Why does God allow suffering?

Suffering is not the way God made the world. It entered through sin, and the whole creation has groaned under it since. God has not stood off from it: He entered it Himself, in Jesus Christ, who suffered to save us - and He has promised His people a future in which death, sorrow and pain are gone. Why He allows the particular sorrow you are carrying, the Bible does not always say, and it does not pretend to.

If you are asking because of something that happened to you or to someone you love, begin here, with a family Jesus loved.

Jesus at a grave

A man named Lazarus fell ill and died. The account says plainly what Jesus felt about him and his sisters:

Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus.

He loved them - and Lazarus died anyway, and they buried him. Being loved by Jesus and terrible grief are in the same chapter. When Jesus arrived and saw the sisters weeping, this is what He did:

Jesus wept.

He did not explain. He wept. And before He did anything else, He said to a grieving sister who was wondering whether God cared:

Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: And whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die. Believest thou this?

That is the God of the Bible at a graveside: tears, and a promise. Everything else on this page is inside those two things.

Where suffering came from

God made the world and called it very good. Suffering and death came in afterward, when man turned from Him:

cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life; Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee; and thou shalt eat the herb of the field; In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.

Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now.

Scripture describes a creation groaning under sin and death. Sickness, accident, cruelty and graves belong to a world broken by its rebellion against its Creator - not to the world as He made it.

It does not mean your suffering is a punishment for your sin

When Jesus’ disciples saw a man born blind, they assumed someone must have deserved it:

And his disciples asked him, saying, Master, who did sin, this man, or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.

He rejected the equation. When a tower fell and killed eighteen people, He rejected it again, and then turned to everyone listening:

Or those eighteen, upon whom the tower in Siloam fell, and slew them, think ye that they were sinners above all men that dwelt in Jerusalem? I tell you, Nay: but, except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.

Two things in that answer. Their deaths did not prove that they were more guilty than those who survived; we cannot look at another person’s suffering and presume to know God’s judgment on their life. And every hearer - the survivors, not the victims - is called to repent. The warning is for the living, not an accusation against the dead.

Jesus suffered - for us

This is the heart of the Bible’s answer. Seven hundred years before He was born, Isaiah described Him:

He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

A man of sorrows, acquainted with grief - and wounded for our transgressions. His suffering was not only a sharing of ours. It was a bearing of our sin, so that sinners could be brought to God. He was betrayed, abandoned, falsely tried, beaten and executed, and He did it to save. And He rose: the One who wept at Lazarus’s grave is the One who said, “I am the resurrection, and the life” - and then called Lazarus out of it, and three days after His own death walked out of His own.

So He knows suffering from the inside, and He is alive to help:

For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.

Come boldly. Not when you have understood, not when you have stopped hurting - now, in time of need, to obtain mercy and find help.

God works in suffering - without promising you an explanation

Joseph was betrayed by his brothers, sold, and imprisoned for years for a crime he did not commit. When at last he stood before them, he said:

But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good, to bring to pass, as it is this day, to save much people alive.

The evil was real, and God did not excuse it. But it was not the end of the story. Joseph was eventually shown what God had done with it. Not everyone is, in this life, and the Bible does not promise that you will be. What it promises those who love God is this:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son

For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us.

The good God is working toward is named: conformity to His Son, and a glory that outweighs the suffering. It is not a promise of restored circumstances or a reason you will be able to see. It is a promise about who you are becoming and where it ends.

God’s patience, and His people’s future

Scripture connects the delay of God’s promised judgment with His patience and His call to repentance:

The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.

That explains why the world as it is has not yet been ended and judged. It does not explain why a particular illness continues or why a particular person died; the Bible leaves those questions where the opening of this page left them. But it does say where His people’s story ends:

And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.

God dwelling with His people; no more death, sorrow, crying or pain. That is the future God promises to those who are His - and it is offered to you, through Christ, on the same terms as to anyone. He will wipe the tears Himself.

What the Bible does not tell you

It does not tell you why this happened to you. Job lost everything and asked God for an explanation. God did not tell Job about the events described in the book’s opening chapters; He answered him with Himself - His wisdom, His power, His governance of everything Job could see. Job came to know Him more deeply while many of his questions remained unanswered:

I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee.

You may still ask, “Why this?” You are allowed to. The Bible is full of people who asked it of God directly, and He did not silence them. What it gives you is not the reason. It is Jesus - as the ground for trusting the love of a God whose reasons you cannot see - and His word that nothing you have wept has been lost on Him:

put thou my tears into thy bottle: are they not in thy book?

The LORD is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit.

Suffering will not have the last word. He will.