Lessons #441 and 442
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+ 1. It is best to use this note after you have listened to the lessons because there are +
+ comments given in the actual delivery not in the note. +
+ 2. The Bible abbreviations are as follows: CEV =Contemporary English version, +
+ CEB = Common English Bible, ESV= English Standard Version, +
+ GW = God’s Word Translation, ISV = International Standard Version, +
+ NAB=New English Bible, NASB= New American Standard Bible, +
+ NEB= New English Bible, NET = New English Translation, +
+ NLT = New Living Translations NJB = New Jerusalem Bible, +
+ NJV = New Jewish Bible, TEV = Today’s English Version. +
+AMP = Amplified Bible, UBS = United Bible Society +
+ 3. Notes have not been edited for grammatical errors. +
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Treatment of parts of the body (1 Cor 12: 20-26)
20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has combined the members of the body and has given greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.
The overall message of the section of 1 Corinthians 12:12-26 that we have been considering is that Unity and diversity are essential in the body of Christ, that is, the church of Christ. We have been considering the fifth and final reason You should be careful how you treat members of the body of Christ, which is that God has His purpose for constituting the church in certain ways. A first stated purpose for God composing the church the way He did is to ensure there will be no division in the church of Christ. It is this purpose that is stated in the first clause of 1 Corinthians 12:25 so that there should be no division in the body. A second stated purpose for God composing the church the way He did is to ensure we care for or have concern for each other as conveyed in the second clause of 1Corinthians 12:25 but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. We indicated that believers having concern for each other is explained as sharing in negative and positive experiences of a fellow believer, given using two conditional clauses in 1 Corinthians 12:26. The concept of sharing in the negative experience of a fellow believer is stated in the first conditional clause of 1 Corinthians 12:26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. It is with this clause we begin our study today.
The apostle sets up a condition that may indeed exist which is the suffering of a believer in a local church described with the phrase one part. This suffering is given in the word “suffers” that is translated from a Greek word (paschō) that may mean “to suffer” as the word is used in Apostle Paul’s preaching to Jews in Thessalonica to prove that Jesus is the Christ as we read in Acts 17:3:
explaining and proving that the Christ had to suffer and rise from the dead. “This Jesus I am proclaiming to you is the Christ,” he said.
The word in connection with suffering may mean “to endure” as that is the sense the word is used in Apostle Paul’s encouragement to the Corinthians as we read in 2 Corinthians 1:6:
If we are distressed, it is for your comfort and salvation; if we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which produces in you patient endurance of the same sufferings we suffer.
Although most of our English versions translate our Greek word with “suffer” but it can also mean “to endure.” Thus, the sentence the same sufferings we suffer of the NIV is translated in the TEV as the same sufferings that we also endure. The word may mean “to undergo” as that is the sense our Greek word is used by Apostle John in relating the message of the Lord to the church in Smyrna regarding their impeding sufferings or persecutions as we read in Revelation 2:10:
Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.
The command Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer may be translated do not be afraid of what you are about to undergo as suggested by the standard Greek English lexicon (BDAG). In absolute sense of suffering, the Greek word may mean “to die” as it used to describe the ultimate suffering of Jesus Christ as “death” in 1 Peter 3:18:
For Christ died for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God. He was put to death in the body but made alive by the Spirit,
The sentence Christ died for sins once for all is literally Christ also suffered once for sins. In our passage of 1 Corinthians 12:26, the word has the sense of “to suffer,” that is, to experience harm or emotional pain.
There is no doubt that a believer in a local church may experience harm or loss of some form that would cause emotional pain. So, believers in that local church are expected to share in whatever is making the life of another believer uncomfortable as that is the essence of the sentence of 1 Corinthians 12:26 every part suffers with it. The analogy the apostle used here is clear since he was not concerned with parts of the body but believers in the body of Christ. The analogy he used reminds us of the truth of what is expected of us. We know that when a part of our body is in pain, there is a sense the whole body is in pain, not necessarily in the sense that each part of the body hurts equally, if say, the finger is hurt the feet do not specifically feel it but only as part of the body it can be said that it hurts. Thus, this analogy makes it easy to understand that believers are expected to share in the suffering of other believers in some way.
