(upbeat music) - Pastor John, here's a question from the news from a listener who asks this. Pastor John, thank you for the podcast. I'm struggling with the story of Jerica Bolin in Appleton, Wisconsin. There's an enormous amount of support for this 14-year-old girl who is terminally ill and has decided to take herself off life support in order to end her life faster.

While I am compassionate about her situation and her pain, I am also unsure about whether she has the authority to speed her death like this. Pastor John, please help us with this question biblically. What would you say? - As I've been giving some thought to what I might be able to say that would be helpful in this regard to the Jerica Bolin situation and her incredible suffering, I've thought that perhaps I won't rehearse the arguments, at least not all of the arguments, for why no human being should take his own life since I've tried to do that in several other places to give those biblical foundations.

Like a couple of years ago, there was another situation where we tried to deal with that. And people can go to the website, desireandgod.org, and type in euthanasia, and there's four or five podcasts and articles there about it. So instead, I thought I might be more helpful if I briefly address only one of the absolutely crucial underlying issues, namely the way that God intends for a Christian to deal with ongoing pain.

This is one of the huge reasons, probably the biggest reason, that people desperately want to end their lives. They want to be done with suffering, which, of course, is understandable. The very meaning of pain is that we don't want to have it and we want to be rid of it.

That's why we call it pain and not pleasure. One of the reasons I want to say a few words about that particular point is that even this past weekend, I was out in California talking to very educated, prosperous, professional, technologically savvy, mainly young people, and I was told more than once with illustrations that they had been tremendously helped in dealing with totally unexpected, big suffering in their lives, like, for example, a child living on a ventilator who's not gonna live till she's probably beyond six years old, being told by these young people, people in their 20s and early 30s, that they had been helped by being prepared for suffering biblically and theologically before the suffering came.

And I say it that way because I know that in the very moment of agony, teaching and preaching and counseling are generally not what people either need or can even handle. All that needs to happen earlier while the mind is clear and the body is not being wracked with pain.

And I've seen in the last 45 years, one experience after the other, so many of them, in people's lives where a biblical orientation on suffering has in fact served profoundly to make the suffering endurable and even significant, even if it's not easy. So here are a couple of those aspects of such a biblical, theological, God-centered vision of suffering, all of which are deeply connected with Christ's sufferings, which he endured, not mainly so that we would escape suffering in this life, but that we would endure suffering in the hope of everlasting and exquisite pleasure forever and ever in the resurrection.

So I'm just gonna mention two things and illustrate. The first is the Bible teaches us to relieve as much suffering as we can, both in this world and especially in the next, but it's this world that we're focusing on. When I say we don't have a right to take our lives, I don't mean we don't have a right to minimize suffering, trying to help people get rid of pain.

That's the first thing. The second thing is that the Bible teaches us to squeeze as much Christ-exalting meaning out of our suffering as we can and shows us how to do it. So let me take those one at a time. Of course, Jesus' command to love your neighbor as you love yourself or to do unto others as you'd have them do unto you, isn't that enough to impel us to relieve other people's suffering as much as we can?

Because we don't wanna suffer, and so we wanna help other people not suffer. But let's be more specific. 1 Timothy 5:23, Paul says to Timothy, "No longer drink only water, but use a little wine for the sake of your stomach and your frequent ailments." Now I was thinking this morning about that term frequent ailments.

Doesn't the word frequent translate into chronic? They're frequent. They keep coming back for poor Timothy. And I think the word ailments, weaknesses, implies at least distracting discomfort, if not real pain. Paul wouldn't bother telling Timothy to work on these with some natural healing efforts if they weren't painful and disabling.

So I think this passage is a clear illustration of using God-given natural means, even medical means of eliminating as much discomfort and pain as we can. So that's the first thing to say about pain. None of us wants it. That's the meaning of pain, and therefore we should help each other get rid of it if we can.

And the second thing is that the Bible shows us we should squeeze as much Christ-exalting significance out of our pain as we can. Oh my, we need hours to talk about that and meditate on that. So let me just point quickly to four passages that people can take away and meditate on and see whether God doesn't shape their heart and their mind so that when the time comes for their chronic pain, they'll be ready.

Number one, 1 Peter 1, 6 and 7, "In this you rejoice," and he's just given about, I count, 10 reasons for enormous joy in the future for the Christian, and then he says, "In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved with various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, which though perishes is tested by fire, may redound, may be found, may result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ." Only God knows when our pain is necessary.

He uses the word necessary. Only God knows how to test us with fire so that our goal, our faith, will be purified and not destroyed. But that's the goal. His goal is purification. Satan's goal is destruction. And so we lay hold on the promise that suffering may be necessary, and it's various, and it's grievous, and it is ultimately gonna result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus.

Number two, 2 Corinthians 1:9, "We were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself, but that was to make us rely not on ourselves, but on God who raises the dead." One of the reasons or designs, one of the designs in all of our despairing suffering is so that we would be thrown onto the invisible arms of God.

We can't see them. We can't physically feel them. And so all we can do, according to Paul here, is trust the God who raises the dead, which is what the design of that experience was for Paul. Third, 2 Corinthians 4:16, "So we don't lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day for this light momentary," which means horrible and lifelong, "affliction is working for us the eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." Now, that text does not say that the affliction is easy.

It doesn't say that being renewed day by day is easy while the outer man is being eaten away by some horrific disease that we can hardly speak of, it's so terrible. But it does say that this is possible because we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

The almighty God, the power of the Holy Spirit, the blood of Christ, the forgiveness of sins, the victory over Satan, victory over hell, hope of everlasting joy, those are the unseen things that we squeeze onto and squeeze meaning and significance. And the last one I would mention is Romans 8, 22, 23.

We know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now, and not only the creation, but we ourselves who have the first fruits of the Spirit groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. None of the promises of God keep us from groaning in our pain, but they do keep our groaning from becoming bitterness and despair.

They turn meaninglessness and misery into waiting for glory. Now, I know those two observations are not the totality of the answer to the question about physician-assisted suicide. And so I hope our listeners will go and read about Brittany Maynard two years ago and what I wrote there and what other people have written.

But oh, how crucial it is to get these two things firmly in place in our hearts before our day comes. Number one, it is right and good to try to reduce pain in this life and the next. And two, it is right and possible with God's help because of Christ and because of hope to squeeze as much Christ-exalting meaning out of suffering as we can.

- Amen, necessary words. Thank you, Pastor John. And for more details about this podcast or to catch up on past episodes or to subscribe to the audio feed, even to send us a question of your own if something in the news has caught your attention, go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

And tomorrow we're gonna talk about life hacking. Yes, life hacking. Our age is abuzz over the latest tricks and shortcuts to productivity and hacks to everyday life. And tomorrow we're gonna focus on life hacking gone wrong. How does it go wrong? We'll look at the life story of one prominent individual in which it did.

You don't wanna miss it. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with longtime author and theologian and pastor John Piper. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you tomorrow. (silence) (silence) (silence) Thanks for watching.