"Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept Thy Word." Psalm 119:67
"It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes." Psalm 119:71
Additional readings: Isaiah 30:1-17, Matthew 16:13-28
When the Lord said to Peter that He must suffer many things of the elders, chief priests, and scribes and be put to death, Peter was grieved and said, "Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee," Then the Lord replied, "Get thee behind me, Satan, thou art an offense unto me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men."
The thought of affliction is repugnant to the unregenerate man, but we do not attain victory without effort, and the severity of the Lord's words to Peter shows the enormity of his error. Isaiah is writing of this same attitude when he says: "Now go, write it before them in a table, and note it in a book, that it may be for the time to come for ever and ever: That this is a rebellious people, lying children, children that will not hear the law of the Lord: Which say to the seers, See not; and to the prophets, Prophesy not unto us right things, speak unto us smooth things, prophesy deceits" (Isaiah 3:10).
The Lord called Peter Satan to indicate the origin and character of person’s sense of offense at the life the Lord Himself led and the struggles He went through. After the resurrection He appeared to the disciples and said, "Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?" (Luke 24:26)
Affliction—at present, at least—is a part of human life. No human being can escape from it. It is born with us and follows us wherever we go. The strongest cannot throw it off. The swiftest cannot escape it. The richest cannot purchase release from it. The cleverest cannot evade it. It waits for the sluggish. The young and the old, the weak and the strong, the ignorant and the wise, the evil and the good are alike subject to it. Today there is widespread affliction and suffering, so that the world is shocked by it, and many are brought to despair.
Yet it is not the things that we like to hear that are always good for us. The truth often runs counter to our natural inclinations, but if we follow our natural inclinations, we do so to our everlasting hurt. So the psalmist writes: "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn thy statutes." When afflictions come, the first question that arises naturally is, "What is their cause?" We should know that they do not come from the Lord. He does not send them. No suffering of body or soul, no disappointment or sorrow comes from Him. Good, and only good can come from Him.
The human body was created in infinite wisdom and with the purpose of gifting mankind with delights. Every part was designed to be a means of communicating happiness to man. The nerves, for example, were created to give pleasure and not to torment with pain. Yet the nerves are sometimes the means of bringing terrible suffering. The Lord does not inflict the suffering. If we violate the laws of Divine order, pain ensues. The ability to enjoy pleasures implies the ability to suffer. If we could not feel pain, we could not feel delights. Stones and trees do not feel pain; neither can they have delights. Even a limited reason can see that it is far better to be a being exposed to the danger of suffering than to be a stone or a tree without the possibility of enjoying. The nerves serve to warn us of dangers and to protect us, as well as to give us delights. These same laws apply to our moral nature. Our intellectual faculties and affections were given for the purpose of bringing us happiness far surpassing the purely physical delights of the senses. Family affections are an instance of this law familiar to us all. They were given to bind husband and wife, parents and children together, and to make each the giver and sharer of the other's joys. New and deep fountains of life and. happiness are opened with each child that the Lord gives.
Yet these capacities for happiness can be the source of the keenest sorrows. When illness and death befall members of the family circle, when true family relationships are perverted, when evils creep in, when selfishness, waywardness, and follies are indulged in, the family suffers. But if no family cares and anxieties were possible, we should also be insensible to all family joys. There is no way to avoid the possibility of suffering without making man such that he is also incapable of enjoying.
If the Lord gives us faculties capable of bringing us joy and happiness and we misuse them so that they bring us pain, we should realize that the pain is the result not of the Lord's action, but of our own. It is true that the Scriptures in the letter often say that the Lord sends affliction, suffering, and sorrow, but such statements have taken their literal form from the appearance—according to humanity's selfish tendency to escape responsibility. They are true only in the sense that all the power we have is given us by the Lord. It is our own misuse of this power which brings suffering upon ourselves and others.
And we should be able to go farther than this. We should be able to see that while the Lord permits evil and suffering, His providence extends over the permission and uses our afflictions as a means of bringing blessings to us. In His infinite mercy and goodness He uses our afflictions to do us good. He provides, in the words of Paul, "that our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory" (2 Corinthians 4:17).
We cannot see this from a merely natural point of view. We must have the eternal life in mind. Just as the material body is not the real man or the purpose of his creation, so this natural life is in itself but the smallest and grossest part of his existence. The world was created for mankind and for the purpose of gratifying his desires and giving delights, to develop his powers and faculties, but not as the supreme end of his existence. We abuse this world if all our conceptions of happiness are limited to it and all our energies are directed to attaining its good things.
The more our natural desires are indulged the more imperative they become. If they were not checked, there would be no possibility of the development of our spiritual faculties. Like the vine our natural tendencies need to be pruned. It is a fact abundantly proved by history that man is of such a nature that he cannot bear uninterrupted natural prosperity. It is a thousandfold more dangerous to him than adversity. So adversities sometimes come. The Lord wishes and seeks to provide for us a beautiful and perfect home in the heavens. People are prone to seek one in this world and to neglect their higher interests. So we come into conflict with the Divine purposes and laws and afflictions ensue.
We never suffer any pain if the body is in perfect health. Pain in the body is a note of warning. When we are afflicted with pain, we seek to find, its cause and to remove it. So it is with our sorrows, which are pains of the mind. They are the voices of sentinels warning us of danger. They tell us that we have wandered from the ways of Divine order and are going astray. We little realize how much we are indebted to the adversities that have come upon us. If we had never had any warning, if we had never been checked in any of our desires, if we never had any anxiety, if nothing ever thwarted our own way, would we ever look to any other than self? Indeed we would go astray from the Lord and never desire to return. But sometimes terrible afflictions come upon us like a thunderbolt from a clear sky. The health which we had enjoyed suddenly fails, our plans are thwarted, death comes unexpectedly and takes husband or wife or children or friends. The whole course of life is broken up. Why is this? What good can come from it? There is one obvious answer, namely, that there is no natural good, no earthly condition which can be relied upon to give us happiness. Afflictions are permitted in order to turn our thoughts to higher things. The natural mind is stubborn. Afflictions soften the stubborn mind. If they are greater than we think we can bear, we may turn to the Lord. The Lord never casts us off. If we cannot find refuge in the Lord, there is no place in the universe where we can find help. When we realize that the Lord never brings the slightest harm or sorrow upon us, but that He is in the constant effort to teach us how to avoid them, to support us when they do come, and to turn them to our advantage by awakening in our minds an abhorrence of the things which caused them, our whole attitude toward affliction and sorrow is changed. We see that the Lord is on our side, taking part with us against the enemies to our peace.
So if afflictions come, let us turn to the Lord for help. It is difficult for the natural mind to conceive that there can be any higher good than that which it is immediately seeking. We put confidence in ourselves rather than in the Lord. We are slow to believe that His plans for us are better than our own, and slow to seek to learn and do His will. But if we will go to the Lord in His Word and listen to Him with a humble and open mind, we shall see that He is using afflictions to restrain us from going farther astray from heaven and from home, to assist us in forming a juster estimate of natural things, to weaken the force of our natural desires, to arouse in us an aversion toward falsity and evil, and to make more room in our thoughts and affections for spiritual things. We shall find that He is giving us more than we have lost, and we shall be ready to say “It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes”—learn to know them, to love them, and to do them.
And if we tempted to look upon our afflictions and losses as irreparable, we shall be able to answer, “Before I was afflicted I went astray: but now have I kept Thy Word” — before I was afflicted I was too much absorbed with natural delights, but now, chastened and humbled, I turn to the light Divine truth and find happiness In trying to follow Him who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
