The notion of suffering as an offset for sin, the foolish idea that a man by suffering borne may get out from under the hostile claim to which his wrong-doing has subjected him, comes first of all from the satisfaction we feel when wrong comes to grief. Why do we feel this satisfaction? Because we hate wrong, but, not being righteous ourselves, more or less hate the sinner as well as his wrong, hence are not only righteously pleased to behold the law’s disapproval proclaimed in his punishment, but unrighteously pleased with his suffering, because of the impact upon us of his wrong. In this way, the inborn justice of our nature passes over to evil. It is no pleasure to God, as it so often is to us, to see the wicked suffer. To regard any suffering with satisfaction, save it be sympathetically with its curative quality, comes of evil, is inhuman because undivine, is a thing God is incapable of. His nature is always to forgive, and just because he forgives, he punishes. Because God is so altogether alien to wrong, because it is to him a heart-pain and trouble that one of his little ones should do the evil thing, there is no extreme of suffering to which, for the sake of destroying the evil thing in them, he would not subject them. A man might flatter, or bribe, or coax a tyrant; but there is no refuge from the love of God; that love will, for very love, insist upon the uttermost farthing.

Commentary

by Dale Darling

It would take poetry I do not write, or music that perhaps I could yet compose, to express the grace of this statement: there is no refuge from the love of God. We see and know beauty and joy at the flutter of a butterfly, the flight of a sparrow, the grandeur of a fresh lily bloom. But the butterfly struggled to escape its chrysalis, and if anyone tried to ease its way by loosing the case, the insect would never fly, for the struggle is required for it. The sparrow hatched from within to without the egg: an immense struggle for a chick. Does it hurt the flower as it goes through the blooming process? What do these natural wonders say about Our Father, Creator of all things?

In our pain, we reach for drugs, assistance, cures, relief, and ease from the tyranny of inconvenience, to the detriment of our right to a particular quality of life physical and spiritual, perhaps missing the means to His end for the eternal present where He has now put us.

Who shall set me free?

I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.