60. You cannot have love without the willingness to suffer.

Surely he took up our pain and bore our suffering. {Isaiah 53:4}

But, I so often hear, if God is love, why does He permit suffering to continue? Aren’t love and suffering at odds with each other? Wouldn’t a loving God keep us from suffering?

Well, it is certainly true that Love never wants the object of its affection to suffer. If you’re a parent, you know that when your child is sick, you would gladly take their illness into your own body if it could relieve their suffering. So why wouldn’t a God of love take the necessary steps to forever insulate us from suffering?

Actually, when you think about it, God had that very choice. In fact, He’s the only Person in the entire universe who had that choice. He could have insulated Himself and the rest of His creation from all suffering forever simply by never creating any beings who had the capacity to think and the freedom to choose. God could have filled up His universe with perfectly-programmed, well-behaved creatures who would never have had the option of causing pain.

But that would also have meant a universe full of creatures who would never have had the option of choosing love. For love must be entered into freely by both parties, and thus it requires freedom. So, only God had the choice between an eternity with the possibility of love or an eternity without the possibility of suffering. And God chose love. Love and suffering aren’t at odds with each other, then, for it was in choosing the love that God also had to choose the possibility of suffering.

You cannot have love without the willingness to suffer. Even God cannot have love without the willingness to suffer, and when it came down to His choice, God was more willing to suffer than He was willing to go forever without love.

If you want to dig deeper—
Philippians 1:29
Philippians 3:10
Acts 5:41