The expression “suffers with” which is translated from a Greek word (sympaschō) that appears only twice in Greek NT. In its other usage, it is used with the meaning of “to share in Christ’s sufferings” in Romans 8:17:
Now if we are children, then we are heirs—heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.
In our passage of 1 Corinthians 12:26, it is used in the sense of “to suffer together,” that is, to suffer along with another or others.
The question that we should answer is: How a believer could suffer together with another believer or share in the suffering of a fellow believer? The answer to this question is dependent on understanding suffering as a subject. Consequently, we will take a detour to consider the doctrine of suffering in our study today and the following before we return to answer the question that we have posed of what it means to share in the suffering of a fellow believer.
DOCTRINE OF SUFFERING
Introduction
Suffering is a phenomenon that is experienced by people all over the world regardless of the level of their technological advancement. In effect, it does not matter whether you live in highly developed society or not there is still suffering. Admittedly, there are some kinds of human suffering that are mitigated by technological advancement, but the most impactful kind of sufferings are not lessened by technological advancement. Anyway, because suffering is a phenomenon that people, believers and unbelievers, face, and wrestle to make sense of it, we will examine what the Bible has to say about it. We begin with giving a basic definition of what it is that we mean by suffering then we proceed to consider its origin, its types, its causes, its effects, its inevitability for believers, right and wrong responses to it and finally its benefits as far as believers are concerned. Because we are basing our doctrine on the Scripture, what we will study is strictly applicable to believers. In other words, if you are not a believer in Christ then you will not understand what we are about to study in a meaningful manner. I do not mean that you will not understand some of the points we will make but that they will ring hollow to you since there is no comfort in suffering that is provided in the Scripture to any unbeliever. We begin our consideration of doctrine of suffering with basic definition.
Definition
Every English-speaking person may say that there is no need to even define suffering because everyone knows what it is. So, bear with me as I define it to ensure that we are thinking of the same concept as we embark on this doctrine. There are two reasons that I want to define this word “suffering.” First, it is as I have indicated to ensure that we all are thinking of the same concept as we proceed in our study. Second, the 11th edition of Webster Dictionary gives two definitions under the word “suffering.” The first is “the state or experience of one that suffers.” But then the verb “suffer” may mean “to experience or be subjected to (something bad or unpleasant)” or “to tolerate,” that is, to put up with something. The second meaning the dictionary gives is “pain.” Thus, it is necessary to be clear about what we mean by suffering in this study. We use the word “suffering” to mean any experience of pain or distress evident both physically and emotionally. With this meaning we proceed to consider the origin of suffering.
Origin of Suffering
The Scripture helps us to understand the origin of suffering as we examine what is recorded in the book of beginning, that is, Genesis. God created Adam and Eve and placed them in the Garden of Eden where they enjoyed His presence and goodness. They did not have to struggle to eat or relate to each other. But that changed when Adam and Eve sinned against God. An immediate result of their sin is the change of their spiritual relationship with God. They became spiritually dead that was manifested through an emotional suffering they experienced. They experienced shame of being naked hence their sewing fig leaves together to cover their nakedness. Although it may not appear to be suffering on their part to have felt shame, but it was. Shame is a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. Recall that we defined suffering in terms of experiencing pain or distress. This being the case, when Adam and Eve recognized they were naked they had a sense of shame that distressed them. This distress which is mostly mental caused them to want to hide from God. Thus, it is the fall into sin that is the origin of suffering. That sin is the origin of suffering is further evident in the punishment God pronounced on Adam and Eve as we read in Genesis 3:16–19:
16 To the woman he said, “I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” 17 To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. 18It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. 19 By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.”
