Ecclesiastes: making sense of suffering

When I think about the pain of grief and suffering, I come to this conclusion: anything which wakes me up out of my apathy and loosens my grip on this world, and increases my longing for the next, is an act of God's mercy and grace in my life. I may not like it and it may not be comfortable, but, like a fire drill, it is essential to prepare me for my heavenly home.

I think this is the main thrust of the book of Ecclesiastes. Suffering, toil and grief on the earth remind the philosopher that everything on earth is, in a sense, 'meaningless': that is, it lacks an eternal value, and in the sweep of even human history many of our endeavours turn to dust just like our mortal flesh. Life is beautiful, precious and fragile; it is also frustrating, unfulfilling and painful. The life we experience as fallen beings is not the life we were designed and created for. We are terrified and unsatisfied with the concept of death because we were never meant to taste it. The futility of our lives and our world was not there in the beginning, and one day will be removed. Only in God's new creation can we really know true life, life to the full, life in abundance, life without limits.

So the main point of Ecclesiastes is the necessity of fearing God in a fallen, and frequently confusing and frustrating world (ESV study notes). The book is full of penetrating observations which spur the listener on to deeper thought and reflection.

'He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end.' (Ecc 3:11)

Every human being wants to find out and understand all the ways of God in the world, but he cannot, because he is not God. Yet the faithful do not despair but cling to Him: 'fear God and keep His commandments (Ecc 12:13). This is true wisdom.

Rather than becoming embittered by what God has not granted, we should enjoy all the gifts He has given.

'There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance' (Ecc 3:1-4)

'In the day of prosperity be joyful, and in the day of adversity consider: God has made the one as well as the other, so that man may not find out anything that will be after him.' (Ecc 7:14, ESV)

Let suffering do its work - let it teach you of your own mortality and fallenness. May it drive you to the feet of your Saviour, and make you cling to His love alone above all the securities this world can offer. May it open your eyes to see Him more clearly and understand something more of eternity.

Job: seeing Christ as the answer

Ultimately, Job's suffering is only given an answer with the meaningful suffering of Jesus Christ and His resurrection.

Job is brought to the point where he realises the 'otherness' of God. He understands something of the divine mystery, and he feels keenly the gap between him and his Creator.

'For He is not a man, as I am, that I might answer Him, that we should come to trial together. There is no arbiter between us.' (Job 9:32-33a)

Job needs a mediator, and so do we. The Bible clearly tells us that we find the mediator we need in Jesus Christ:

'For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus' (1 Tim 2:5).

It is a wonderful thing; Jesus makes the sacrifice once and for all for sins (Hebrews 10). He died for the sins of the whole world (1 Jn 2:2) and made the propitiation that no one else could. Think about it: if Job, even Job, with all his righteousness, had died on the cross, what would have happened? Would the sky have turned dark and rocks split open and the dead been raised? No. There would have been no atonement, and no resurrection. Only Jesus could fulfil this role uniquely as the mediator because He was both God and man, and in sinless perfection, He could bring us to His Father.

In a stunning glimpse of gospel-clarity, Job sees that resurrection is needed to solve the mystery of suffering: 'For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth.' (Job 19:25)

Only God has power of death (Job 38:17). Christ's victory over Satan will ultimately answer all the human frustrations of suffering and injustice. Redemption in Christ gives a final answer to Satan's accusations by justifying the ungodly (Rom 4:5).

'He is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them... He did this (offered sacrifice) once for all when He offered up Himself.' (Heb 7:25-27)

'For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.' (1 Cor 15:22)

We have only ever known this world to be full of suffering and death since Adam fell; Jesus offers the only solution to our fallen human condition. In sending Jesus, God wasn't pressing the 'pause' or even the 'stop' button on the world's suffering; He was entering into it Himself to deliver us eternally. The rest of our earthly life will continue to be marked with suffering as part of our mortality, but we can be made right before God through Jesus Christ and spend an eternity in His perfect new creation where there will be no more tears (Rev 21).

Jesus is not only our mediator, but our friend. He is acquainted with sorrow (Isa 53:3), and He gets how we feel, and He is not lacking in compassion for us:

'For we do not have 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 sin. 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)

His nail-marked hands hold ours as we walk through life with all its shadows and pain. Each step takes us closer to seeing Him face to face in an eternity without suffering.

The Truth About Hell

Okay, so isn't hell just a scare tactic that Christians use to pressurize vulnerable people into joining their church? Isn't it a myth amplified by fire-and-brimstone preachers in rural parishes who love the sound of their own voice a bit too much? Who has the right to say someone is going to hell anyway? Surely you can't possibly know what happens to someone after they die...

