61. Nobody will ever suffer more than God has.
The Lord was sorry that He had made man on the earth, and He was grieved in His heart. {Genesis 6:6}
Since you cannot have love without the willingness to suffer, our God, who is Love, has suffered from the very beginning of Lucifer’s rebellion. From the first moment that His first beloved creature began to turn away from Him and reject His offer of a loving relationship, God has known and suffered the horrible pain of a broken heart.
And as He watched this creature then spread his rebellion to others, eventually disrupting the peace and harmony of heaven and infecting our world with sin, God’s heart has ached at the pain and misery that has been unleashed in His universe.
And as all of our suffering continues to pass through Him, He continues to suffer. His suffering did not begin or end with His physical incarnation in the person of Jesus Christ. From the very beginning of the rebellion, God has been suffering. And even when the rebellion is over and the war has long ceased, God will forever suffer the loss of His children that He was unable to win back to love and trust. Like a parent in this world who must temporarily endure the loss of a child from suicide, God will bear that same hurt forever as He grieves the eternal loss of some of His children.
So let us never think that our God of love is somehow untouched or unaffected by our suffering and that, if He wanted, His love could somehow make all the suffering cease. It is because of His love that He has suffered and will suffer more than any part of His creation. He doesn’t suffer in spite of His love; He suffers because of His love.
If you want to dig deeper—
Isaiah 16:11
Isaiah 42:14
Isaiah 53:3-4
Isaiah 63:9
Jeremiah 19:3-5
Jeremiah 48:31
Ezekiel 8:17
Hosea 11:8