The Spoil Of Evildoers

“Whoever is wicked covets the spoil of evildoers, but the root of the righteous bears fruit.”

Second Timothy 3:13 instructs us that “…evil people and impostors will go on from bad to worse, deceiving and being deceived,” and Proverbs 28:5 teaches us that “Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the LORD understand it completely.”

These verses point out that wicked individuals get worse and do worse than before, and that they do not care about justice. A failure to love justice means a failure to love mercy. God is not like this. He is just and merciful. It is because he is just that he is merciful. God never operates or conducts himself in a way that is contrary to his nature. In the same way, sinful men and women conduct themselves according to their nature. This is simply the biblical doctrine of the nature of man and the sin of man. We always act according to our nature. More than this, evil men covet any gain from any evil committed. They desire to gain from their acts of wickedness. The result of the evil of man is the suffering of man.

All suffering is connected to sin in some way. Now it is true that God brings and allows suffering in order to refine us and teach us. Suffering is the fruit of the curse that God pronounced upon Adam in Genesis 3. What troubles us most of all though, is why God seems to allow the innocent to suffer.

The recent tragedy of the Boston Marathon reveals this. Innocent bystanders, even children, are killed and hurt by the wickedness of man. Now was this the plan of God? It certainly was the plan of wicked men, but where does God fit in, and does he fit in?

There are no easy answers to these questions. Someone who is not a Christian will never understand the biblical answer, simply because he does not know or understand the nature of God as revealed in the Bible. So it will be very difficult to convince him that God was somehow involved. God certainly was involved from the standpoint of his sovereignty; otherwise he would not be God.

This of course, is no help to the unbeliever who asks “why” or “where was God” or “if God is good, then why has this happened,” or “if God is all-powerful and good, then shouldn’t he have prevented this from happening?” These statements are also difficult for Christians to answer. It is no use being glib about them, and it is no use being resigned to some sort of fatalistic approach to God’s sovereignty. Whenever we speak of God’s sovereignty we must always think in terms of purpose. We might not know God’s purpose, but we may rest assured that God has a purpose. We can say this because God is God, and he is a God of order and decrees. The entire book of Job is about this very thing. I don’t think I can even begin to answer all the questions we might have, but here are just a few thoughts to direct us and perhaps help us.

But let us try to understand why God seems to be uncaring or unwilling or unable to do anything about human suffering. Every Christian recognizes that he will in some way be called upon to suffer. We suffer when loved ones die. We suffer when they get seriously sick. We suffer when persecuted. There are different kinds of suffering, but we will all at some time or other be exposed personally to suffering. And it is very possible that we might question God about such suffering. We know that suffering exists in the form of natural disasters, wars, racism, genocide, school killings, social evils (i.e. poverty, hunger), sickness and death. What we perhaps never think of is that God also has suffered. Jesus as the Son of God suffered. His very humanity was a humiliation (as was his death). God the Father suffered from the point of being cut off from his Son which was the action that He, as the Father, had to take when his Son was made an offering for sin. If God was willing for his Son to suffer, then we too will be able to gain some perspective on the issue of suffering. It is not that we will simply suffer the suffering. Paul says we are to rejoice in sufferings (Rom. 5:3). The word “rejoice” carries the idea of boasting. This is hard for us to do. We are helped in this, though, when we consider what Jesus suffered for us. Hebrews 3:1, tells us to “consider Jesus, the apostle and high priest of our confession.” What should we consider? Consider his life and death and present ministry on our behalf.

All suffering is either public or private. Bombings leave lives shattered and never the same. Cancer ravages and decimates a child’s body, bringing serious pain or fast, early death. Some 40 million people suffer from AIDS. Hitler slaughtered 6 million Jews in the Holocaust. Chairman Mao slaughtered between 20 and 50 million of his people (likewise Stalin).The earthquake in Mexico City in 1985 killed at least 10,000 people. These were people who woke up and then died that day. It happens every day. Two hundred thousand died in the Pacific tsunami. These are staggering statistics. Ever since Adam fell, the world has experienced this. Think of God’s judgment on the world in the Flood. Think of what is to come. A mechanized rational form of a standard answer does not help anyone. We must learn to share suffering. We must learn not to be callous, as a result of thinking we are righteous and others deserve it. Jesus pointed out in Luke 13 that the Galileans that Pilate killed and the 18 people who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them were not worse sinners or better people than those to whom this did not happen. Rather, Jesus says that the suffering of others should drive you to examine whether you are right with God. Jesus said “unless you repent, you will likewise perish” (Luke 13:3, 5).

If we abandon belief in a sovereign, omnipotent God, we may resolve for ourselves at the moment the problem of evil, but the cost is high. We will be left with a god of our making or none at all. So what has been resolved? Neither must we think that anyone who has suffered has done so because he has sinned. We all have sinned. We tend to accuse others silently of this dilemma. There are some who suffer horribly who are some of the most godly people around, and others also suffer horribly who are not Christians yet bear their sufferings. We must not simply lump all suffering with a degree of sin, meaning that because a person suffers, they must have sinned. As Christians we must learn to accept the mystery of God’s providence. It is a mystery because it blends the sovereign purposes of God with human responsibility (think of explaining the Trinity or the natures of Christ). Grief from suffering takes time to heal. We must always offer comfort to the suffering. Answering the question “why” does not have to be immediately.

Why did the Boston Marathon tragedy occur? On one level, it is because man is sinful and wicked, and those evil people will rejoice in such violence. On the other hand, God hides his purposes from us. We do not know why. We must recognize that this is for our good, otherwise, we would continually be demanding of God and we would never be satisfied. We would actually not have faith then in a sovereign God. We must grieve with those who grieve (Rom. 12:15). Like Job, we must learn to worship God because he is very great (see Job 42), and we must learn to be satisfied with God. We are to share in humanity’s suffering, and not be exempt from it because Jesus shared in our humanity and suffered for our sins. We must not be like Dylan Thomas, “rage, rage against the dying of the light.” We must be like Jesus our Lord, “not my will, but yours be done.”