someone to eradicate it, to banish it, to abolish it—and that someone is Jesus Christ. Part II: Suffering’s Abolition

(vv. 3-5) “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him.  We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.” Jesus reorients his disciples’ preoccupation of whose sin caused this man to suffer, and points to them to the works of God being displayed in him.  This blind beggar, who has never seen anything in his life, is going to be the recipient of and the means of the magnification of the glorious mercy of God.  And, while we might not all experience that in the same way as this man born blind, we to, who are believers in Christ, are the recipients of and the means of the magnification of the glorious mercy of God as he works in and through our suffering; for our good and for his glory. Here are five ways that God works in our suffering, and they are in the order from the most personal to the most global.  And, to keep us from going everywhere in the Bible, I am going to quote from 2 Corinthains three times.  So, turn to 2 Cor. 12 in your Bibles. God works in our suffering for our sanctification and the refining of our faith (2 Corinthains 12:7-10) Paul says this: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me. For the sake of Christ, then, I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities. For when I am weak, then I am strong.”

What Paul says about his specific thorn to keep him from being conceited can be applied to all of our weaknesses and all of our afflictions—they are made to show us just how weak, frail, and human we are so that we turn to our Savior and trust and rest in his all-sufficient grace.  His power is made perfect in our weakness.  It is only when we realize our weakness that we become strong in Christ, we become more like him.  When we are refined in the fires of affliction, the sinful dross is burned away and we come out as pure gold.  But, it is when we feel the heat of the fire that we need to cling to the Savior God works in our suffering so that we may comfort others in their suffering (2 Corinthians 1:3-5) “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. For as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too.” When you are well-acquainted with suffering, you are going to be well-equipped to help others in their suffering.  if you are well-acquainted with the God of All Comfort, you are going to be able to bring others to the God of All Comfort when they don’t think that they are going to be able to bear it.  Paul says in 1 Cor. 12:26, “If one member [of the body] suffers, all suffer together.”  And again, in Galatians 6:2, “Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ.”  This happens when God works through your current suffering so that God can work through you in the future suffering of a brother or sister in Christ. God works in our suffering for the furthering of the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:8-12, 15)

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be manifested in our bodies. For we who live are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So death is at work in us, but life in you.... For it is all for your sake, so that as grace extends to more and more people it may increase thanksgiving, to the glory of God.

As we have already seen, Paul speaks a lot about suffering and affliction in 2 Corinthains, and here, he tells us why.  As they suffer, the Gospel of grace extends to more and more people.  They are always being given over to death so that life can be at work in both the Corinthains and beyond.  If you read the book of Acts, we get a taste of Paul’s suffering and persecution, including imprisonment, shipwrecks, animosity, and so on—things that certainly cause suffering—but they were used to take the Gospel of Jesus Christ all over the Roman Empire.

As you live your life in faithful, humble submission to the Lord in the midst of suffering, the world takes notice.  When you point to the fact that, yest you are suffering but that the Lord is working in you through your suffering (either in the perseverance through or the alleviation of your suffering) people are going to wonder just who this Lord is.

Bringing it back into John 9 with the man born blind, this is what happened, too.  (vv. 8-12) “The neighbors and those who had seen him before as a beggar were saying, “Is this not the man who used to sit and beg?” Some said, “It is he.” Others said, “No, but he is like him.” He kept saying, “I am the man.” So they said to him, “Then how were your eyes opened?” He answered, “The man called Jesus made mud and anointed my eyes and said to me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed and received my sight.” They said to him, “Where is he?” He said, “I do not know.”

His neighbors are stupefied by what happened, but they need to know what man made this happen, and as we will see next week when this healing becomes a controversy, it brings the Jesus to the forefront.

God works in our suffering to point the world to Jesus Christ Look back to vv. 4-5: “We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming, when no one can work.  As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.”  Jesus is saying that the work that God is going to do in this blind man is to point to him as the Light of the World.  The blind man was in a literal darkness; he could not see.  And now, the Light of the World was coming to make him see light.  And, through this man’s suffering and Jesus healing him, it is going to be another sign that points to him as the Son of God, as the one that the Father sent. When the world sees you suffering in faith, the world is going to wonder about the one that you have placed your faith in.  When the world sees you glorying in the fact that God alleviated your suffering (either by medicinal means or miraculously, it was still his sovereign will and mercy that caused you to be healed) they are going to want to know who this God is. God works in our suffering to give us a foretaste of the New Creation Look back at vv. 6-7 to how the man’s blindness was healed—“He spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva.  Then he anointed the man’s eyes with the mud and said to him, ‘Go, wash in the Pool of Siloam,’ (which means Sent)  So he went and washed and came back seeing.”

A lot of scholars and commentators look at these two verses and wonder what is going on here, especially with the mud that Jesus made with his spit.  People have put forth a lot of weird suggestions, but there is one that, I feel makes the most sense.

In Genesis 2, we are given an account of how God made Man.  Gen. 2:7 says, “Then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

The Hebrew word for man here is, Adam (אדם); that makes sense.  The Hebrew word for “ground” here is Adamah (אדמה).  It is no coincidence that Adam was made out of Adamah.  And I don’t think that it is a coincidence that Genesis 2 has God creating the man out of the dust of the ground and John 9 has the Son of God restoring, re-creating, this man’s eyes with the dust of the ground mixed with a little bit of saliva.

This is an act of re-creation.  This is a taste of the New Creation that is to come, where “death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4).  In our suffering, we taste the Fall, we taste sin, we taste death.  When we are free from suffering, even for a moment here on this earth, we get a foretaste of the New Heavens and the New Earth when we are fully, ultimately, and eternally free from the effects if the Fall.  But, even if we aren’t free from it, even if it comes back again and again, if the Lord doesn’t remove the thorns from our side, even as we face our own mortality, we can still suffer well, suffer in faith, knowing that Christ is making all things new.  And, we can suffer well knowing that Christ suffered, too.

The One who will abolish pain, suffering, and death for eternity intimately knows pain, suffering, and death.

(Hebrews 2:9-10) But we see him, […] Jesus, crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering. (4:15) For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.

You know what those people who ask why God doesn’t stop suffering don’t realize?  That God the Son himself suffered.  That, at Jesus was said in v. 4, “Night is coming,” when the Light of the World would be snuffed out for three days.  I’ll close with a quote from theologian John Stott:

I have turned to that lonely, twisted, tortured figure on the cross, nails through hands and feet, back lacerated, limbs wrenched, brow bleeding from thorn-pricks, mouth dry and intolerably thirsty, plunged in Godforsaken darkness. That is the God for me! He laid aside his immunity to pain. He entered our world of flesh and blood, tears and death. He suffered for us. Our sufferings become more manageable in the light of his. There is still a question mark against human suffering, but over it we boldly stamp another mark, the cross”

BENEDICTION: 2 Corinthians 4:16-18