The Suffering Soul is he who is being wrought by God to a state of grace in forcing him to look to and rely on Him. This is becoming truer for me everyday. Not only because life demands suffering but because my life has demanded me to take a look at what suffering is. I am not going to write a thesis on suffering today but I am going raise some questions that deserved to be looked at.
Paul in Romans seven paints a beautiful picture of a suffering soul, a man torn by conflicting desires when he asks, “13Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.”
Without looking too deeply both theologically and exegetically at this, I just want to bring to your attention the struggle that is so very evident within the soul of Paul. You can hear the suffering and agony he is dealing with when he honestly looks at himself through the lens of Gods perfection, oh what a wretched man he is, what wretched men and women we are! The very next chapter Paul brings to light a cure so potent and sweet that it is almost impossible for me not to read this wthout seeing Paul’s eyes fill with tears. He writes in a beautifully climactic style that “1There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. 2For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
How wonderful is the answer of Gods grace to our evidently contradictory lives. (I am speaking to Christians here.)
Can there be this struggle in those who are willfully at enmity with their Creator? I tend to say no, but upon further inspection and a recent conversation I had with my Aunt Kitty, I can not help but think of Judas. His actions of betrayal were clearly sinful and opposed to the actions of one who truly loved Christ, hence his title as the son of Perdition. Yet after his betrayal of Christ he felt incredible sorrow and suffering in his soul, so much so that he committed suicide. I can think of no other verse that address this than 2 Corinthians 7:10 which says that “Godly grief produces a repentance that leads to salvation without regret, whereas worldly grief produces death“
How sure we must be than that our sorrow, our suffering, is that which is of God. Can we know? How can we be aware of such differences within ourselves? I echo Paul in soul wrenching gladness, thankfulness and hopeful longing when I say “far be it from me to boast in anything but in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world”
Soulah Gratia 