Prior to this narrative in Genesis 3 that has to do with the fall, the Hebrew word (ʿiṣṣāḇôn) that means “pain, suffering” or “toil” has not been used in describing anything about humans in relation to creation of God. That aside, the word “pain” used in the pronouncement of punishments to both Adam and his wife is a clear indication that it is sin that brought suffering in the world. The woman is to suffer as it relates to childbirth but, of course, her suffering is not just confined to that of giving birth but the whole experience with having and raising children is one that involves suffering both physically and mentally. The punishment pronounced on man involves suffering that is associated with making a living. Thus, there should be no doubt that if sin had not entered the world through the fall of Adam that there would have been no suffering on this planet.
Our assertion that suffering originated from the fall of man into sin raises the question of whether every suffering a person experiences is due to the individual's sin. In other words, we have to wonder if every time a person suffers that such suffering is due to sin. Although sin that entered the world through Adam is the origin of suffering in general, but we have to recognize that not every suffering that an individual undergoes is a direct result of that person’s sin. The Jews of the time of the Lord Jesus probably because human suffering originated from sin, assumed that the man born blind that Jesus eventually healed must have been born that way because of the parents’ sins as per their question to the Lord Jesus as recorded in John 9:2:
His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
Jesus responded by indicating that the man was born blind not because of his parents’ sins as we read in John 9:3:
“Neither this man nor his parents sinned,” said Jesus, “but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.
The answer of the Lord Jesus implies that the specific case of suffering of the man born blind was not due to his parents’ sins but because of God’s purpose of the Lord Jesus displaying His power as God in the healing of the man born blind. However, we should be careful to recognize that the Lord Jesus did not mean that children may never indeed suffer because of their parents’ sins for they do. I mean that when children follow the footsteps of their parents in rebelling against God that they will suffer because of their parents’ sins as the Lord declared through Moses to Israel as recorded in Exodus 34:6–7:
6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation.”
Anyway, the fact is that there may be occasions where a person may suffer not because of the parents’ sins or the individual’s sin. Nevertheless, the Scripture is clear that quite often our sufferings are because of our sins. This suffering because of sin is one associated with Israel’s failure in the desert. For example, we read in Numbers 14:34:
For forty years—one year for each of the forty days you explored the land—you will suffer for your sins and know what it is like to have me against you.’
The same concept of suffering because of sin is stated in Psalm 107:17:
Some became fools through their rebellious ways and suffered affliction because of their iniquities.
It is this suffering for one’s personal sin that is demonstrated in the suffering pronounced by the Lord Jesus on the woman called Jezebel in the local church of Thyatira that was involved in sexual immorality as we may gather from Revelation 2:22:
So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways.
The suffering the Lord threatened this woman is, as we have said, due to her sin so that we should not always assume that a person’s suffering is not due to sin. Similarly, we should not always assume that a person’s suffering is because of a person’s sin. We are saying that for the most part suffering is due to our sins but that there are occasions when a person’s suffering may not be due to the individual’s personal sin but to bring to fruition God’s plan as in the case of the man born blind. That aside, the truth is that suffering originated from the one sin of Adam that caused all humans to be sinners. Because suffering originates from sin and every human being is a sinner therefore no person is exempted from suffering as declared in Job 14:1:
“Man born of woman is of few days and full of trouble.
The word “trouble” is translated from a Hebrew word (rōḡěz) that may mean turmoil, that is, a state of trouble and hardship. Hardship speaks to trouble of some sort in life. Hence, Job tells us that there is no one born of woman in a natural way that escapes suffering. Again, this is because we all have sinned and so suffering that originates from sin is our lot on this planet. Our assertion that no human being escapes suffering on this planet leads us to consider different kinds of suffering on this planet.
Types of suffering
Suffering as we have indicated involves pain. Consequently, there are three general types of suffering that exist. A first type of suffering is physical that is most often associated with illness or diseases. It is this kind of suffering that Job experienced during his ordeal as we may gather from Job 2:7:
So Satan went out from the presence of the LORD and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the top of his head.
