Audio Transcript
On Thursday we looked at being tempted and tested, and the difference between those two phenomena — even when the Greek terms are identical. Today’s question is about God’s motives when he brings afflictions into our lives. And the question is based on three of our Bible readings in Jeremiah and Lamentations. The question is from a young man in Baltimore.
“Hello, Pastor John, I’ve heard you preach and teach on Lamentations 3:33, where it says the Lord ‘does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.’ But I’m struggling to reconcile this verse with Jeremiah 23:20, which says, ‘The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart.’ Specifically, I’m wrestling with how to understand God’s wrath and judgment in light of these verses. Lamentations tells us that God does not afflict from his heart, yet Jeremiah speaks of his anger being executed according to ‘the intents of his heart.’ Then there’s a similar verse in Jeremiah 30:24, where the language shifts slightly to refer to ‘the intentions of his mind,’ rather than his heart. How do I make sense of the tension between these passages? How can God’s judgment and anger be in accordance with his heart’s intention, yet Lamentations says he does not afflict from his heart? I’m eager to understand these passages more clearly. With a heart full of gratitude for all that is done by you and Desiring God!”
Digging to the Roots
This is the kind of question that turns a Bible reader into a theologian. Thousands of people read their Bibles with great benefit, and yet some read their Bibles with that same benefit and ask difficult questions and linger over those questions long enough to find a biblically faithful answer. That lingering, that penetrating season of thought, is what makes a person a theologian.
And I don’t mean a professional scholar — I just mean a very thoughtful person who puts the pieces together in a way that forms a larger, clearer, even more beautiful picture of God. I mean a theologian like Mary King, the cook at Spurgeon’s school in Newmarket. Here’s what Spurgeon wrote about this older, simple woman:
The first lessons I ever had in theology were from an old cook [named Mary King]. . . . She liked something very sweet indeed, good strong Calvinistic doctrine, but she lived strongly as well as fed strongly. Many a time we have gone over the covenant of grace together . . . and I do believe that I learnt more from her than I should have learned from any six doctors of divinity of the sort we have nowadays. (Autobiography, 1:38–39)
How easy it is to spot two passages of Scripture that seem to say opposite things and then to close the book, conclude that the Bible is self-contradictory and unreliable, and move on to do what you’re going to do in your day. But, oh, how difficult it is (and yet how fruitful it is!) to spot those apparent contradictions, give the benefit of the doubt to God’s word, dig down into the roots of each text, and discover that, in fact, they have a common root of truth. Discovering those unifying roots is what makes a person a Mary King–like theologian.
Turning Up a Tangle
Here are the two texts that seem to be contradictory. Lamentations 3:32–33: “Though he cause grief” — though God cause grief — “he will have compassion . . . for he does not afflict from his heart or grieve the children of men.” Then, in Jeremiah 23:20: “The anger of the Lord will not turn back until he has executed and accomplished the intents of his heart.”
So, he’s not going to turn back from judgment until he has accomplished the intents of his heart. On the one hand, it appears that the Lord brings judgment but not from his heart — and on the other hand, it appears that the Lord brings judgment, and it is from his heart.
“How difficult (and fruitful!) it is to spot apparent contradictions, dig deeply, and discover a common root of truth.”
Now, before I suggest a way forward with this apparent contradiction, I think it’s helpful to realize there are similar kinds of tensions in regard to God’s judgments elsewhere in the Bible. For example, Ezekiel 18:32 says, “I have no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Lord God; so turn, and live.” And yet, in Deuteronomy 28:63, the Lord says, “And as the Lord took delight in doing you good . . . so the Lord will take delight in bringing ruin upon you and destroying you.” So, “I don’t have pleasure in your defeat,” and “I do have pleasure in your defeat.” Now, what should we think when we find such apparent contradictions in the Bible?
For those of us who have come to trust in Jesus and his view of the Old Testament (remember, he said in John 10:35, “Scripture cannot be broken,” or in Matthew 5:18 he said, “Until heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot, will pass from the Law until all is accomplished”) — for us who embrace both texts as true, we don’t assume a contradiction. We think both sides of this apparent contradiction are true. So, how could that be?
We’re not talking here about a strictly logical contradiction. We’re talking about the complexities of the emotional life of God. And what do we know of that? We know what he tells us. That’s all we know. That’s all we can possibly know. The infinite, holy Creator God, who holds the universe in being, either tells us or doesn’t tell us what his emotional life is like. And what he tells us is that, in some sense, he does delight in the death of the wicked and, in some sense, he does not delight in the death of the wicked. He tells us that, in some sense, he does not afflict us from his heart and, in some other sense, he does afflict us from his heart.
If this were not true — namely, that he does afflict us from his heart — then all who are justly in hell could hold God hostage by their own wickedness. They could always say, “Ha! At least my suffering in hell is making God miserable.” But God says, “No, it’s not that simple.”
Resting in Complexity
Now, how can we fathom the complexity of the emotional life of God? For example (I don’t know if you’ve ever thought of this, but I’ve thought about this so many times), who can comprehend that the Lord hears in one moment of time the prayers of millions of Christians around the world, and sympathizes with each one personally and individually like a caring Father (according to Hebrews 4:15) — even though, among those millions of prayers, some are brokenhearted and some are bursting with joy? How can God weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice when they’re both coming to him — indeed, by the thousands and thousands — at the same time? In fact, they’re always coming to him, with no break at all, from around the world.
Or who can comprehend that God is angry at the sin of the world every day (Psalm 7:11), and yet, every day, every moment, he is rejoicing with tremendous joy because somewhere in the world a sinner is repenting (Luke 15:7)? Remember that that whole chapter with the prodigal son is saying that there’s joy in heaven! There’s joy in the Father’s heart when a prodigal returns, and that’s happening every minute around the world. Who can comprehend that God grieves over the unholy speech of his people (Ephesians 4:29–30) and yet takes pleasure in them every day (Psalm 149:4) and ceaselessly makes merry over the penitent prodigals who are coming home all the time?
So, when we’re dealing with this infinitely deep and complex reality of the emotional life of God, and he tells us that he is capable of afflicting us not from his heart and, in another sense, afflicting us from his heart, we would do well to humble ourselves and to seek to be encouraged by what both of these tell us about our heavenly Father: that he is compassionate and that he delights in the wisdom and justice of his judgments.
