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Pain and suffering are a reality in this world today, but it was not what God intended from the beginning of time. God created the world good (Genesis 1-2). However, humans rebelled against God’s good and perfect rule, and as a result, God’s good creation became cursed. This is called ‘The Fall’. ‘The Fall’ is pervasive, it affects everything (Genesis 3:14-19) – the serpent is cursed, the woman is cursed, the man is cursed, the very environment is cursed. God’s perfect harmony is disrupted, and this disruption spoils humanity’s relationship with God, humanity’s relationship with creation, humanity’s relationship with one another, and even the harmony within a person’s own body. You could say that even our DNA has been affected by the fall. All disease and pain came about as a result of ‘The Fall’, ultimately.

God would have been perfectly just and allow us to languish and die in our fallen state, but He sent a Saviour, Jesus, His only Son, to die on the cross, bearing the punishment for our sins, and to reverse the affects of ‘The Fall’. One of the effects of ‘The Fall’ that Jesus does reverse is that of sickness and disease. That is why in Isaiah 53:5, it says that “with his stripes we are healed”. Some people take this to mean that we can have perfect health in our lives even now. However, this view does not take into account the tension that exists between Jesus’ ascension to heaven, and His coming again to judge and restore creation – what theologians call, ‘The now and the not yet’. What this means is that Jesus has come to inaugurate God’s Kingdom on earth, so there is a current reality of God’s Kingdom on earth, ‘The now”. That is why Jesus says in Mark 1:15, “…the Kingdom of God is at hand…”. At the same time, while the Kingdom is inaugurated, it is not fully established here on earth. This awaits Jesus’ second coming. This is now the period where God gives an opportunity for all men everywhere to repent and believe in the Gospel and be saved. If God were to establish His Kingdom fully now, he would have to wipe out all sin, and all sinners in His judgement, meaning that there would be no more opportunity to be saved. That is why Jesus also teaches us to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done” (Matthew 6:10), and that the Book of Revelation sees the removal of all pain and suffering, and with that disease and death, as something that is going to happen in the future (Revelation 21:3-4), when Christ again to dwell fully with man.

Having said that, we do have a taste of God’s future Kingdom here on earth, by the presence of God’s Spirit. It is a sort of down-payment of things to come. The extent to which we can taste the future Kingdom here today, is entirely up to God – what we do know is that it cannot be the fulfillment of God’s Kingdom now. Otherwise, it makes no sense that people still die, and that Revelation 21 is future, and that people are still being given a chance to repent. When it comes to sickness and disease, God does tell us to pray for those who are sick, believing and asking that God would heal, as in James 5:15. James is asking us to trust God, and entrust to Him all our afflictions. He is not however teaching that all illnesses will be healed if people just have enough faith, or pray with enough conviction – that is a pervasive, but false teaching that has infected churches everywhere. Healing, when it does come, is always a gift from God, and we do well to remember that. Whether He gives it, or withholds it, it is always for our ultimate good, and we can have joy in God, even in the midst of suffering (Romans 8:28).