The word “sores” is translated from a Hebrew word (šeḥîn) that may mean “ulcer” or “inflammation” of the skin, that is, a boil. This is usually an infection that causes pain on the body and so suffering on the part of the person who suffers from it. It is this kind of suffering due to illness that the father of Publius, the official in the island of Malta that Apostle Paul eventually healed experienced as indicated in Acts 28:8:
His father was sick in bed, suffering from fever and dysentery. Paul went in to see him and, after prayer, placed his hands on him and healed him.
A second type of suffering is emotional stress. It is this kind of suffering that the psalmist referred as he described his distress in Psalm 55:4–5:
4My heart is in anguish within me; the terrors of death assail me. 5Fear and trembling have beset me; horror has overwhelmed me.
The emotional suffering of the psalmist is described with such words as “anguish,” “fear” and “trembling.” The word “anguish” is translated from a Hebrew word (ḥûl) that may mean “to swirl down, dance” but it is used in the sense of suffering torture in Job 15:20:
All his days the wicked man suffers torment, the ruthless through all the years stored up for him.
Many people probably would not recognize that when they worry, they are actually suffering emotionally. Thus, it is not surprising that emotional suffering is described as “anxious heart” in Proverbs 12:25:
An anxious heart weighs a man down, but a kind word cheers him up.
To say An anxious heart weighs a man down is to say that a person that worries is depressed which is a form of suffering only that it is mental or emotional experience of someone. It is emotional suffering that Apostle Paul conveyed the Lord spared him by restoring Epaphroditus to health as we read in Philippians 2:27:
Indeed he was ill, and almost died. But God had mercy on him, and not on him only but also on me, to spare me sorrow upon sorrow.
Sorrow is an emotional stress, a feeling of deep distress caused by loss or disappointment. So, if a person experiences sorrow, then the person experiences pain only that it is mental hence, we describe such suffering as emotional.
A third type of suffering is spiritual. The spiritual suffering is usually associated with a sense of God being distant, that is, that God has abandoned someone or an inward pain because one is concerned with God’s righteousness that is ignored. The psalmist described this kind of suffering in Psalm 22:1:
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, so far from the words of my groaning?
The two questions of the psalmist express his desolation and hopelessness that indicate his suffering is spiritual since he felt that God had abandoned him. This psalm is messianic in the sense that the words of this psalm were voiced out by the Lord Jesus on the cross when He was being judged for our sins as we read in Matthew 27:46:
About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?”—which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
It is spiritual suffering in terms of experiencing pain when sin abounds that is used to describe Lot when he lived in Sodom as we read in 2 Peter 2:8:
(for that righteous man, living among them day after day, was tormented in his righteous soul by the lawless deeds he saw and heard)—
The word “tormented” is translated from a Greek word (basanizō) that may mean “to experience anguish,” “to suffer” or “to be in pain.” Each meaning describes suffering that is not physical but inward that Lot felt every day as he watched the moral decay in Sodom. So, spiritual suffering is related to disgust against sin or a feeling that God has abandoned someone. Apparently, only believers at this time experience this kind of suffering although unbelievers inwardly suffer because of the torment of sins but they are generally not aware that they are suffering because of sin. In any event, we proceed to consider the causes of suffering.
Major causes of suffering
We have indicated that the origin of suffering is sin but there are many causes of suffering for people on this planet that for the most part, are related to sin or the fall. We will group these causes into what we refer as general causes and specific causes to a specific kind of suffering, that is, emotional suffering. We present in general five general causes of suffering.
