Audio Transcript
Welcome back to the podcast on this Monday. Last Monday we looked at God’s active role in our suffering in APJ 2171, one of many episodes on this podcast devoted to answering your most painful questions about personal trials and chronic suffering. I tried to give you a summary of all the ground we’ve covered in the APJ book on pages 365–94.
Personal suffering is tied to personal discipline too. Just yesterday in our Navigators Bible Reading Plan, we read Proverbs 3 together, on God’s discipline, leading to this question from Andrew, a listener who struggles with a lot of pain: “Pastor John, good morning and thank you for this podcast. My question is about God’s fatherly chastening in Proverbs 3:11–12. How do we distinguish his chastening from the decay and difficulties that result from this sin-filled world?
“For example, I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, the genetic kind, at age seven, and later developed other health issues, including chronic joint pain. I wasn’t a true, repentant believer until my late twenties, when I also began to have digestive issues that needed medical attention. Are all these physical issues discipline from the Lord? And were the issues I faced before becoming a believer God’s wrath rather than discipline? How do I discern between God’s discipline and the physical difficulties that could also be explained as decay in a fallen world or judgment from him in my sin?”
There is one particular question in this cluster of questions that we haven’t dealt with as directly as we have some of the others. We’ve talked before about how to distinguish (or whether we should distinguish) God’s chastening in our pain from the ordinary pain that everyone experiences because we are all part of the fallen world — but we have not dealt as directly with the question that Andrew asks: “Were the issues that I faced before becoming a believer God’s wrath rather than discipline?” That’s a unique question. Let’s ponder that for a few minutes, because I think it will shed light across the other questions as well.
Our Union with Adam
I think the first thing to realize is that all of us, without exception, come into the world under condemnation, under wrath. Paul calls all of us “children of wrath” in Ephesians 2:3. Now, that includes people who never become believers in Christ, and it includes people who do become believers in Christ. Romans 5:16–18 says, “The judgment following [Adam’s] one trespass brought condemnation. . . . [By] one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man. . . . One trespass led to condemnation for all men.”
“The painful experiences of our pre-Christian life had a double identity, a double meaning, a double purpose.”
So, before we were united to Christ by faith, we were all rightfully viewed by God in our fallen human nature as subject to wrath and condemnation. And the penalty for that was not only death but the entire futility and corruption that marks the whole creation. Here’s Romans 8:20–21: “The creation was subjected to futility” — that’s the whole creation — “not willingly, but because of him [that is, God] who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption” — so, he calls it “futile”; he calls it “bondage to corruption” — “and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God.”
All the natural disasters, all the diseases (like diabetes and joint pain), all the suffering in the world is owing to our union with Adam in his disobedience: our sin and God’s just response in wrath and judgment.
Our Double Identity
And just to make it clear that this is true of all of God’s precious, born-again, adopted, justified children, Paul says this striking thing in Ephesians 2:3: “We all once lived [among the sons of disobedience] in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” So, that’s people who have been saved. And I think it’s absolutely crucial to notice that little phrase “by nature”: “by nature children of wrath.” Christians were “by nature children of wrath.”
And the reason that’s so crucial is because it wasn’t our only identity. We had another identity, even before we became Christians. You can juxtapose “by nature children of wrath” with “by election we were not children of wrath but destined for adoption to be children of God.” Here’s Ephesians 1:4–6: “[God] chose us in [Christ] before the foundation of the world.” So, that’s election. He chose us — election. “He predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of [the glory of his] grace.”
Here’s a huge reality that goes right to the heart of Andrew’s question. Before we were Christians, we had a double identity: by nature children of wrath, by election destined to be children of God. And the reason it is possible for any of us to pass from being a child of wrath to being a child of God is because God, in his glorious, redemptive plan, sent his only divine Son, Jesus Christ, into the world to bear his wrath and forgive our sins.
Here’s John 5:24. This has got to be one of the most wonderful verses in the Bible. I mean, there are a lot of wonderful verses, but listen to this: “Whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.” That’s staggering. Your death is behind you, Christian. And Paul says in Romans 8:1, “There is . . . no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Pain’s Double Purpose
So, what does that mean now for Andrew’s diabetes, contracted before he was a Christian? And not just him, but almost all Christians can think of ways that events and relationships in our lives before we became Christians (maybe when we were three years old or nine or twelve or fifteen or twenty) damaged us, hurt us, in such a way that we’re still dealing with those effects of that sinful situation before we became a Christian. Some natural calamity or disease or pre-Christian abuse or whatever — every one of us has something like that. There aren’t any perfect families.
On the basis of what we’ve seen in Scripture, I would say that, just like every Christian had a double identity before he was united to Christ by faith, in the same way the painful experiences of our pre-Christian life had a double identity, a double meaning, a double purpose from God. Just as we were by nature children of wrath and by election destined to be children of God, similarly, the pain that came into our lives was, on the one hand, a proper and fitting act of God’s judgment in response to our nature as children of wrath — but on the other hand, that very pain was a merciful shout of God, warning us to turn from sin to Christ.
And then, in Christ, that very pain might be healed, or it may be transformed from judgment to a painful and merciful means by which God proves the genuineness of our faith as we hold fast to him and by which he keeps us humble and dependent on him all the days of our lives, and brings us safely to everlasting, pain-free joy in his presence.
Andrew’s question was, “Were the issues that I faced before becoming a believer God’s wrath rather than discipline?” And my answer now is that, because you had a double identity before you became a believer — by nature a child of wrath, by election destined to be a child of God — both of those are true.
