Christ and Pain
Rev. xxi. 4
There is much in this Apocalypse that we cannot understand, — the sapphire throne, the glassy sea, the descending city of God, the bottomless pit, — but amid these sublime and dazzling hieroglyphs there are sweet breaks of melody, like verdant grassy plains amid the splintered grandeur of the higher Alps. Here, at least, we can feast our weary souls.
Such is this verse, musical in its rhythm, pathetic in its reminiscence of the anguish which is at an end forever, content to leave the positive marvels of heaven untold if only it may assure us that at least the saddest elements in our earthly life shall be forever banished.
What a marvelous completeness there is in the Scripture record! It rounds the cycle of truth, opening with a paradise in which there was neither mourning, nor crying, nor travail; narrating, in pages stained with blood and tears, man’s bitter heritage, self-caused, of weariness and woe; and ending with the new heavens and earth, on the air of which no stifled groan or sigh or dirge can ever break.
The pain of misunderstanding will be no more, since we shall see eye to eye and know as we are known.
The pain of suspense will be no more, because we shall behold the purposes of God in their ultimate and beneficent outworking.
The pain of waning love will be no more, because in that happy land, as the children sing, love is kept by a Father’s hand and cannot die.
The pain of bereavement will be no more, because death cannot intrude into that glad city of life. No cypress-tree grows there; no mourning garb is ever seen in those streets; no funeral cortege ever winds its slow length along them.
But it is to physical pain that these words seem primarily to refer.
I. The mystery of pain. How can we account for it? That it is an intruder seems clear from the fact that travail was so distinctly inserted as one of the items in the divine sentence on the fallen pair. Besides, pain is one with death, and we know that death did not pass over to the human family until sin had opened the door for it to enter. The pain of the lower order of creation does not now enter our discussion, since that is so evidently connected with the fall of Satan, who made them subject to vanity, though not willingly. Perhaps, too, the coming fall of man cast its dark shadows before.
Our Lord gives three clues to the solution of this mystery, any one of which leads us away into the infinite, as paths that go up into the moors and lose themselves.
( i ) He attributed some pain to the direct agency of Satan. “Satan,” said He, “hath bound this woman, lo, these eighteen years.” And this conception of the direct agency of Satan in the persecution and pains of men is constantly referred to in other passages of Scripture.
When the apostle’s visit to his converts was delayed beyond his expectation, he did not attribute it to the divine will, but said deliberately, “Satan hindered us.”
When he was suffering from some heavy affliction which maimed his strength and limited his usefulness, he did not scruple to speak of it as a messenger of Satan, sent to buffet him.
And in the epistles to the churches, indited by the Lord through the Spirit to the beloved apostle, they are distinctly warned that Satan would cast some of them into prison.
It may be that certain forms of illness and suffering, especially epilepsy and mania, are the direct result of malevolent and malignant spirits; and if so, the unhappy patients should be specially assisted by the prayer and sympathy of their brethren, that they may be recovered out of the snares of the devil, who have been taken captive by him at his will.
(2) He attributed some pain to wrong-doing. “Go,” said He, to the paralytic who had lain for thirty-eight years on the brink of Bethesda’s pool, “sin no more, lest a worse thing come upon thee.” We may infer from this sentence that the pain of those thirty-eight years had been caused by some direct violation of the moral law, and that it might return, and worse, if he trifled with the prohibitions of conscience and Sinai.
How much pain there is in the world which need not have been there except for man’s wilful transgressions! As we sow to the flesh, we painfully reap corruption. The moment’s unholy gratification is fearfully avenged by months and years of anguish.
“Pain follows wrong
As the echo song — On, on, on.”
On the whole, this is beneficently conceived, and the certainty of the operation of this great law has repeatedly stayed the sinner’s steps when on the verge of disobedience. It is well that the fire burns, or we should be throwing ourselves into the flames unsuspecting.
(3) Our Lord attributed some pain to high moral considerations. When talking of the sickness of Lazarus He said: “It is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God should be glorified thereby;” as though to suggest that some suffering at least cannot be included in either of the categories already named, but is permitted as a platform on which the power and love of Jesus may be revealed to men. What an honor is conferred on such — ah, happy souls! — subjected to pain for the revelation of the Master’s nature, certain of being sustained by divine consolations during the ordeal and of being infinitely rewarded when it is done.
Again, when healing the man born blind, He denied the suggestion of His apostles that the pain was due to prenatal sin, and affirmed that his blindness had been permitted that the works of God might be made manifest in him.
These words may have a wider scope than for any individual case. They may cast a light on the permission of moral evil, whether in the forms of sin or pain. It did not, and could not, originate in
God. An enemy wrought this, and sowed tares in God’s harvest-field. And God permitted it because He knew that evil would furnish a dark background for the exhibition of His glorious attributes; that the pain and anguish would finally be immeasurably outstripped by the preponderating blessing; that where sin abounded His grace should much more abound; that, as sin reigned in death, so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life.
II. Our Saviour’s attitude toward PAIN. Always counting it as an intruder, throughout His public ministry He bore Himself as its uncompromising antagonist. He healed the sick and cast out devils. Many a time He would enter a village or town and heal every’ sufferer before nightfall, so that, for a marvel, there was no sleepless couch, no anxious watcher, no moan of pain, throughout the whole population.
Three words may sum up His attitude during His earthly life and His attitude to-day:
(i) Patience. “The kingdom and patience which are in Jesus.” He could not have suffered pain for Himself, because His body was absolutely pure and holy. Even in the grave it did not see corruption. But He suffered untold pain as our Brother, who fulfilled the prophecy of Isaiah, and Himself took our infirmities and bare our sicknesses. He could not have delivered men if He had not taken their maladies to Himself, though how, we know not. Surely something more is meant than keen sympathy.
But amid all His sufferings and sorrows He bore Himself with unflinching fortitude, with immeasurable patience: led as a lamb to die, drinking the cup submissively which the Father placed in His hands, silent under the scourging of His foes.
(2) Sympathy. “He sighed “; “He sighed deeply “; “He groaned in spirit.” When He saw the sisters and mourners bathed in tears, He wept.
Such fellow-feeling is His still. He is touched with the feeling of our infirmities and with the pressure of our pains.
(3) Ministry. The Venus of Milo looks benignantly down on the upturned faces of her admirers, but she has no arms — powerless to help the generations as they pass before her. But Christ sits at the right hand of power, rides forth in the chariots of salvation, and stretches forth His hand to heal and save.
Probably it is only thus that it is possible for Him to be blessed, as He bends, with sleepless care, over our world. A woman may be very delicately strung, unable to look on wounds and acute pain; but directly it is her child that is suffering, and something has to be done for it, she forgets her former fears and finds blessedness amid her awful anxiety by practical ministrations. So, probably, our Saviour is blessed, because He never stays His right hand, but exerts all power to mitigate the rule of sin and rescue the suffering children of men.
III. The destined end. “There shall be no more pain.” Its causes will have been ended. Satan will be bound, consigned to the abyss, and no longer able to afflict.
There will be no more death, or Hades, for they will have been cast into the lake of fire. There will be no more sea, and so separation and loneliness will have been done away.
The body of this humiliation will be changed into the likeness of the body of His glory, and the inhabitant of that world shall no more say, “I am sick.”
We shall no more recall the pain of our present condition than we can remember the aches and pains of childhood. The recollection of pain is always short-lived, but there it shall be as utterly obliterated as the traces of footsteps on the sands by the incoming tide, or as the murmur of shells when the ocean waves thunder along the beach. The statues shall be complete, and the almighty Sculptor shall cast away, never to take up again, the chisel with which He has achieved some of His noblest designs.