Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Suffering, Pain, & God’s Sovereignty

by Bruce Mills
As I write these words, I am sitting in a recliner with my left leg locked in a brace, unable to move it.  I suffered a serious fracture of my patella (knee cap) and had to undergo surgery to repair it.  Now I am living with pain almost every moment of every day, and I am faced with many months of rehabilitation before I will ever be able to walk on it again without a brace and either a wheelchair, crutches, or a walker.  I am dependent upon my family members to help me bathe, go to the bathroom, and get dressed.  It will be about eight weeks before I am able to return to work in a limited capacity.  There is much about my situation that is humbling and humiliating. 
I have already experienced the depression that comes periodically in such situations, as Satan tempts me to despair that my circumstances will never get better, that my pain will never go away, that my rehab will be too much for me to bear.  I admit that it is a daily struggle.  So when those dark times of depression and anxiety come, I have decided to follow my own counsel; the advice that I have given many other believers through the years who were going through some difficult time of suffering in their lives, and that is to rest in the sovereignty and trustworthiness of God.
I really don’t think there is a more comforting doctrine in times of suffering, pain, and physical limitation than God’s sovereign control over such matters.  When I contemplate the fact that He has absolute control over everything in the universe, and foreordained from before the world began that I would go through this experience in order that His glory might be magnified, it brings a sense of purpose and comfort to my soul. 
Ephesians 1:11 declares that God in Christ “works all things after the counsel of His will.”  The Greek word for “works” is energeĊ, which indicates that God does not merely carry all of the universe’s objects and events to their appointed ends, but that He actually brings about all things in accordance with His will.  In other words, it isn’t just that God manages to turn the evil, harmful, and hurtful aspects and events of our world to good for those who love Him (Rom. 8:28); rather, it is that He Himself ordains and orchestrates these terrible, painful, difficult events for His glory and His people’s good.
Consider that He proclaimed to the Pharaoh of Egypt that the only reason God had brought him to the place he was and allowed him to remain in power was so that as God rained down plague after plague upon the Egyptian people, God’s name and power and glory would be proclaimed throughout all the earth (Exodus 9:13-16).
Consider the man in John 9 who was born blind—who lived perhaps 20-25-30 years in darkness—forced to beg in order to survive.  Yet Jesus said that the reason those awful events took place in that man’s life were “so that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3).
So when I consider that Scripture teaches that God goes to such lengths to bring pain and misery upon His creation in order to display His glory, the fact that He will cause me to suffer a serious injury to my knee and leave me dependent on others for the most basic functions of daily life means that He is working to accomplish His glory through me and my situation.  That is a marvelously encouraging thought, especially when I am hurting and weak and incapable.  Because when I recognize that He is accomplishing His purposes in me and magnifying His glory through me, it is staggering to my feeble mind.  Ultimately, my injury is not about me; it is about God’s glory.
But since God has called me to this purpose, what might He be doing in my life?  Well, as I said at the beginning of this post, there is much about my circumstances that are both humbling and humiliating, and since God knows my sinfully prideful heart, He knows that I need to be broken of that pride.  One way is to forcibly rid me of my own self-sufficiency by making me completely dependent upon others.  In the wonderful book, Suffering and the Sovereignty of God, a collection of essays on the subject of suffering in the life of the believer, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor, Joni Eareckson Tada writes:
Do you know who the truly handicapped people are?  They are the ones—and many of them are Christians—who hear the alarm clock go off at 7:30 in the morning, throw back the covers, jump out of bed, take a quick shower, choke down breakfast, and zoom out the front door.  They do all this on automatic pilot without stopping once to acknowledge their Creator, their great God who gives them life and strength each day.  Christian, if you live that way, do you know that James 4:6 says God opposes you?  “God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.”
And who are the humble?  They are people who are humiliated by their weaknesses.  Catheterized people whose leg bags spring leaks on somebody else’s brand-new carpet.  Immobilized people who must be fed, cleansed, and taken care of like infants.  Once-active people crippled by chronic aches and pains.  God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, so then submit yourselves to God.  Resist the devil, who loves nothing more than to discourage you and corrode your joy.  Resist him and he will flee you.  Draw near to God in your affliction, and he will draw near to you (James 4:6-8).
It’s too early to know what all the lessons are that God wants me to learn over the next several months, but one obvious one is to rip away some of my pride and teach me humility.  And as I learn that lesson, God is glorified.  So it looks like the next several months will be an adventure, albeit a painful one, as God works through my disabling circumstances to bring about His glory and my good.  I pray that I will “consider it all joy…knowing that the testing of [my] faith produces endurance” (James 1:2-3).

