Monthly Archives: October 2005

The Fairness of a Father

21 Friday Oct 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Calvinism, Hell, John MacArthur, love of God, orthodoxy, Theodicy

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One of the toughest lessons I had to learn as a father was trying to find ways of making consequences “fit”. To feel corrected rather than abused, a child must sense proportionality.

Punishment is a loving thing for a father to concern himself with, because if a father does not correct a child early and often, the child will suffer greatly throughout his life, as his inability to say “no” to himself brings a cascade of disasters from the world around him and the rebel within him. Immediate response by their parents is especially helpful in the early years — children benefit from consistent results, arriving predictably and soon from their experiments with disobedience. Sam Stalos, of Denison University, has lectured effectively on the importance of consistent parental response to their children. Reb Bradley has a slightly too-terse but incisive view of this in “Child Training Tips.”

The trouble is, immediate response for a hothead like me is apt to be angry. It took me a number of years to learn to manage my own emotions to the point where I could teach my children lovingly without over-correcting. Of course, now I’m the master of that… right kids?!

The other potential extreme, lethargy or equanimity, is equally or even more dangerous. Children sometimes act up to get attention, and if a parent disengages out of fear of over-reacting, that hurts the child, too.

I mention these points as a backdrop to the concept of God’s wrath espoused by Calvinist evangelicals such as John Piper or John MacArthur, Jr. I consider these fellows my brothers in Christ, though I presume that attitude would not be reciprocated, in view of my multiple heresies.

I am still working on an answer to the first of 4 thesis statements Piper makes about God’s wrath — that it is eternal — that is, never ending.

Yesterday I argued that the scriptures balance the view by stating that God’s wrath is indeed momentary in the scope of cosmic time, and even in the scope of promised human experience. God stated that he did not create the earth in vain — to be burned up. Rather, he made it “to be inhabited”. As Jesus said, God is not the God of the dead, but the living. He intends to have a living creation, in fellowship with him, a family on earth as well as in heaven.

Today I will simply state that the punishment chosen by God must, by his own definition, fit the crime.

Consider murder. That’s a simple one. Genesis 9 states God’s view, that if a man sheds the blood of another, his own blood is forfeited. Exodus 22 repeats the concept: “An eye for an eye.”

Property crimes are also fairly simple: make restitution, with an added penalty attached. And if you couldn’t pay, you became the indentured servant of the person you stole from for up to 7 years. Here’s an excellent summary of Old Testament and New Testament laws against stealing.

Reciprocity, or tailoring the punishment to the crime, was thus an important part of God’s law.

Augustine said, “God judged it better to bring good out of evil than to suffer no evil to exist.”

I agree with that, but the conventional Christian view of redemption doesn’t bring an adequate good out of the permission of evil. It doesn’t bring proportional good to most of the Jews, most of the East, most of the West.

Romans 1 and 2 are pivotal to an understanding of how God views human sin. A careful reading of these passages reveals proportionality, not the mainstream notion of infinite payback for finite sin. The ultimate penalty is cited clearly: death. Nothing about hell, nothing about torment. Just death. Those who commit sin are worthy of death.

And death would be eternal if God were not to interrupt it with a resurrection — so that’s where the “everlasting” or eternal idea comes from, Biblically.

Jesus said the same thing in his clear words about “eternal hell” — Gehenna — in Matthew 10. There he said,

Don’t be afraid of those who kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul. Rather, fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in Gehenna. 

Check out the word for “destroy” and you will find that it does not mean “preserve alive in torment.” It means obliterate, annihilate. Both the soul, the conscious existence, and the body, the form and structure, are terminated in the condition he calls “Gehenna.” It is permanent death, not eternal torment, which the Bible sets out as the consequence of sin.

It’s very important to me to understand why God would be happy. I don’t suppose most readers are all that familiar with the Calvinist teachings on this, but Calvin (and Augustine before him) claimed that God’s people would be sitting on the edge of heaven, looking down at hell where they could hear the cries of pain and agony of sinners for all eternity, and they would praise God for this. Their, and God’s happiness, would be magnified by the realization that bad people were getting what they deserved. But I agree heartily with atheists such as Chad Docterman who say infinite payback for finite sin is unfair.

