Why is God punishing me?

This week I am writing a series of posts prompted by what is your pastor’s most dreaded question: “Why is this happening to me?” I have been learning that one of the questions lurking behind that one is, “Why is God punishing me?”

A few years ago a woman walked into my office and bluntly told me, “I feel like I must have kicked God’s dog.” Have you ever felt like that? Sometimes, when suffering goes on and on for no apparent reason we start to question if we are being punished.

I touched on this in yesterday’s post. Have you accepted Jesus Christ as Your Lord and Savior? Do you believe that He died on the cross in your place? If you do, I can say with certainty that God is not punishing you. When Jesus died on the cross, all the just wrath and anger God had for your sin—past, present, and future—was spent on Jesus in your place. God’s justice was totally, completely, and finally satisfied there on your behalf. In the sight of God the Father Almighty, you have been absolved of all charges in Christ. Your slate is clean, not one jot or tittle remains on it. Your forgiveness in Christ is total, complete, and irrevocable.

What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life—is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us (Romans 8:31-34, NIV).

There are two other options worthy of consideration:

First, if you are willfully, chronically, and unapologetically sinning you may be being disciplined. By willfully, I mean you are clearly choosing to sin. By chronically, I mean that this sinful behavior is a constant and consistent habitual reality in your life over a prolonged period of time. By unapologetically, I mean that you know that what you are doing is sin and are not repentant of it. When all three of those things are true, and you are experiencing a lot of things going wrong in your life—spiritual deadness, problems in your marriage, family, and relationships, work, or finances—you are likely experiencing God’s discipline.

God disciplines those whom He forgives. A prime example of this is the experience David had after his affair with Bathsheba recorded in 2 Samuel 12:1-14. God forgave David for his affair and for murdering Bathsheba’s husband Uriah. But He did not remove the consequences of his actions and disciplined him by taking the life of the child of their affair. The good news is that David afterwards is still described as a man after God’s own heart (1 Kings 11:4 and Acts 13:22). He really was forgiven, even though many hard times resulted from his sin.

When we are being disciplined, the point is to wake us up to the reality that we are willfully, chronically, and unapologetically sinning against God in some area of our life. When we own that, repent, and in repenting, give up that sin, His discipline will stop.

If after honest examination of yourself you find no such issue, then it is most likely that you are experiencing what Bruce Wilkinson in his excellent little book, The Secrets of the Vine, calls spiritual pruning. When you are tending a garden, you may have to cut off a part of a plant that is sick or dead for it to stay healthy (discipline). You also need to prune plants, cutting off what are, for all intents and purposes, perfectly good branches or leaves in order for it to produce more fruit or flowers. Both can feel very similar because in a real sense they both involve a cutting away. The goal of discipline is to cut away something harmful. The goal of pruning is to increase one’s fruitfulness.

If you discern that you are being pruned, be of good cheer, because fruitfulness is following close behind! In closing, I think I will share the great insight from Oswald Chambers’ November 5^th reading from his daily devotional, My Utmost for His Highest, for he says it better than I ever could.

“…but rejoice to the extent that you partake of Christ’s sufferings…” 1 Peter 4:13.

If you are going to be used by God, He will take you through a number of experiences that are not meant for you personally at all. They are designed to make you useful in His hands, and to enable you to understand what takes place in the lives of others. Because of this process, you will never be surprised by what comes your way. You say, “Oh, I can’t deal with that person.” Why can’t you? God gave you sufficient opportunities to learn from Him about that problem; but you turned away, not heeding the lesson, because it seemed foolish to spend your time that way.

The sufferings of Christ were not those of ordinary people. He suffered “according to the will of God” (1Pe 4:19), having a different point of view of suffering from ours. It is only through our relationship with Jesus Christ that we can understand what God is after in His dealings with us. When it comes to suffering, it is part of our Christian culture to want to know God’s purpose beforehand. In the history of the Christian church, the tendency has been to avoid being identified with the sufferings of Jesus Christ. People have sought to carry out God’s orders through a shortcut of their own. God’s way is always the way of suffering—the way of the “long road home.”

Are we partakers of Christ’s sufferings? Are we prepared for God to stamp out our personal ambitions? Are we prepared for God to destroy our individual decisions by supernaturally transforming them? It will mean not knowing why God is taking us that way, because knowing would make us spiritually proud. We never realize at the time what God is putting us through—we go through it more or less without understanding. Then suddenly we come to a place of enlightenment, and realize—”God has strengthened me and I didn’t even know it!”