On Pain and Suffering

by Dr. Peter A. Kerr

Within Reformed theology, suffering is frequently interpreted as divinely ordained pedagogy. Affliction is not merely foreknown or permitted but positively willed as an instrument of sanctification and as a means by which God displays His glory. Texts such as Romans 8:28, Hebrews 12:6–11, and Joseph’s declaration in Genesis 50:20 are often read through a decretal lens: suffering occurs because God has determined it to occur for morally sufficient reasons.

This framework has genuine pastoral intent. It seeks to assure believers that their pain is not meaningless and that no event lies outside God’s sovereign purpose. Yet when examined through the lens of holy love rather than sovereign control, a deeper problem emerges. The issue is not that God redeems suffering—Scripture is unambiguous that He does—but that suffering itself becomes tacitly elevated into a preferred pedagogical instrument. Within this logic, evil is no longer merely what God overcomes; it becomes what God intentionally employs.

There must be a decisive distinction here between divine use and divine desire.

Holy love does not require suffering in order to mature creatures. Love requires freedom, time, and real participation. Suffering enters the economy of formation only because freedom entails the genuine possibility of rupture, resistance, and harm. In other words, suffering is not intrinsic to God’s pedagogy; it is incidental to a world in which love is real rather than programmed.

A Deo Lumen teaches holiness is plenitude rather than lack. God does not need brokenness in order to teach wholeness, nor pain in order to communicate goodness. The formative power belongs to love itself: its patience, its illumination, its invitation, its endurance. Suffering becomes pedagogically relevant only after something has already gone wrong—after love has been refused, distorted, or wounded within the created order.

This reframing preserves what Scripture affirms without importing what it does not require. Hebrews 12 does not say God prefers affliction as a teaching tool; it says God disciplines His children as a loving Father. Discipline names intentional formation, not the direct causation of harm. Parents do not teach maturity by desiring injury; they teach within a world where injury is sometimes unavoidable. When harm occurs, love intervenes to heal, reorient, and strengthen. Divine discipline operates in precisely this manner.

Reformed theology often collapses this distinction by identifying God’s ultimate will so tightly with every concrete outcome that permission and intention become functionally indistinguishable. Once this collapse occurs, suffering easily slides from tragic necessity to divinely curated means. God does not merely work with suffering; He plans it. The result is a God whose holiness risks appearing morally asymmetric: forbidding evil to creatures while strategically deploying it Himself.

We must resist this thinking by re-centering holiness as non-competitive love. God does not relate to creation as a chessboard on which suffering is optimally placed for maximal sanctifying effect. God relates as a Father committed to forming sons and daughters capable of love. When suffering arises, God’s action is remedial, not instrumental. He works through it because He must remain faithful to freedom and history—not because suffering is an efficient teacher.

This distinction matters profoundly for moral formation. If suffering is viewed as divinely preferred, believers may be tempted either to spiritualize harm, minimize injustice, or passively accept preventable evil as “God’s lesson.” These responses are distortions of holiness. Holy love resists suffering even while redeeming it. Jesus does not praise affliction as educational; He heals the sick, confronts oppression, weeps at graves, and rebukes those who interpret tragedy as divinely targeted instruction.

Even the cross, the central locus of redemptive suffering, fits this pattern. The cross is not God’s preferred method but God’s faithful response. It is the point at which divine love enters fully into the consequences of creaturely sin in order to heal from within. The cross reveals not that God needs suffering to save, but that God will not abandon creation even when suffering becomes unavoidable.

Suffering teaches only secondarily. What teaches is love’s presence within suffering: God’s refusal to withdraw, His patience with growth, His illumination amid confusion, His resurrection beyond loss. Sanctification does not flow from pain itself but from the way divine love accompanies, interprets, and transforms pain without ever sanctifying the evil that caused it.

The pedagogical center therefore shifts. The question is no longer “What lesson did God intend by this suffering?” but “How is God loving, healing, and forming within this situation while opposing the suffering itself?” This preserves God’s sovereignty without making Him morally complicit, and it preserves hope without requiring believers to call evil good.

The doctrine of providence is not hereby weakened—it is purified. God remains sovereign not because He authors every wound, but because no wound can finally defeat His holy love.

Rejoice with those who Rejoice, Mourn with those who Mourn

Comfort for the afflicted does not come from explaining their pain as divinely planned, but from assuring them they are never abandoned within it. The deepest consolation is not an answer to “Why did this happen?” but a promise about “Who is with me now, and where this is going.”

First, we offer the comfort of God’s unbroken nearness. Affliction does not signal divine displeasure, distance, or abandonment. Holy love does not withdraw when creatures suffer; it moves closer. God is not watching pain from a distance in order to extract lessons from it. He is present within it—listening, grieving, strengthening, illuminating, and sustaining. The afflicted are not objects in a pedagogical experiment but beloved persons whose dignity remains intact even in weakness.

Second, we re-read “God works all things together for good” as a promise of faithfulness, not orchestration. When Scripture says that God works all things together for the good of those who love Him, it does not mean that every event is good, chosen, or desired. It means that no event—however tragic, unjust, or senseless—has the power to derail God’s loving purpose for those who remain turned toward Him. God does not need to cause suffering in order to bring good from it. His goodness is so plenary that it can enter what He did not will and still heal, reorient, and redeem.

This is a profoundly different kind of comfort. It tells the afflicted: “This did not happen because God wanted it. But it will not have the final word. God will weave even this into a story that bends toward life.”

Third, we affirms that God’s “no” can be as loving as His “yes.” In affliction, unanswered prayers often wound more deeply than pain itself. We do not dismiss this anguish by appealing to mystery alone. It insists instead that divine refusal is not arbitrary or indifferent. God’s “no” is never the withholding of love; it is the protection of a deeper good that cannot yet be seen.

Sometimes God says no because a requested outcome would collapse freedom, stunt growth, entrench harm, or prematurely close a story still unfolding. At other times, God says no because He is committed to forming a person rather than merely fixing a moment. The comfort here is not that every desire is fulfilled, but that no refusal is ever detached from love. God’s “no” is not silence; it is a different form of faithfulness.

Fourth, we offer hope without sanctifying pain. The afflicted are not asked to call their suffering “good,” “necessary,” or “meant to be.” We must refuse to baptize evil in order to preserve hope. Instead, it distinguishes clearly between what God opposes and what God redeems. God hates what harms His children, even while He remains powerful enough to bring healing from it. This allows sufferers to grieve honestly without fearing that their lament is a lack of faith.

Fifth, we should locate comfort in God’s commitment to completion. Affliction often fragments life, leaving stories that feel unfinished and unresolved. The afflicted should be reassured that God’s work is patient, not rushed; relational, not transactional. What is not healed now is not forgotten. What is not resolved in this life is not abandoned. God’s promise is not merely survival but fulfillment—the eventual mending of every rupture, the clarification of every confusion, and the restoration of every love that has been wounded but not surrendered.

Finally, we may comfort by redefining strength. The afflicted are not required to understand, justify, or spiritually optimize their pain. They are only invited to remain open—to keep turning toward the light they can still see. Even fragile trust counts as faith. Even wordless endurance is prayer. God’s love does not demand comprehension before it offers communion.

In sum, we can comfort the afflicted by saying this: God did not need your suffering in order to love you. He does not require it to form you. Yet He will not waste it, abandon you within it, or allow it to define the final shape of your life. His yes will come in time, His no is never loveless, and His good is large enough to gather even this into a future still worth trusting.