Dr. Joel R. Beeke

All things work together for good to those who love God, says Romans 8:28. Included in “all things” are our afflictions.

Afflictions can be very heavy and difficult to bear. “If sin is the head of the serpent, affliction is its tail,” Ralph Erskine wrote. Yet, dear believer, afflictions also serve as medicine for you in the hands of your great Physician, Jesus Christ. Let us look at several ways in which Jesus Christ uses afflictions for our spiritual welfare and eternal health.

First, through affliction the Lord humbles you deeply, showing you that, apart from divine grace, you are nothing but sin and corruption. He teaches you the same truth He taught Israel in Deuteronomy 8: “I led thee through the great and terrible wilderness, wherein were fiery serpents, and scorpions, and drought, and I fed thee in the wilderness with manna, that I might humble thee, to prove thee, to do thee good at thy latter end” (v. 2).

Affliction makes and keeps us humble before God. Affliction vacuums away the fuel that feeds our personal pride. An afflicted believer resembles a fruit-laden tree; the ones that are most heavy-laden bear the most fruit. If God uses your afflictions to humble you, do not your afflictions work together for good?

Second, through affliction you learn that sin is God-dishonoring, defiling, and damning. Through affliction you learn, as Thomas Watson said, “Sin has the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages.” You learn through affliction that sin attacks the very heart and being and attributes of God. As John Bunyan wrote, “Sin is the daring of God’s justice, the rape of His mercy, the jeering of His patience, the slighting of His power, and the contempt of His love.”

In affliction the Holy Spirit searches your soul with candles (Zeph. 1:12) for secret and open sins. When affliction is sanctified by the Holy Spirit, sin is dragged out of its hiding place in your heart and set in the light of God’s holy and all-searching eye. As Psalm 90:8 says, “Thou hast set our iniquities before thee, our secret sins in the light of thy countenance.” Affliction strips away the Adam-like fig leaves that we are prone to hide behind. “The sins of God’s people are like birds’ nests,” William Bridge said. “As long as leaves are on the trees you cannot see them, but in the winter of affliction when all the leaves are off, the bird nests appear plainly.” When affliction is sanctified to us, sin becomes heinous and hated. Sin becomes exceeding sinful in its very nature. It becomes hated more for its nature than for its consequences.

Third, the Holy Spirit uses affliction as a medicine to destroy the deadly disease of sin in us so that we may bring forth healthy and godly fruit. When sin makes us backslide from our Savior, the Lord Jesus as Good Shepherd sends the rod of affliction to set us straight. Affliction is the Shepherd’s dog sent out not to devour the sheep but to bring them back to the fold. Sanctified affliction cures sin. “Before I was afflicted I went astray,” David confessed, “but now have I kept thy word” (Ps. 119:67).

It is as good for us to be chastised with affliction as it is for a young tree to be pruned (John 15:2), for affliction not only presses out the awful stink of sin but also sends forth the fragrant smells and fruits of divine graces. Do you know that in some countries trees will grow but will bear no fruit because they experience no winter? The Christian needs the winter of affliction if he is to experience the spring of blossoming, the summer of growing, and the autumn of harvesting.

The life of God’s children is like a bell; the harder it is hit, the better it sounds. Believers learn more under the rod that strikes them than under the staff that comforts them. The Good Shepherd does not drown His sheep when He washes them nor kills them when He shears them. Rather, His washings are cleanings; His shearings are strippings; and His corrections are essential lessons.

Affliction reaps golden fruit. It mines, smelts, refines, and forms the believer until the divine goldsmith can see His reflection in the work of His hands. Then the child of God experiences with Job the truth of these words, “When he hath tried me, I shall come forth as gold” (Job 23:10). “Affliction is the diamond dust that heaven polishes its jewels with,” wrote the godly Robert Leighton.

Fourth, the Lord uses affliction to make us seek Him, to bring us back into communion with Himself, and to keep us close by His side. As sheep will stay close by their shepherd in storms, so the Lord said of Israel, “In their affliction they will seek me early” (Hos. 5:15). The storms and stones of affliction force us to come closer to our Shepherd. All the stones that hit Stephen knocked him closer to the chief cornerstone, Jesus Christ, and opened heaven for his soul.

Affliction drove a woman of Canaan to the Son of David; it drove a dying thief to a dying Savior. Not the crown of Manasseh, but his chains were used to bring him to the knowledge that the Lord is God (2 Chron. 33:11–13).