God says that the death of a sinner doesn’t make him happy. Jesus says that the repentance of a sinner makes him and everybody in heaven happy.

So if God is a happy God, a happy Father, I’m looking for Biblical perspectives that maximize the number of sinners who repent, and minimize the number of sinners who ultimately fail to “get it.”

While death would be a reciprocal penalty for sin, God is not reciprocal with man. Where sin (and therefore death) abound, God’s grace abounds even more. We just haven’t seen it all yet.

I’ll have more on reciprocity tomorrow.

Yet more wrath?

20 Thursday Oct 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Calvinism, eschatology, Hell, John MacArthur, John Piper, love of God, orthodoxy, Theodicy

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I love the premise of “Desiring God” — that our chief end is to delight in God, enjoying Him forever. It can and should be “all joy” to know, and be loved by, the great and good God of the Universe. But when John Piper gets to describing what God is doing, and how the heavenly Father is treating the people he created, I see a disturbing picture that fails to find a balanced vantage point, an internally consistent understanding of God that harmonizes all that the Bible says about His attributes of love and justice. Let’s start with the first of brother Piper’s statements about God’s “final” wrath — that it is “eternal — having no end.” He leads with the following statement in support of his proposition:

In Daniel 12:2 God promises that the day is coming when “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.” 

Let’s look at Daniel for a minute to see what he is arguing. In verse 1 he talks about the beginning of Messiah’s rule, when it starts to make an impact on the world scene. And he talks about 2 resurrections: those who awake to olam life, and those who awake to olam contempt.
Now, there is no question that olam, a Hebrew word for indefinite time, can and often does mean “everlasting”. There is also no question that the life of the righteous who are awakened at the beginning of Messiah’s rule do indeed live beyond the age of Messiah, into the unlimited future — everlastingly. I would argue, however, that the contempt referred to here is limited by other scriptures to the age of Messiah — the “judgment day”. As such, this scripture is focusing on the experience of 2 classes of people who are awakened and dealt with by God during the day of the Lord: those who were already proven righteous beforehand, and those who arrive without having done “the good deeds”, as John 5 describes it. For them, the age of Messiah will be an age in which abhorring or contempt will be their experience.

Take a look, for example, at another use of olam with regard to God’s wrath: Isaiah 57:16. There God says that he will not be always angry. How long is he angry? a long and indefinite period of time (olam in the sense it is apparently being used in Daniel 12:2); but not FOREVER (olam in the sense it is apparently being used in Isaiah 57:16). How long will he be angry and exert pressure on the sinners? Apparently, until the heart becomes contrite, and humility appears. Until that time, there will be no rest for the wicked. Or as the Psalm I quoted yesterday puts it, “call his wickedness to account till you find none.” (I think a number of passages make it clear that God has set aside one day of 1000 years to do all this — it won’t go on longer than that.) At the end, there will still be some who are incorrigible in their wickedness, as Revelation 20 makes clear. Their fate? Revelation 20 calls it the “second death”. The next verse here in the Psalms states, “the strangers are perished out of his land.” He will judge the fatherless and the oppressed, so that the man of the earth may no more oppress. (Psalm 10:18) He is trying to teach as many as become willing to learn. Those who refuse after God’s amazing grace has attempted with sweetness and fury to reach them, will perish — vanish, die, be exterminated according to Strong’s.

The problem God has with sinners is their sin. His hand is not shortened, it can save. But God is working with people in a way that is respectful of the condition he created them with — free moral agency. Unlike Satan, who dominates and enslaves, God allows even sinners the individuality of their will, such that they are able to choose not to be contrite, not to submit to God. Granted, as long as they remain in sin, in one sense they are not “children” of God until they come back to him in the only way he has appointed — repentance from sin and faith/obedience in the Son. But all people, including those still rebellious, are God’s creation, and God has promised some things for all of them.

Some nuts are really tough for even God to crack. Human fathers find this, too. Some of my kids were so responsive that I could catch their eye and melt them. Others needed direct, vigorous confrontation and the imposition of consequences to turn their behavior and, more importantly, their attitudes.

This variety of the tools of love needed for different folks is described in Isaiah 59.
Again, it is talking about the same group of people Daniel refers to, those whose sins have kept them from having a familial relationship with God. In 59:18, 19, God spells out the principle he uses in meting out vengeance — according to their deeds, he will repay. There is reciprocity there, and the penalty is appropriate to the sin. More on that tomorrow.

