Why Trials Come

Well then, though we say that trial is twofold, that is, in prosperity and in adversity, you must know that all people are tried in three different ways: often to test them, sometimes to improve them, and in some cases because their sins deserve it. To test them: so we read that the blessed Abraham and Job and many of the saints endured countless troubles. So too Moses says this to the people in Deuteronomy: “And you shall remember all the way by which the Lord your God has led you for forty years through the desert, to afflict you and to test you, so that what was in your heart might be made known, whether you would keep his commandments or not.” And this, which we find in the Psalms: “I tested you at the waters of strife.” And to Job: “Do you think I have spoken for any other reason than that you might be seen to be righteous?” [a]

To improve them: God disciplines his righteous ones for some small and pardonable sins, or to raise them to a higher state of purity, and hands them over to various trials. He does this so that he may purge away all their unclean thoughts and, to use the prophet’s word, the “dross” that he sees has gathered in their hidden places. In this way he may send them on, like pure gold, to the judgment to come, allowing nothing to remain in them for the fire of judgment to find when it later searches them with the torments of punishment. As this saying goes: “Many are the troubles of the righteous.” And: “My son, do not neglect the discipline of the Lord, and do not grow weary when you are rebuked by him. For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and whips every son whom he receives. For what son is there whom his father does not correct? But if you are without discipline, which all share in, then you are illegitimate children, and not sons.” And in the Revelation: “Those whom I love, I reprove and discipline.” To these people, under the figure of Jerusalem, Jeremiah speaks these words in the person of God: “For I will utterly destroy all the nations among which I scattered you, but I will not utterly destroy you. I will discipline you with judgment, so that you may not seem innocent to yourself.” And David prays for this life-giving cleansing when he says: “Test me, O Lord, and try me; turn my inmost parts and my heart.” Isaiah too, knowing well the value of this trial, says: “O Lord, correct us, but with judgment, not in your anger.” And again: “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for you were angry with me; your anger has turned away, and you have comforted me.”

But the blows of trial also fall as a punishment for sins, as when the Lord threatens to send plagues on the people of Israel: “I will send the teeth of beasts on them, with the fury of creatures that crawl on the ground.” And: “In vain have I struck your children; they have not accepted correction.” In the Psalms too: “Many are the scourges of the sinners.” And in the Gospel: “See, you have been made well. Sin no more, so that nothing worse happens to you.” It is true that we also find a fourth way. We know on the authority of Scripture that some sufferings are brought on us simply to show the glory of God and his works, as these words of the Gospel say: “Neither this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God might be shown in him.” And again: “This sickness is not to death, but for the glory of God, so that the Son of God may be glorified by it.”

There are also other kinds of vengeance, with which some who have gone beyond all bounds of wickedness are struck down in this life. So we read that Dathan and Abiram, or Korah, were punished. Above all there are those of whom the apostle speaks: “That is why God gave them up to shameful passions and to a depraved mind.” This must be counted worse than all other punishments. For of these the psalmist says: “They do not share in the toils of men, nor will they be scourged like other men.” They are not worthy to be healed by the Lord’s life-giving visitation and by plagues in this world, since “in despair they have given themselves up to sensuality, to the working of every error, to impurity.” By hardening their hearts, and by growing used and accustomed to sin, they have gone beyond cleansing in this brief life and beyond punishment in the present world. These are people rebuked by the holy word of the prophet: “I destroyed some of you, as God destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, and you were like a burning stick snatched from the fire; yet you did not return to me, says the Lord.” And by Jeremiah: “I have killed and destroyed your people, and yet they have not turned back from their ways.” And again: “You have struck them, and they have not grieved; you have crushed them, and they refused to accept correction. They have made their faces harder than rock; they have refused to return.” And the prophet, seeing that all the remedies of this life will have been applied in vain to heal them, and already, as it were, despairing of their life, declares: “The bellows have failed in the fire; the smelter has melted in vain, for their wicked deeds are not burned away. Call them rejected silver, for the Lord has rejected them.” And the Lord laments that he has applied this healing cleansing by fire to no purpose to those who are hardened in their sins. He speaks of Jerusalem, crusted all over with the rust of her sins, when he says: “Set it empty on the burning coals, so that it may grow hot and its bronze may melt, and let its filth be melted inside it. Great pains have been taken, and its thick rust has not gone out of it, not even by fire. Your uncleanness is detestable, because I wanted to cleanse you, and you have not been cleansed from your filth.” So, like a skillful physician who has tried every cure that could save the patient and sees that no remedy is left to apply to the disease, the Lord is in a manner overcome by their wrongdoings and is forced to give up that kindly discipline of his. And so he declares against them: “I will no longer be angry with you, and your jealousy has departed from you.” But there are others whose hearts have not grown hard by long continuance in sin, and who do not need that most severe and, if I may call it so, burning remedy; for their salvation the instruction of the life-giving word is enough. Of them it is said: “I will improve them by the hearing of their suffering.”

We are well aware that there are still other reasons for the punishment and vengeance brought on those who have sinned grievously. It is not to make amends for their crimes or to wipe out what their sins deserve, but so that the living may be struck with fear and amend their lives. We plainly see that these punishments were brought on Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and Baasha the son of Ahijah, and Ahab and Jezebel, when God’s rebuke declares: “See, I will bring evil on you, and I will cut off your descendants, and I will kill every male of Ahab’s, both the one shut up and the last in Israel. And I will make your house like the house of Jeroboam the son of Nebat, and like the house of Baasha the son of Ahijah, because of what you have done to provoke me to anger, and for making Israel sin. The dogs also will eat Jezebel in the field of Jezreel. If Ahab dies in the city, the dogs will eat him; but if he dies in the field, the birds of the air will eat him.” And there is this, threatened as the greatest threat of all: “Your dead body will not be brought to the tomb of your fathers.” It was not that this short and momentary punishment would be enough to purge away the blasphemous inventions of the man who first made the golden calves and led the people into their lasting sin and their wicked separation from the Lord, or the countless shameful sacrileges of the others. It was so that, by their example, the fear of the punishments they dreaded might fall on others as well. For those others thought little of the life to come, or even disbelieved in it altogether, and would be moved only by thinking about things present. By this proof of his severity they might acknowledge that the majesty of God on high does not fail to care about human affairs and people’s daily doings, and so, through what they greatly feared, they might see more clearly that God is the one who repays all their deeds.

It is true that we find some people receiving the same sentence of death in this world even for lighter faults, the same sentence with which those men were punished who, as we said before, were the authors of a blasphemous falling away. So it happened to the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath, and to Ananias and Sapphira, who through the sin of unbelief kept back part of their property. It was not that the guilt of their sins was equal. It was because they were the first to be caught in a new kind of wrongdoing. So it was right that, as they had given others an example of sin, they should also give them an example of punishment and fear. Then anyone who tried to copy them would know that, even if his punishment was put off in this life, he would be punished in the same way they were at the trial of the judgment to come. And since, in our wish to run through the different kinds of trials and punishments, we seem to have wandered somewhat from our subject, let us now return to it once more. We were saying that the perfect man will always remain steadfast in either kind of trial.