Such light we can get from the Old Testament with regard to the problem of suffering. What further clarification do we get from the "good news" contained in the New Testament? What difference does it make that Jesus Christ was born, lived, died, and rose from the dead? Here are four insights that the New Testament helps us to clarify: 1. God is involved in evil with us.
2. God conquers evil.
3. God conquers death.
4. God gives us the power to conquer.
Each of these deserves some comment.
1. God is involved in evil with us. A strange notion, this! God involved in evil? Surely God is beyond good and evil, off in heaven somewhere, free from the kinds of cares and sorrows that plague the lot of ordinary mortals. So the coal miner in "Caliban in the Coal Mines" thought, when he said,
"God, You don't know what it is You, in Your well-lighted sky --"
But the very heart of the gospel, the "good news," is that God does know what it is, that God is not far off and remote, but that in Jesus Christ he became man and dwelt among us. God has, so to speak, "invaded" our human life and taken part in it. (See Chapters 7 to 10.) This means, quite simply, that God is involved in evil with us; that he did not permit evil to exist in the same world and then stay as far away from it as he could, but that on the contrary he came to that very place where evil was -- human life -- to do battle with it, in human life, as a human being. You could almost say that God was "willing to take his own medicine," that he did not stay aloof from the unpleasant experiences through which his children were going. Biblical faith finds this claim most clearly focused in the crucifixion of Christ. Here we see God, present in Jesus Christ, being subjected to the very worst evils that men can devise. He does not bypass suffering and evil but accepts them.
He is involved.
Any notion that God "doesn't care" is promptly scotched by a little reflection upon the fact that men did not crucify just a nice man, but the very Son of God himself. The coal miner in the poem was too modest in his request. All he asked for was "a handful of stars." God didn't send a handful of stars. He sent his own Son.
Notice how this brings God into relationship with our suffering:
Item: A father and mother have a son who grows up and then dies almost at the beginning of his adult life. Those parents can know that God too has experienced some of the pain that they are experiencing, and that he understands.
Item: A man with great vision and concern for his fellow men begins to put his plans into concrete action, and people simply laugh at him and refuse to help him and utterly destroy him. That man can realize that his failure (if indeed it is a failure) is not an experience that puts him "out of touch" with God, but that on the contrary it brings him closer to what God, in Christ, has himself experienced.
To such people there comes not only the conviction that God understands, but also the conviction that God, being God, can help them in their time of trouble. The letter to the Hebrews sees this:
For we have not a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sinning. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need ( Heb. 4: 15, 16).
2. God conquers evil. Just to say that God is involved in evil with us wouldn't be "good news." It might mean only that God was "caught" in the same predicament we are, and that he couldn't escape either. So the New Testament makes another startling claim at this point. It says that God is not only involved in evil, but that he does battle with evil and conquers it.
(Explosive retort by incredulous reader: Now wait a minute! How can you talk that way? If evil was defeated by Christ nineteen hundred years ago, it's doing a pretty good job of pretending to be alive today.)
This is a fair enough reaction, and to meet it we must remind ourselves of the inner significance of the crucifixionresurrection event. If the Gospels ended with the death of Jesus, we should have tragedy pure and simple. God would be involved with evil, all right, and it would conquer him. But, as we have seen, the New Testament makes the point that the death of Jesus was not the end. Evil did crucify the Son of God and kill him, but it was not able to win the day, for God raised Jesus from the dead, thus making plain the true meaning of the cross, which was that the power of evil had been defeated by the power of God. Here was God, in the person of Christ, weak and defenseless and powerless, assaulted by evil men and evil forces. If God could conquer in this encounter with evil, it would be clear that he could conquer any further assaults upon him by the powers of evil. And the New Testament says that God did precisely that -- that in this struggle he emerged the victor. (The section on "The Cross as Victory" in Chapter 10 should be reread in this connection.)
What does this mean for us? It means that we can be quite confident that no other display of the powers of evil is strong enough to defeat God. It means that we live in a world where his victory has been won.
(Grudging concession by incredulous reader: But even if God won on that day, he seems to have been losing ever since. How can you believe that evil has been conquered in the twentieth century world?)
There is no easy answer to this question. The only final answer the Christian can give is that he sees in the event of
crucifixion-resurrection enough of an indication of God's power over evil to be willing to believe that the victory is sure. Perhaps an example can make this point clear:
As you read a detective story (The Case of the Bloody Hand, say, or No Corpse, No Murder) the plot seems very confused, and you are not at all sure what the outcome will be. But in the last chapter the detective summons all the suspects into a room, proceeds to unravel the mystery, shows the pattern running through it, and reveals how he knew the guilty man. It is only in the light of that final chapter that the rest of the book hangs together. After you have read it, you can say: "Oh, yes! Now I see why the butler in Chapter Three threw the knife down the well without erasing his fingerprints." Now you can understand the plots, the counterplots, the "red herrings," and the carefully planted hints and clues.
Suppose for a moment that you had read that final chapter first, and then had read the rest of the detective story. . . .
You would be able to make a good deal more sense out of the story! You would see something of the meaning and significance of the events as they took place. You would understand a little better the relationship of the knife, the fingerprints, the unmailed letter, the midnight visitor -- while to others the same events would still be a hopeless chaos. Because you knew what happened in that final chapter you would have a clearer picture of the meaning of the story as a whole.
Now don't press that one too far; don't ask too much of it. But let it stand as a way of saying that you, as a Christian, are in a position somewhat like the reader. As you look at the mysterious tangle of events known as human life and history, you can see some meaning and direction in them because you know what the final outcome is. You know that God will be victorious in the ongoing struggle with evil, because he already is victorious in the event of crucifixion-resurrection. You have, so to speak, already seen the final chapter. And so you can live your life in the assurance that there the decisive battle has been fought, and that the outcome is certain victory for God. Of course you cannot "prove" this. You still walk by faith (which means "trust") rather than by sight. But you see enough to believe and trust in God.
When we speak of God's conquering evil in Christ, we cannot do this fully without seeing the way in which the "Suffering Servant" passages (especially Isa. 52: 13 to 53: 12) illumine the event of the cross. Look again at the quotation earlier in this chapter. Here is another dimension of the cross as victory. We have sinned, we have disobeyed God's will, but rather than making us bear the full brunt of the penalty for sin, God in Christ bears it himself. (This is why, at various times in Christian history, Christ has been referred to as the "sin bearer.") He carries the weight of the burden that should be ours; he takes upon himself the punishment that should be meted out to us. He is "wounded for our transgressions"; he is "bruised for our iniquities."
Just why God should do this, we do not know. It is a mystery. But it is a mystery of his love and we see in this divine activity the way in which love comes to grips with evil -- by bearing it and thus conquering it. Paul makes the same point in a slightly different fashion. In Christ, he says, "God . . . canceled the bond which stood against us with its legal demands; this he set aside, nailing it to the cross" ( Col. 2: 13, 14).
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