Still, hope is held out because of the power and commitment of God: (Isaiah 59:20)

And come to Zion hath a redeemer, Even to captives of transgression in Jacob, An affirmation of Jehovah. (Young’s Literal translation) 

This is the verse which Paul quotes in Romans 11:26, to support his conclusion that “all Israel shall be saved.” Paul reads it as meaning, not that the Redeemer will only benefit the repentant, but that he will succeed in turning the “captives of transgression” toward righteousness. He will be a victorious Redeemer.

The Redeemer that is referred to, in the context of Isaiah 59, is Christ, of course, but I believe that Christ in the full, composite sense is meant. The entire body of Christ, the church and its Head, is what both Paul and Isaiah have reference to. For example, in Isaiah 59 God muses that there is no man that can accomplish this redemptive work, this intercessory work, on behalf of the rebellious of Israel. So he sends “his right arm” — a reference to Jesus. And this man puts on a helmet of salvation, covers himself with a breastplate of righteousness, and wears the garments of zeal, of vengeance. (See Isaiah 63 for further description of how Jesus is the agent of vengeance, paying for the sins of the world with his own blood).

All studious Christians will recognize these elements of the Redeemer’s clothing, the breastplate etc., as being descriptive of the soldier’s garb that is also given to Christians who follow in Jesus’ steps. (Although in this life Christians are told vengeance is not appropriate to them, it is promised as a reward in Revelation 2:27, and it is spoken of as what we are being prepared for in 2 Corinthians 10:4-6).

No question, the Bible is difficult to understand. And it doesn’t work to try and erect competing lists of “proof texts” to see whose list is longer. Let’s roll up our sleeves and earnestly try to catch the spirit of God, what the attitude of God is toward human beings.
I believe the harmony is found in recognizing that God’s anger is “for a moment“, and his mercy or undeserved kindness will indeed “endure forever.”

(Psalm 30:5, Psalm 136)

Remember. The Daniel text, and other seemingly harsh texts, must be harmonized with the picture of a father that Jesus gave us in the parable of the prodigal son. The father is willing to let the son squander his inheritance until he comes to his senses — and then he is ready to meet him more than halfway, helping restore and welcome him back to the fold.

Tomorrow — more on trying to understand God’s anger, its appropriateness, and its fairness and redemptive impact.

Father Provides

19 Wednesday Oct 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Calvinism, Hell, John Piper, love of God, Theodicy

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My son-in-law passed the first day of his new role in promising fashion. He stayed up with the baby to let Mom sleep. As with the human creation, night came first, and as in one of my favorite texts, there was a lot of weeping.

Like a good father, my son-in-law met the needs of his child, and also the needs of the others who were dependent on him. That’s not always easy, as any father knows. And it always involves a strong emotional investment and sacrificial commitment by the father.

So as I plug those reflections into my quest to understand the heavenly Father, and how he is viewing the human race, I am confident that when the record is complete and everyone can see clearly what He was doing all these thousands of years of the “night of weeping”, we’ll be very amazed at his loving concern and commitment. Though I’m glad for brothers like John Piper to tell me that everything is fine, God is sovereign and can’t make any mistakes, I am not reassured by him — he just seems a bit insensitive to the real situation, the real impact of things on God’s creatures. Here, for example, is what my brother Piper says about the wrath of God toward those humans who do not come into the fold before they die:

If we focus on the wrath of God that falls on human beings at the final judgment, we can say at least these four things about it: 1) It will be eternal—having no end. 2) It will be terrible—indescribable pain. 3) It will be deserved—totally just and right. 4) It will have been escapable—through the curse-bearing death of Christ, if we would have taken refuge in him. (Sermon on God’s Wrath from 2005)

Over the next few days I’ll deconstruct this and, I trust, demonstrate that this sad view is both incorrect Biblically and, from Pastor Piper’s perspective, seriously at odds with his life goal, to praise God and enjoy what God is doing.

This morning, I’m just thinking about what God does to provide for his children. When I read the Bible, there is ample testimony from the scriptures that God had clear goals in mind, and is causing even the bad stuff to work out FOR THE GOOD of everyone.

