Have you ever looked at the world around you and asked God, “Why?” I sure have. The horror of war. The torture and murder of an elderly woman. The rape of a four year old. The suffering of a child with cancer. We hear about these atrocities and wonder, “How could God allow that to happen?”
Maybe what you’re asking God “why” about is something in your own life. You look at your deep sorrow and wonder why He has allowed that in your life. You wonder why a good God would allow such pain and suffering.
I don’t pretend to know the answers to those questions. God is much too big for my finite brain. It would be like trying to explain computers to a cockroach. Or space travel to an ant. I am not capable of understanding the things of God. David felt the same way when he wrote “Such knowledge is too wonderful for me too lofty for me to attain” (Psalm 139:6).
God Himself even makes it clear that we can’t begin to understand His ways when He basically spent four full chapters (Job 38-41) taunting Job about how “wise” he really wasn’t! There are things about God and the things of God that we are just not meant to know. “The secret things belong to the Lord our God…” (Deuteronomy 29:29).
Maybe we are just asking the wrong questions. Instead of asking “why,” perhaps we should be asking “who?”
Who is God? Who is He in relation to mankind? Who is He in relation to me?
The problem is that we look at the world around us and try to define God by what we see in the world. It doesn’t work like that. This world is controlled by the prince of darkness. His whole agenda is to alienate us from God. He wants to make us believe that God is not good. The truth is, we can’t define God by looking at this world.
How do we know who God is? Look at Jesus. Jesus was all-God and all-man. God loves us so much that He came to earth in the form of a man in order to reveal Himself to us. So if you ask the question, “Who is God?” The answer is to look at Jesus.
Read the gospels (especially the book of John) to see how Jesus interacted with people. He was compassionate, gracious, patient, and loving. He served others to the point of exhaustion. He sought out the outcasts and gave dignity to women, who were treated as inferior during those times.
Jesus suffered more trauma than any of us can ever imagine. Sure…He was God, and He knew He had come to die upon the cross. But in His humanity, he was sickened with dread at the thought of the physical suffering. He was overwhelmed at the thought of the emotional suffering of being separated from His Father and the spiritual suffering of being covered in the vileness of our sin. Yet Jesus willingly did that for us. OUR GOD willingly did that for us. That is who God is.
He died to save us. We deserved God’s righteous wrath. God couldn’t just let us go free. He is righteous. Would it be right for a judge in our court system today to let a murderer go free? Of course not. Justice must be served. Jesus took our punishment upon Himself, thus satisfying the penalty for our crimes. Our God purchased our salvation with His own blood. How incredible!
But there is an additional reason that He went to the cross that you might not have thought about. If you look at your own suffering, you can see that He mirrors yours. The pain you feel of being hurt by someone you loved- the sting of His betrayal. The physical pain of illness- His physical suffering. The grief, anxiety, depression, and other things you might struggle with- His emotional and spiritual turmoil.
“For this reason he had to be made like them, fully human in every way, in order that he might become a MERCIFUL and FAITHFUL high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17, emphasis mine).
Merciful and faithful. That’s who God is.
And that is always the right question.