This is Part 4 of 4 parts answering the question, “How can you be released from the suffering God allows?” in the larger question, “Why does a loving God allow suffering?”

There Is A Resurrection Body Coming

Whether through the Rapture or through death, all Christians will receive a new resurrection body, which will suffer no more. Paul explained this transition,

For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.  ² For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from heaven, ³ if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. ⁴ For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. (2 Cor. 5:1-4 NKJ)

Because God made this body to come, you will dwell in it suffering-free. You will be released from the trials of this life and transformed into the next – in fact, that is a promise! You will no longer be confined or constrained by the things of this world – your citizenship is in heaven, so your resurrection body will be similar to His,

²⁰ For our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, ²¹ who will transform our lowly body that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working by which He is able even to subdue all things to Himself. (Phil. 3:20-21 NKJ)

Discussion Questions:

1) What do you think about when you are suffering or in some form of affliction?

2) How easy is it to “fix your eyes” on the Lord Jesus AND KEEP them there? How can and do you maintain this practice?

3) How would you come alongside someone who is suffering and help him focus on the Lord and trust Him instead of pursuing ways to find relief?

4) What passages of Scripture give you hope while you are in suffering? How could you use them to help another person?

5) If death is the believer’s means of release from all suffering, how do you help one who just wants to get the pain over with and end their life? How do you help him see he needs “to be still” and know that the Lord will be exalted?

¹Toussaint, Stanley. “Suffering in Acts and the Pauline Epistles,” Why, O God. (Wheaton: Crossway, 2011), p. 191.

²Ibid., p. 189.