For example, he wanted to give Jesus some people who could share with him in the governance of the world. (John 17:6-11) So Christians need this “world” of opposition in order to develop the kinds of gracious character, wisdom, trust, patience, and humility that God looks for as good fruitage.

Another example is the desire God has to teach the rebellious. Heaven knows that there are plenty of rebellious folks, going all the way back the beginning of the human race. Well-meaning brothers from Augustine to Luther to Piper have noticed, as I have, the scriptures that explain God’s commitment to the eventual destruction of rebellion. What is less well known is the equally clear message of hope for those who respond to God’s medicines for rebellion. I’ll expand on this in coming days, too, but for now just meditate on this one verse: (Psalm 10:15)

Break the arm of the wicked and the evildoer,
Seek out his wickedness until You find none. 

Seek out each person’ wickedness until… until there is no more wickedness there. As a father, I can relate to this. Proverbs tells me that “foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child.” But I don’t spend my days beating my kids to get it out of them. I give them experience, put them into situations that will tax their skills, place them under discipline, etc. until their foolishness is gone. Now, my kids feel to me like they’re my friends, my confidantes. I feel like I’m in a family of counselors, because I took the time to work with my children’s needs for correction and encouragement and admonition and love.

This is what I see many, many scriptures describing as the intent of what Pastor Piper calls “the final judgment”. God will have used 6000 years of human history to teach collective lessons about what humans can and cannot do without following his laws. He will also have used each lifetime to teach personal lessons about the pain that comes from disobedience. Then, when the evildoers are resurrected as the Bible plainly says they all will be, they will have some motivation to persevere through the time when God will, through the good offices of Christ and his gentle, loving but righteous Church, “seek out their wickedness” until it there is no more. All the wickedness will be found, exposed, repented of, and healed. As Isaiah 26:9 words it, “when [God’s] judgments are in the earth, the inhabitants of the world will learn righteousness.”

God has been saving for mankind’s college education. Not that it will be entirely a pleasant experience, any more than the years of self-will and Satanic deception have been fun either. But to prepare for a glorious, unlimited, wonderful future absent ANY pain or suffering, God has been allowing people by their own choices to “build up for themselves a storehouse” in the day of judgment. (Romans 2:5,6) That storehouse of undealt-with, uncorrected sins and character flaws will require some tough medicine. But it will be a benevolent learning experience, not a retributive frenzy the way Piper’s words above describe it. More tomorrow….

I’ll say goodbye with a photo my wife and I took last year of Zion… National Park, that is. But what an inspirational insight into the greatness, and goodness, and beauty, of our Father which is in heaven.

Grand Fatherhood

18 Tuesday Oct 2005

Posted by in eschatology, fatherhood, Hell, John Piper, love of God, salvation, Theodicy, universalism

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First things first. My first daughter had her first baby, my first grandchild, my first male descendant, and his initials are… A.D. It has been a really good year in the Lord, and Adrian is just one of the many reasons. Fatherhood is better than ever, starting with the first day of the year, when my fourth daughter was baptized. Now all of my kids have turned the key to their heart over to the Heavenly Father. They have all received Christ as their Lord and Savior, and all of them are, from my biased perspective, making a positive impact on a lot of people. What I love most about my kids is that they are both humble and independent, both gentle and emphatic, or as Hugh Ross put it in his outstanding book, A Matter of Days, both tolerant and discerning.

Which brings me to the issue of Fatherhood.

As I was waiting for the baby to come last night I was reading Desiring God by John Piper. (he has a nice tribute to his own father at http://www.desiringgod.org/library/sermons/05/061905.html )

As I read John Piper’s words, I can’t help but see a warm and loving man, who delights to do the Heavenly Father’s will, enjoys the manifold grace of God to all believers in this life, and eagerly anticipates the glory and endless joys of an eternity that is promised to all believers. I share those God-directed hopes in my own walk with God, too.

But I think there is an aspect to God’s loving character that is being overlooked by Pastor Piper: he defines the goal of God as being the maximization of his own praise and honor. I don’t think so. I agree that God is honorable, praiseworthy, and deserving of all praise. I agree that he is sovereign and works all things according to his own plans and will, and I agree that what he says, he will do. He will not be disappointed or frustrated.