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

The Problem with Forgiving Yourself (Part 2)

by Bruce Mills
In our last post, we examined the commonly held view that those who are struggling with guilt over some past sin need to learn to forgive themselves, and we noted that such a viewpoint is never found in Scripture.  Rather, the Bible discusses vertical forgiveness (God forgiving man) and horizontal forgiveness (a man forgiving another), but the concept of forgiving oneself is not found anywhere in the Scriptures.
We also discussed two reasons why some individuals may struggle with a seeming inability to forgive themselves and the remedy for those problems.  We will now continue with a discussion of this matter and look at three more reasons why some individuals can’t seem to overcome guilt and only focus on self-forgiveness.
3.  The person who says, “I just can’t forgive myself,” may be venting his regrets for failing to achieve a certain cherished desire.
In essence, this individual is saying, “I had the opportunity to get something I really wanted, but I threw it all away!  I can’t forgive myself.”  The desire may have been to get rich, be married, receive the approval of their boss, have children who respect them, or even to see a dying relative come to faith in Christ. 
So the individual will say, “Because of my sin, I’ve blown it…” And they add something such as, “I lost my money in a bad investment,” or “I embarrassed my boyfriend and he broke up with me,” or “I made a mistake that lost a big account for our company,” or “I was still afraid to speak up for Christ to my dad and now he’s gone.”  And then they add, “And now I can’t forgive myself for squandering the opportunity to get what I always wanted.  I was that close to being happy and I blew it!”
This person is behaving as though he or she could control the world and guarantee getting what they want.  When their desires are thwarted, the result is self-reproach and a lingering case of “if only I had…”  This individual is blind to his underlying urge to control his own happiness.
Such an individual needs to hold up the mirror of Scripture and see the deceptiveness and power of his ruling desires.  It is nothing more than idolatry.  He has decided that his desire to have whatever “thing” he wants is so important that he can’t be happy without it, and when that takes place, he has created an idol of the heart.  What he needs to do is recognize it as idolatry, confess it as sin, turn from it, and begin to cultivate a relationship with God that sees Him as sovereignly causing all things—including what he believes are bad things—to work together for good in his life (Rom. 8:28).
4. The person who says, “I just can’t forgive myself,” may be trying to establish his own standards of righteousness.
In this case, the statement “I can’t forgive myself” is equivalent to saying, “I haven’t lived up to my own perfect standards” or “I haven’t lived up to other people’s expectations.”  This individual’s longing for self-forgiveness arises from his failure to measure up to his own standards of performance, his own image of how good he is or ought to be.
In essence such an individual has proudly erected his own law or even embraced someone else’s law.  He is chasing not only “a righteousness of [his] own” (Phil. 3:7-9) but a righteousness of his own against a standard of his own.  But the Bible tells us that God is the only One we must please.  His law must be our sole standard of self-measurement.
Advocates of “self-forgiveness” rightly observe our tendency to criticize ourselves and the fact that this is a problem.  But the answer is not self-forgiveness; rather, it is to stop our God-playing propensity to erect and obey our own laws.
For example, the person who can’t forgive himself when he makes a mistake on the job has erected an unbiblical standard: “I must be a perfect worker.”  He is playing God by rejecting God’s law and establishing his own.  Yes, we are to be hard workers who strive for excellence.  But we are not to place a false standard upon ourselves which replaces God as the only sovereign qualified to rule over our lives.  Similarly, the woman who can’t forgive herself because, in her words, “If only I had persuaded my husband to go to the doctor, he wouldn’t have died,” is assuming God’s role.
5.  The person who says, “I just can’t forgive myself,” may have ascended to the throne of judgment and declared himself to be his own judge.
In this case the expression “I can’t forgive myself” is the equivalent of “I’m the one in the role of judge and I will dispense forgiveness as I decide.”  Such a person has convened the court, rendered a guilty verdict upon himself, and now believes that he must grant the needed pardon!  But the Bible declares that God alone is both judge and forgiver, as well as penalty-bearer for those in Christ!
This role issue is important.  What is the person actually saying when he speaks of forgiving himself?  Has “he” sinned against his “self,” or has his “self” sinned against “him”?  Who is the “he” who forgives his “self”?  And who is the judge who determines that guilt even exists?  This whole notion of self-forgiveness proposes that one individual as the offender, judge, and forgiver.  The only Person who can stand in all three of those roles is Jesus Christ.  So when someone else does it, he or she is playing God.  They are usurping Christ’s role.  It is very important that this person look away from self and to Christ alone as the only judge and forgiver.
In conclusion, what do we say then when someone says to us, “I just can’t forgive myself?”  First, we should recognize that he or she has a true problem of guilt.  We should take that statement seriously and respond to that person compassionately.  But we must help them see that they have mislabeled their problem and how the Bible provides the only accurate, helpful diagnosis and solution.
When the person who is struggling with guilt begins to understand the depth of God’s love and grace, grasping the fact that God alone is in sovereign control over the circumstances of our lives, and only He retains the right to both judge and forgive us, that individual will begin to see that their thinking patterns which require self-forgiveness are unnecessary, self-centered idols of the heart.  He can then confess and forsake his sin, with an understanding that God retains absolute authority as both righteous judge and gracious forgiver, making self-forgiveness an unneeded concept.