Fifth, the Lord uses afflictions to conform us to Christ, making us partakers of His suffering. So the author of Hebrews wrote that we are chastened for our profit so that we might be partakers of Christ’s holiness (12:10). God had only one Son without sin, but none without affliction. His afflicting rod is like a pencil that draws Christ’s image upon us. Through the way of suffering, we become followers of the Lamb of God who walks before us. All our paths of affliction have already been traveled, overcome, and sanctified by our Shepherd, whose stream of substitutional blood, from His circumcision to the cross, is our sure pledge that no affliction or trial is able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 8:39). Our deserved suffering leads us to Christ’s substitutional suffering, which in turn, makes us exclaim, “His yoke is easy and his burden is light” (Matt. 11:30).

Dear believer, are not the times of your sufferings usually the times when you have the most communion with Jesus Christ in His sufferings? His entire life was nothing but a series of sufferings, as Isaiah 53 says. May you complain about the light crosses you bear as guilty sinners (2 Cor. 4:17) when you consider the heavy crosses Christ bore as the innocent sufferer?

Sixth, spiritual afflictions work for good because the Lord balances them with spiritual comfort and joy. David wrote, “For his anger endureth but a moment; in his favour is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning” (Ps. 30:5). Christ told His disciples, “Your sorrow shall be turned into joy” (John 16:20). Hosea 2:14 says that He brings His people into the wilderness to speak comfortably to them. And 2 Corinthians 1:4 –5 says that where godly suffering abounds, godly consolation abounds. The godly George Downame once wrote, “God gives gifts that we may love Him, and stripes that we may fear Him. Yea, oftentimes He mixes His frowns with His favours.”

The Shepherd’s rod has honey at its end. The apostle Paul sang prison songs, knowing that sweet would follow the bitter. Joy would come in the morning. The Lord would turn water into wine. Samuel Rutherford wrote, “When I am in the cellar of affliction, I find the Lord’s choicest wines.” In affliction, God’s sheep sometimes experience sweet raptures of divine joy which lead them to the very borders of heavenly Canaan. At such moments they can confess with Eliphaz the Temanite, “Behold, happy is the man whom God correcteth: therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty: for he maketh sore, and bindeth up: he woundeth and his hands make whole. He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee” (Job 5:17–19).

Seventh, affliction works for good by helping us walk by faith and not by sight. If we were only given sensible enjoyments in this life, we would love this life and live off of spiritual provisions instead of our Provider. The Lord orders some sour sauce along with sweet meals to help digestion, so that we may live not by sense, but by faith. In prosperity we talk about living by faith, yet often darken counsel by words without knowledge; but in adversity we come to the experiential knowledge of what it means to live by faith.

Eighth, affliction works for good in weaning us away from the world. A dog does not usually bite those who live in its home, but only strangers. Likewise affliction bites us deeply because we are too little at home with the Word of God and too much at home with the world. If we were more at home with our Master and Shepherd in heavenly places, afflictions would be far easier to bear. So Thomas Watson wrote, “God would have the world hang as a loose tooth which, being twitched away, doth not much trouble us.”

Finally, affliction helps prepare us for our heavenly inheritance. Affliction elevates our soul heavenwards, to look for “a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God,” says Hebrews 11:10. Affliction paves the way to glory. “For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Cor. 4:17). And John Trapp wrote, “He that rides to be crowned will not think much of a rainy day.”

Children of God, are you now convinced that affliction is for your spiritual welfare and that you will not lack anything necessary or good for you, both temporally and spiritually? Though the wind of affliction is contrary to your flesh, it pleases God to use this crosswind to blow you toward heaven. Your afflictions are tailor-made to fit you with divine precision all the way to glory. Consider, none less than the triune God has in love appointed your every affliction for your eternal good (1 Thess. 3:3).

Did you ever think of affliction this way, dear child of God? To think this way of affliction is to think opposite of Job’s friends, who said, “If you are heavily afflicted, you have heavily sinned.” Rather, think of what Downame said, “The Lord does not measure out our afflictions according to our faults, but according to our strength, and looks not at what we have deserved, but what we are able to bear.”

Shall not all things, even affliction, work together for the welfare of God’s people? Your duty then, dear believer, is to do what Paul calls you to do in 1 Thessalonians 5:18, “In every thing [even in affliction], give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.”

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Dr. Joel R. Beeke is president and professor of Sys­tematic Theology and Homiletics at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary, and a pastor of the Heritage Nether­lands Reformed Congregation of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Published by The Banner of Sovereign Grace Truth, used with permission.