But God is love, and love means a commitment to give of oneself in every area for the good of another. God saw the world he had created, and whom he had allowed to become enslaved by that sin, and whom he had placed under judicial restraint, a curse of “dying though shalt die.” That is the anger and wrath of God, and it will not last forever.

Piper quotes Ephesians 1:5-6: {God] predestined us in love to be his sons . . . to the praise of the glory of his grace.” And his emphasis is on the fact that God will get praise and glory as a result of his grace toward his sons. I get a different emphasis from this. In Ephesians 1:10 the apostle goes on to say that there will be one family, in heaven and earth, and it will all be in God’s name — that is, God’s character. There are sons now, and I’m happy that this makes me the brother of a John Piper, even if for now we don’t agree on what God’s goals are.

The reason why God is working at this project is so that he will have a family — not a group of people who automatically do what he says, and praise him no matter how many people seem to be going, going, gone, lost forever without hope, without God. Because in John Piper’s, Jonathan Edwards’, John MacArthur’s view of the world, many more people are lost than are saved. That’s OK with them because they trust God knows what he is doing, and they’re convinced that is the way God says it will be. I read the Bible differently, and I see God saying he’s going to save EVERY soul from Adamic condemnation, and bring them to an accurate knowledge of the Truth – Christ.

According to Paul in Ephesians 1, God is the Father, the originator. We are sons, and brothers to each other. And when we see other brothers who are perishing, succumbing to sin, terribly beset by seemingly random acts of violence, what father could fault us for going to him and saying, “Dad, this brother or potential brother of ours just got hurt. This one just died. What can we do about this? What are you going to do about this?”

I could look at the 14-year-old Palestinian who recently told Israeli police that he was told to blow himself up or his fellows would kill him. And I say, “His friend who blew himself up last week — a Palestinian who does not know Jesus, does not know the God of Abraham — where is he now? How has God’s love and plan affected him?” And I turn to God’s word for answers, and I am very happy with the answers I read there. And I can see why God is happy, God is OK with the trouble in the world, because he really does have a plan in place that will deal effectually and wonderfully with that one boy, or the millions that died in the Iran/Iraq war, or the earthquake in Pakistan or Katrina or whatever the disaster-du-jour might be.

So, punch-drunk as all sensitive people are by the trouble and disaster in the world, it’s great to be able to turn to Ephesians 1, 2, and 3 and be told there is indeed a family under development, a very very large family, of both people and spirit beings, in heaven and earth, who will all, from top to bottom, consider God their Father, and actually obey his principles, and actually have his character. (his Name). (Ephesians 3:15). Character is everything. Bad character is why the world is such a mess. To contemplate a world where every single person has learned the hard way, through experience, what is good, and has chosen to, with God’s help, do what is good … well that almost seems to good to be true. If I didn’t read emphatic statements in a trustworthy source that this indeed will happen, I would think it was impossible. As a father who worked hard to develop good character in his children, I’m really happy to believe that God has planned from the beginning how to impart good character to all the people who are willing to learn it — a character of love, unselfishness, willingness to serve others even when it is painful, willingness to delay gratification, and to be merciful — to go as far as is possible, be as gracious as possible, to reclaim, correct, recover an erring soul.

This is what God is doing, setting us all an example of grace, humility, patience, kindness even to the arrogant and unholy.

God is a father, and as I become a grandfather, I see more clearly that the goal of a father is to bless his children, to see them grow and respond and learn what he knows is best. The role of a grandfather is to watch his children provide the discipline and correction, so that he can provide the fun and the candy. That’s how I see God working, through Christ, to bless the world. Praise in the end will not only be spontaneous, it will be universal, because all who are alive will delight to give God all the praise for his great plan of grace and salvation.

Why is God happy? My first response to John Piper

17 Monday Oct 2005

Posted by in a happy God, Calvinism, eschatology, Theodicy

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I am not the first to notice that Paul calls God the “happy God” twice in his epistles to Timothy. Many have commented on this extensively. One of the most prolific is John Piper, whose book Desiring God I am now reading.
In the link above, Pastor Piper states what he calls “the ultimate Biblical explanation for the existence of suffering.” I agree that the Bible does indeed offer the ultimate Biblical explanation for suffering, and that Christ is the center of that process, and the Church is the firstfruits of that redemptive plan. I keep hoping for Piper, and C.S. Lewis, and others to reach the logical implications of their arguments, but they keep falling short.

