Does the New Covenant Innately Entitle Ease in Life to Those Under It ?

The new covenant: what a glorious plan that God has implemented for us! Everything points to it and everything flows from it. Without the realization of Jesus and his story, there is absolutely no hope for anyone, ever. It is the fulfillment of everything leading up to it, the illumination of the ancient shadows of God's promises from generations past. Yet it is also the point to which every future generation points, the only event in history that can actually bring hope to a hopelessly broken soul. It is the inescapable beauty of God's wisdom fulfilled through His own Son, for the sake of His own name and renown, that His own people may have ultimate joy in Him. This is reality. But so is life here on earth.

Lately, it seems like the media has escalated the propaganda of suffering. I have Facebook friends continually posting videos depicting the carnage that is currently taking place in the Gaza region. One day, I viewed a video in which a conservative Jew defends Israel rightly, in the sense that Israel is a people, not a place, and that the warring Israelis are as radical a misrepresentation to Judaism as fundamental Islamic terrorists are to Islam. The next day, I skimmed over a video depicting graphic war images of the typical carnage that happens during any war: dead women and children, charred by the damage of weapons of mass destruction. But who has the hope? Is there any? Who is virtuously defending their cause? Is there even a cause worth defending? And what about the places, say in Africa, where genocide has been being propagated for generations, yet no one seems to care? Where is their hope?

Cease fire? Doubt it. At least, not for long. Unfortunately, there is a war imbedded deep within human nature that, when misguided, cannot be satisfied by anything other than the exertion of power over something else, a prideful demonstration of a man's rebellion due to sin. There is no one without it. Everyone has it. There is a war in everyone, either physical or spiritual, or both. There is likely not a person who doesn't, at one time or another, beg the question, "Why all this suffering if there is a loving God hovering over us all?" Others, who have faith in Jesus, may ask, "If then we are under the new covenant of healing grace, then why do we let ourselves suffer? It doesn't have to be that way!"

It's interesting to think about the different types of spiritual awareness of suffering...

The man who leaves his carnal passions unchecked picks up a gun and starts shooting. His life becomes the embodiment of suffering, the very definition of a miserable existence. He suffers relentlessly.

The man who finds religion restrains his carnal passions so that he doesn't screw up his life and goes on doing all the rights while avoiding all the wrongs. Yet he hates many things about his life for no particular reason, unable to find his worth in anything except his religiosity. He suffers every day except Sunday and Wednesday, when he's able to renew his devotion to religion.

The man who finds spirituality attempts to transcend his carnal passions by taking control of his life and everything in it. Suffering ought not affect him because he has found a higher place, far away from it. Yet he is ungrounded, dismayed when he is inevitably faced with suffering. He suffers when things are uncertain and suffering looms heavily upon him. He suffers even more when the suffering actually comes.

The man who is found by Jesus relinquishes all control of his carnal passions, knowing that he will fail from time to time, yet trusting that he is accepted regardless of his imperfections. He realizes that there is suffering in store for him, yet he hopes in the sovereign providence of his God to persevere him through it. He doesn't try to escape it, but instead digs his heels deep in faith, knowing that God will never leave him to face it on his own. He asks confidently for deliverance by his God, according to God's perfect and infinitely wise will. He suffers frequently, yet overcomes it and conquers it.

For those who are found by Jesus, suffering is never absent. In fact, Jesus promises it to those who earnestly follow him. Until he returns to reconcile all things to himself, to make all things new, there will be sin and the resulting effects of it. So how much more, then, is suffering prevalent to all people!

When Adam and Eve rebelled against the one command of God in the Garden of Eden, certain things followed:

"To the woman he said,

“I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children. Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”

And to Adam he said, “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, 'You shall not eat of it,' cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”"
Genesis 3:16-19

To separate suffering from humanity is to separate sin from a man. Obviously, the time has not yet come for this to happen. Therefore, there will be suffering. The woman who has devoted her entire life to helping others in need will still die from cancer. The young child, afflicted with leukemia, will still suffer much before it all ends in death. Millions will continue to die in third world countries due to disease and famine. Wars will continue to ravage the countrysides of nations worldwide, as it has for decades. In both small and large measures, through circumstances that bring a person to the brink of self-destruction, suffering has endured the ages. These things ought to be expected, for they have remained almost since the beginning of time. Sin causes death, and pain, and suffering. These are all inevitable. However cynical and pessimistic this may seem, it is reality. It is the cost of rebellion against God.

So why do I say all this? Well, I have some well-meaning great friends and brothers in the faith who sometimes entertain the idea that these things can somehow be different. In an attempt to encourage, one of these brothers might say, "It doesn't have to be that difficult; we are under a new covenant!" In other words, we don't have to settle for sickness and hardship, for God must deliver us from those things since we are under grace and not the law only. "The prayer of a righteous man accomplishes much" (James 5:16b) and "many are the afflictions of the righteous but God delivers him from them all" (Psalm 34:19), but where is the line drawn between faith fueled by ignorant zeal and faith informed in deep biblical teachings?

I believe that the only thing to which we are entitled under the new covenant is death and hell, for it is what we deserve. Yet the grace and kindness of God affords us faith in a gracious Lord and Savior, Jesus. And that is enough. We need not order God to simply take suffering away from us. Jesus is enough to persevere us in the midst of suffering and pain. He'll be there and in the darkness of our weakness he'll be our strength. Those who trust him will consequently endure.

"More than that, we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us."
-Romans 5:3-5