A first general cause of suffering is the disorder in creation. What this means is that God has set the order by which creation should function but when this order is reversed or when extraordinary thing happens that reverses God’s order in creation then the result is human suffering in various degrees. From creation, it is God’s plan for the husband to be the authority in marriage relationship so when this order is reversed there is bound to be suffering. This we learn from the Fall. Adam obeyed the wife, and the result was the introduction of suffering in the world. This we gather from Genesis 3:17:
To Adam he said, “Because you listened to your wife and ate from the tree about which I commanded you, ‘You must not eat of it,’ “Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life.
The reason the Lord gave for suffering involved in work as indicated in the adjective “painful” in the NIV and many of our English versions is that Adam listened to the wife. The word “listened” as used in the NIV is translated from a Hebrew word (šāmǎʿ) that basically means “to hear” but with several nuances. In this passage, the best meaning is that of “to obey” as reflected in the NET that translated the clause Because you listened to your wife of the NIV as Because you obeyed your wife. The NJV (Tanakh) reflected the same meaning since its translators translated the clause as Because you did as your wife said. So, it is because of reversal of order in marriage relationship that Adam sinned and so his sin introduced suffering associated with making a living. The point is that in marriage relationship when the woman is authoritative, and the man obeys there is going to be a form of suffering. This is demonstrated by Sarah’s complaint to Abraham as we read in Genesis 16:5:
Then Sarai said to Abram, “You are responsible for the wrong I am suffering. I put my servant in your arms, and now that she knows she is pregnant, she despises me. May the LORD judge between you and me.”
Abraham’s wife blamed her suffering on him. But why did she suffer wrong as she put it? It is because Abraham obeyed Sarah to sleep with Hagar, Sarah’s maid, to get her pregnant as we learn from what is stated in Genesis 16:2:
so she said to Abram, “The LORD has kept me from having children. Go, sleep with my maidservant; perhaps I can build a family through her.” Abram agreed to what Sarai said.:
The word Go is a command although Sarah softened it by adding in the Hebrew the word that may mean “please” not translated in the NIV. Abraham’s response is stated in the word “agreed” that is translated from the same Hebrew word (šāmǎʿ) used in Genesis 3:17 to describe Adam’s response to Eve that we indicated that in that context meant “obeyed.” It is the same meaning that the word has here in Genesis 16:2. Abraham obeyed Sarah’s command to impregnate Hagar whose attitude towards Sarah changed after she recognized she was pregnant. Sarah considered the change in attitude of her maid a suffering, but she brought that on herself because of reversal in God’s order in marriage relationship. It would not be an exaggeration to say that most women who are suffering in their marriage relationships are in that state because they reverse the order of the relationship between husband and wife in that they assume the authoritative role in marriage. Anyway, a first general cause of human suffering is reversal of order or disorder in God’s creation.
A second general cause of suffering is what is often described as natural disaster. Famine, for example, is considered a natural disaster but when it exists it leads to human suffering. It was because of the suffering associated with famine that the Egyptians of Joseph’s time were reduced to servitude so they could have something to eat as we read in Genesis 47:20–21:
20 So Joseph bought all the land in Egypt for Pharaoh. The Egyptians, one and all, sold their fields, because the famine was too severe for them. The land became Pharaoh’s, 21 and Joseph reduced the people to servitude, from one end of Egypt to the other.
It is because famine causes suffering that Prophet Jeremiah referenced it as part of the promise of the false prophets to the people of Israel that they would not suffer it as we read in Jeremiah 14:13:
But I said, “Ah, Sovereign LORD, the prophets keep telling them, ‘You will not see the sword or suffer famine. Indeed, I will give you lasting peace in this place.’”
Another example of what we call natural disaster that causes human suffering is earthquake. When it happens, people die and property are lost, leading to people suffering as we read, for example, of future judgment of God in Revelation 11:13:
At that very hour there was a severe earthquake and a tenth of the city collapsed. Seven thousand people were killed in the earthquake, and the survivors were terrified and gave glory to the God of heaven.
Other natural disasters as the term goes that cause human suffering include tornadoes, hurricanes, and flooding.
