He delivers by affliction

Do you want to hear a counter-intuitive verse? Try this one. Job 36.15: ‘He delivers the afflicted by their affliction and opens their ear by adversity.’

He delivers by affliction? What about from affliction? How does God deliver by affliction — doesn’t the fact that he’s using the affliction negate the idea of deliverance?

We need to be careful with Job 36.15, because Elihu speaks it and Elihu draws too strict of a connection between sin and suffering. But there is truth in what he says here in Job 36.15.

The truth is that God uses affliction to humble us and bring us back to a place of listening to him and being led by him. In so doing, he delivers us from our sin. He ‘opens our ears’ with adversity. C.S. Lewis said the same thing. In The Problem of Pain he wrote: ‘God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains; it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.’

The brother of Jesus said something similar and it has been helping me in recent days. James said that we should consider suffering joy because of the good things it produces in us (James 1.2-4).

Are you afflicted? Look to the fruit. Ask God to deliver you (from hard-heartedness, from deafness to him, from disobedience) by your affliction.

Posted by Stephen Witmer on Nov 7, 08:27 AM