(Mark 15:1-39)
Theren is relatively rare medical condition (estimated to occur in roughly one in every 25,000 people) called Channelopathy or Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP), which, if you are unfortunate enough to have it, means that you cannot feel pain at all.
At first, it might seem strange to describe people with this syndrome as unfortunate. But as Claire Resuggan, whose son Tyler has CIP, told one newspaper, it’s a nightmare: “Some people think it sounds great not feeling pain, it’s actually dreadful and life threatening.” By the age of eight, Tyler had visited the emergency room 27 times and fractured a bone for every year of his life, including his skull. It might not surprise you to learn that though the condition is rare in children, it is even more rare in adults.
Pain is a horrible thing. My wife suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and this, at times, reduces her capacity to take part in everyday life to almost nothing. Yet pain is also a vital part of life. Without it, we are left vulnerable and exposed. The capacity to feel pain is a good thing for human beings to have – even if the benefit lies largely by learning to flee it. Pain seems, ironically, to be something that is essential to human flourishing in the fallen world in which we live.
But imagine for a moment trying to explain the debilitating experience of something as simple as a toothache to someone like Tyler, who can put their hand in a pan of boiling water without discomfort. How would you describe it? It’s hard for any of us to understand something which we have no capacity to experience. How can someone who cannot suffer even begin to imagine what it’s like to be in pain?
Therefore, to say that God cannot suffer, as the title of my message does, will, when you stop to think about it, leave us with some questions. If God is unable to suffer, does that mean He is unable to understand our pain? How can He care if He doesn’t know what it’s like? We might start to imagine that God is monstrously indifferent to our suffering.
Such a view of God is not only unpalatable, it’s deeply unbiblical. In the scriptures we find a God who describes his relationship to his people in these terms:
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast
and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
Though she may forget,
I will not forget you!” (Isaiah 49:15)
This is hardly a picture of a cold, unfeeling deity. God invites His readers to imagine the most intensely protective and compassionate scene that they can – a mother feeding her baby – and insists that His own care for His people is deeper, more heartfelt, and more reliable. And every mother – including Tyler’s – knows what it is to suffer on behalf of her child.
Given that, it might surprise you that for almost the entire history of the church, there has been near unanimous agreement that God cannot suffer. During the early centuries of Christianity, all orthodox theologians and even most of their heretical opponents agreed that God was, to use the theological term, “impassable” – that is, unable to suffer.
Fast forward a Millennium or so to the doctrinal statements of the Reformation, and there too impassability was included as a fundamental characteristic of God’s being. For instance, the Westminster confession describes God as “without body, parts or passions.” It’s the “passions” bit we’re interested in here. (“impassable” means “without passions”). In the 21st century we tend to think of a “passion” as something positive, but it derives from the Latin word for suffering, and at that time generally referred to an emotional response that controls and masters you.
So, for almost all of church history there has been a basic consensus that God cannot suffer. How could Christians in days gone by insist on something that seems so counterintuitive to us?
We should remember that God’s inability to suffer was not, for our Christian forebears, an idea independent of or disconnected from everything else they believed to be true about Him. You can see it in the phrase I just quoted from the Confession, “without body, parts or passions.” Just as God doesn’t relate to space in the same way that we do (He has no body), His emotional life is not like ours either.
Perhaps it might help to think about it like this: how can the timeless being suffer? Suffering generally involves a response to something that happens to you. But as we have already seen, God does not sit inside the world of space and time like we do and respond to things that happen. He exists in a different way, but He relates to every moment of time and space perfectly and all at once.
A “passion,” as conceived of theologically, is not identical to an emotion; rather, it refers to a response that controls you. If the creation can produce an unwilling response in God himself, then, in some way and to some extent, He is subject to the creation at that point; has power over Him. In that case, there is a lot at stake in the question of whether or not God can suffer. To say that He is capable of it may seem fairly inconsequential, but in fact it raises some very big questions about God’s being.
It is vital to understand that to speak of God as impassable is not the same as to say that He is apathetic. He may not have passions, but He certainly has compassion. God is not indifferent to either our sin or our suffering. So, we mustn’t emphasize God’s impassability to the extent that we neglect everything else the Bible says about Him. God’s relationship to us is described in creaturely terms so that we can understand. We must not forget that He tells us that our rebellion grieves Him, our repentance delights Him, and our neediness moves Him to pity. He meant what He said when He proclaimed Himself as “The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.”
You see passions are an uncontrolled response to an external event, compassion is an expression of God’s internal (and eternal) being. It’s not that God doesn’t “feel” (if we can use that word) – it’s that what God “feels” flows from His character; it isn’t forced on Him from something outside of Himself. In this sense, He does not suffer (a word that comes from the Latin “to bear” or “to undergo”). The early Christians knew God to be supremely and unchangeably blessed – that is, perfectly fulfilled in every good thing. In other words (and at the risk of oversimplifying), He is as happy as it is possible to be. How then could He suffer?
Now, with all that said, we’re left with lots of questions: questions about how God relates to this broken world, and how we can say that He understands and cares about our suffering even while saying that our suffering does not challenge His blessedness. Yet, as with so many other things, there must be a point at which we stop and accept that there are some things we will never understand. That’s not to suggest that we have reached that point here, however!
I also understand that we are about to enter Holy Week – that time when we remember and reflect on that absolute truth that Jesus suffered for our sin. Jesus, who was, is and ever will be fully God, suffered. Yet, that truth changes nothing I have already said. And I will, as far as is humanly possible, resolve that apparent dichotomy next week.
For now, I want you to take away the fact that, even if it doesn’t initially feel like it, God’s impassability is supremely good news and should comfort you as you lay your head on your pillow at night.
In the first instance, it is surely a relief to be reminded once again, and to see from another angle, that God really is able to keep His promises. Grief and suffering is an unavoidable experience for anyone who lives in this broken world. There is no shame in that – the psalms are full of heartfelt and full-throated expressions of lament. In my life, I can think of times when such “passions” have made it impossible for me to fulfill my responsibilities. In God’s case, though, there is nothing in all creation that can deflect Him from His purposes for His people. He will never have an “off day” that’s been colored by a difficult conversation; He will never speak hastily through anger. The God who cannot suffer is dependable because He does not change. He can always help you, and His desire to help you will never wane. When you pray, He will always be ready to hear. When you fall and fail, He will be there to pick you up and to forgive. You can rest in Him and rely on Him. Always.
Secondly, God’s complete fulfillment in every good thing means that He always has the resources to be able to help us in the face of our sufferings. The compassion of God is seen then not in His suffering in solidarity with humankind, but in His ability to alleviate the causes of human suffering – sin. God’s unlimited resources of blessing mean that He can pour out blessing unceasingly and unstintingly. The supreme happy God will one day share that happiness perfectly with His children.
28Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The Lord is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