A third general cause of suffering is human cruelty. This may manifest itself in the act of murder. It is difficult to understand the suffering of those whose loved ones are murdered. The Israelites of Moses generation suffered greatly because of the order of Pharaoh to kill all males born to the Israelites as we read in Exodus 1:16:
“When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”
The suffering of mothers in Egypt in time of Moses was similar to those who lost their children around the time of birth of Jesus because of the order of Herod to kill every boy two years old or under it in his attempt to kill the baby Jesus as we read in Matthew 2:16:
When Herod realized that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under, in accordance with the time he had learned from the Magi.
Another human cruelty that causes suffering on people is oppression. When people oppress others, they cause suffering to those they oppress. The Israelites were oppressed by the Egyptians as we read in Exodus 1:11:
So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.
The oppression of the Israelites evident in forced labor they endured is interpreted by the Lord Himself as suffering for them as we may gather from Exodus 3:7:
The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering.
The point is that human cruelty leads to suffering of others.
A fourth general cause of suffering is old age. There are several conditions of old age that lead to suffering. Some who are old suffer ill health of different kinds that are summarized by what Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 12:1–7:
1 Remember your Creator in the days of your youth, before the days of trouble come and the years approach when you will say, “I find no pleasure in them”— 2before the sun and the light and the moon and the stars grow dark, and the clouds return after the rain; 3when the keepers of the house tremble, and the strong men stoop, when the grinders cease because they are few, and those looking through the windows grow dim; 4when the doors to the street are closed and the sound of grinding fades; when men rise up at the sound of birds, but all their songs grow faint; 5when men are afraid of heights and of dangers in the streets; when the almond tree blossoms and the grasshopper drags himself along and desire no longer is stirred. Then man goes to his eternal home and mourners go about the streets. 6Remember him—before the silver cord is severed, or the golden bowl is broken; before the pitcher is shattered at the spring, or the wheel broken at the well, 7and the dust returns to the ground it came from, and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
A fifth general cause of suffering is satanic activities. Satan can cause suffering to a person by inflicting pain or discomfort on the individual. It is this kind of suffering that Apostle Paul referred in 2 Corinthians 12:7:
To keep me from becoming conceited because of these surpassingly great revelations, there was given me a thorn in my flesh, a messenger of Satan, to torment me.
Satan may bring suffering to believers through inspiring persecution. This was the kind of suffering the Lord Jesus informed the church at Smyrna would come to them as we read in a passage we cited previously, that is, Revelation 2:10:
Do not be afraid of what you are about to suffer. I tell you, the devil will put some of you in prison to test you, and you will suffer persecution for ten days. Be faithful, even to the point of death, and I will give you the crown of life.
We have considered five general causes of suffering but there are three causes of suffering that are specific to emotional suffering. A person may suffer emotionally because the individual perceives injustice or lack of help. It is this kind of suffering that Job experienced when he perceived injustice in the sense that he gets no response from God or help regarding his complaint as we read in Job 19:7:
“Though I cry, ‘I’ve been wronged!’ I get no response; though I call for help, there is no justice.
The cry of Job is against violence as reflected in many of our English versions. The word “wronged” of the NIV is translated from a Hebrew noun (ḥāmās) that may mean “a wrong, injustice.” But it can also mean “violence.” It is probably that Job cried out because of violence he perceived but because he did not get immediate response, considered himself of suffering injustice. When a person feels there is injustice, but the individual could do nothing about it, that situation creates emotional suffering. Hence, we contend that when a person perceives injustice, that could lead to suffering emotionally.
Another cause of emotional suffering is frustration. There is a kind of pain and so suffering associated with a feeling of frustration. It is this kind of pain that Job felt when he perceived that God has worked in such a way that he cannot move away, say from his suffering, or progress in a way that avoids his suffering as we read in Job 19:8:
He has blocked my way so I cannot pass; he has shrouded my paths in darkness.