And the reason they keep falling short is that they ignore God’s mechanism for bringing salvation to Adam and Eve and all the others who have not believed in this life.

Here’s an excerpt from this sermon:

“As for you, Adam and Eve, you meant evil against God as you rejected him as your Father and Treasure, but Oh what an infinite good he planned through your fall! The Seed of the woman will one day bruise the head of the great Serpent, and by his suffering he will display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God. You have not undone his plan. Just as Joseph was sold sinfully into slavery, you have sold yourselves for an apple. You have fallen, and now the stage is set for the perfect display of the greatness of the glory of the grace of God.

“For not only did sin enter the world, but through sin came suffering and death. Paul tells us that God subjected the world to futility and corruption under his holy curse. He put it like this in Romans 8:20-23:

“The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

“When sin entered the world, horrible, horrible things followed. Diseases, defects, disabilities, natural catastrophes, human atrocities—from the youngest infant to the oldest codger, from the vilest scoundrel to the sweetest saint—suffering is no respecter of persons. That’s why Paul said in Romans 8:23, “We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.”

“Ezekiel tells us that God does not delight in this suffering. “As I live, declares the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked” (Ezekiel 33:11). But the plan remains, and Jeremiah gives us a glimpse into the mysterious complexity of the mind of God in Lamentations 3:32-33, “Though he cause grief, he will have compassion according to the abundance of his steadfast love; for he does not willingly afflict or grieve the children of men.” Literally: “He does not from his heart [millibbô] afflict or grieve the children of men.” He ordains that suffering come—“though he cause grief”—but his delight is not in the suffering, but in the great purpose of creation: the display of the glory of the grace of God in the suffering of Christ for the salvation of sinners.

“The stage has been set. The drama redemptive history begins to unfold. Sin is now in its full and deadly force. Suffering and death are present and ready to consume the Son of God when he comes. All things are now in place for the greatest possible display of the glory of the grace of God.”

It seems to me that the glaring omission in all of this is that God has provided a way to undo the pain and sin of all humans throughout all history. Piper correctly sees that the true followers of Christ will be a glorious redeemed group, a victory for suffering over evil, for grace over pride. True Christians, of whom I am sure brother Piper is one, will indeed enjoy each other and enjoy God throughout all eternity. But I think the Word promises they will also enjoy the masses of mankind, whom they are explicitly promised to reign over, to shepherd with a staff of iron, to “judge” (which means not condemn, but guide and correct). Christians will enjoy being priests on behalf of the world of mankind, they will enjoy being representatives of God’s extended and sovereign grace on behalf of the world. The gates of pearl, allowing access to the City of God. Indeed, the very streets of the city itself!

Pastor Piper speaks about how Joseph’s brothers are akin to Adam and Eve, who did something bad but God found a way to bless. But in Joseph’s case the brothers are blessed and restored to favor. What about Adam and Eve? The silent elephant in the middle of the living room, which I haven’t yet seen Brothers Piper or Lewis or McArthur talk about, is that in their view Adam and Eve are lost forever for their sin. Jesus is the seed of the woman, to be sure, and he brings some folks out of death and destruction through his and their pain, but there’s a whole lot more people and a whole lot more suffering that is unaccounted for. It feels like we are asked to just wash our hands of it and smile and say, “God can’t make a mistake so it must be OK.”

Or as Piper puts it early in his book, Desiring God, we have to learn to look at it with God’s wide-angle lens — I guess so we don’t see the personal pain and futility of it all.

So brother Piper quotes Romans 8:23 in the above sermon, which talks about how we groan within ourselves during the time of suffering and pain. That’s true, that’s good. But it also says in Romans 8:22 that the whole creation likewise suffers through this process. What of that? When will those who aren’t “the sons of God” yet have their suffering addressed? Paul answers that question in verse 21. The creation itself will ALSO be delivered from the bondage of corruption, into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

They don’t live happily ever after until they start to live happily ever after. But they will and I think THAT is why God is happy now. Because he sees it and he has planned it and he knows it will happen.