There are dozens of objections to the concept of hell, framing themselves in various moral, philosophical or logical guises. But the heart of the matter is really this: how can we know if there is a hell?

Well, Christians believe in an all-knowing, all-seeing God. A God who is timeless and eternal, who created the cosmos and watches over it. This God at one point in human history became a man and took on human flesh: Jesus Christ. And, as the Son of God, Jesus is able to tell us unique things about heaven and hell, because He had a divine perspective on them that no mere human could ever achieve.

And it follows that most of what Christians know about hell comes directly from Jesus Christ. He spoke about hell like no one else ever had done (namely because they couldn't), and He spoke about hell in the loving authority which characterised His ministry as recorded in the four gospel accounts.

Jesus said:
1. Hell is real, and hell is terrible.
In several parables, including the parable of the Great Banquet, Jesus shows those who rejected God to be thrown outside 'into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.' (Matthew 8:12) These three things (darkness, weeping, gnashing of teeth) are used repeatedly by Jesus to depict what hell is like. It is basically the place outside God's kingdom, where God's presence does not dwell, and so all of the good things we enjoy on earth (happiness, joy, friendship, love etc) are absent too. No one can enjoy anything in hell. It is a place of sadness and torture.

2. Hell is the place where people go to eternal punishment, having been judged by God and condemned.
'Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.' Matthew 10:28
'The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil.' Matthew 13:41
Everyone who sins -that is, everyone who ever fails to love God with their whole heart, all of the time- is destined for hell because we all fall short of God's pure standards (see also Romans 3).

3. Hell is easy to get to- it's the default position of men to go against God.
'Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.' Matthew 7:13

4. Hell is to be avoided at all costs.
'If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to go into hell.' Matthew 5:29-30
This is extreme language! Jesus warns us that it's worth undergoing great pain and struggle to avoid hell.

5. Hell can only be avoided through faith in Him.
After the parable of the weeds, which so vividly depicts the destruction of evildoers, Jesus tells the parable of the great treasure and the pearl. He says that heaven is worth giving up everything for, and seeking more than anything else in this life. How do we seek and find the kingdom? Well, the key is in the King of the kingdom: Jesus.

'Whoever acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge him before my Father in heaven. But whoever disowns me before men, I will disown him before my Father in heaven.' Matthew 10:32-33

Getting into heaven and thus avoiding hell is not about doing good deeds and racking up a tally chart before God. It's about knowing Jesus. Acknowledging Jesus means to see Him for who He truly is: the Son of God; to believe in Him and trust in Him for salvation. Who has the right to decide who goes to hell? Jesus does. That's what He means in the verses quoted above. If Jesus disowns you, you're heading to an eternity without Him.

Now the parable of the sheep and the goats (Matthew 25) teaches us that, if we truly know Jesus, we will show this in the way that we act- helping the poor and needy around us and working for justice. But ultimately we've been given our life here on earth to get to know Jesus, and if you spend your life ignoring Him then you're wasting your life!

Christians don't relish the idea of hell. It's an awful thought. But, just as you would want to warn people of an oncoming tsunami to save them, Christians want to share the truth of Jesus with people so they can avoid the danger too.

Who is Jesus? -John 1

At the start of his gospel, John wants to make it crystal clear to us who Jesus Christ is. Why? Because it's the key to knowing Him and loving Him. And it stops us from dismissing Him as a man, eccentric or unusual as He may be.

For Jesus, John claims, was no mere man, but the Word, who was with God and who was God through all eternity (1-2). Jesus created the universe with God the Father (3); He is the source of life (4), and He humbled Himself to come to the earth He created, and suffered rejection there (10-11).

'Yet to all who received Him, to those who believed in His Name, He gave the right to become children of God' (12). Why did Jesus, the mighty Creator of the universe, bother to come down to earth? To make it possible for YOU to become a child of God. It's not our natural status- we are children of sin. But Jesus was prepared to endure rejection by some, in order to give life to others who would accept Him.

What a cost it was, for the glory of the Son of God to be transformed and hidden in human flesh (14). And He didn't come down for a sinister purpose- to 'catch us out'- but offering grace and truth (14). Jesus came to make God known to us (18). That's so incredible, showing such amazing love and compassion, that it provokes us to stop, look and love Jesus. If you were in His position, would YOU have come to earth to save one like yourself? Ugly with sinful selfish thoughts and behaviour? Think long and hard. The answer is: 'probably not'.