Apostle Paul probably experienced some kind of pain or frustration because he could not get to the Thessalonians as he desired since Satan kept preventing him from going to them as we read in 1 Thessalonians 2:18
For we wanted to come to you—certainly I, Paul, did, again and again—but Satan stopped us.
Still another cause of emotional suffering is mourning the loss of someone. It is this kind of suffering that David experienced as he mourned the death of Absalom as we read in 2 Samuel 18:33:
The king was shaken. He went up to the room over the gateway and wept. As he went, he said: “O my son Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! If only I had died instead of you—O Absalom, my son, my son!”
In any event, we mentioned three causes of emotional suffering but there are certainly other things that could cause emotional suffering but the ones we mentioned are sufficient to establish the fact that there are specific causes for emotional suffering.
The emotional suffering that people experience may be evident in several ways. Emotional suffering may manifest itself in sadness. This manifestation of emotional suffering was demonstrated by Nehemiah who, as a captive, was an official of King Artaxerxes. Apparently, he has been suffering emotionally as he thought of the state of Jerusalem that one day his emotional suffering expressed itself in his sadness that was noted by the king as we read in Nehemiah 2:1–3:
1 In the month of Nisan in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was brought for him, I took the wine and gave it to the king. I had not been sad in his presence before; 2 so the king asked me, “Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? This can be nothing but sadness of heart.” I was very much afraid, 3 but I said to the king, “May the king live forever! Why should my face not look sad when the city where my fathers are buried lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?”
It was not normally permissible for a king’s servant to serve him without an attitude that indicates cheerfulness so for Nehemiah who has not done such a thing before to be sad before the king was because his sadness was inevitable or unconcealable expression of his emotional suffering. The king himself observed that the sadness was not because of physical suffering due to illness as indicated by his question of verse 2 Why does your face look so sad when you are not ill? The emotional state of Nehemiah was due to his emotional suffering because of the state of affairs in Jerusalem as reflected in his rhetorical question in verse 3 that indicates that he was pained by the physical conditions of Jerusalem that lied in ruins. Nehemiah must have been tormented by the thoughts of the ruins of the city of Jerusalem that unwittingly his emotional suffering was reflected in his sadness. Hence, sadness is one of the ways emotional sufferings may be evident. Another way emotional suffering may be expressed is weeping and groaning. This expression of emotional suffering is reflected by the psalmist as he called attention to the seriousness of his pain that he indicated, led to groaning, and weeping as we read in Psalm 6:6–7:
6I am worn out from groaning; all night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. 7My eyes grow weak with sorrow; they fail because of all my foes.
The word “groaning” is translated from a Hebrew word (ʾǎnāḥāh) that refers to sounds that accompany suffering and pain, so the word refers to sounds that express emotional or physical pain. It is because the psalmist was under emotional suffering that he groaned and wept to the point that his eyesight was affected. The point is that one of the ways emotional sufferings is evident is through weeping and groaning. Still another expression of emotional suffering is bitterness. When people are in pain or suffering, there is the tendency for them to reflect their emotional suffering through bitterness. When Israel during the exodus suffered because they were thirsty, they expressed their suffering that was both physical and emotional through their bitterness towards Moses and Aaron which was, of course, directed to Yahweh as we read in Exodus 17:3:
But the people were thirsty for water there, and they grumbled against Moses. They said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt to make us and our children and livestock die of thirst?”
It is this expression of emotional suffering through bitterness that Job exhibited during his ordeal as we read in Job 7:11:
“Therefore I will not keep silent; I will speak out in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.
The word “bitterness” is translated from a Hebrew word (mǎr) that pertains to a mental state of great, intense distress. So, Job was suffering emotionally as well as physically. It is for this reason that he indicated he would complain because of the intense suffering he was inwardly, as implied in the phrase my soul. Anyway, a person under emotional suffering may express it through bitterness that the person exhibits. This brings us to the effects of suffering and that is where we will begin our study next week.
08/12//22