Proverbs 12:13 ESV
An evil man is ensnared by the transgression of his lips, but the righteous escapes from trouble.
[https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=proverbs+12%3A13&version=ESV]
This verse continues the themes of the previous verse and of much of Proverbs: the self-destructive nature of evil and the fundamental consonance of righteousness with God’s world. These two tendencies are far from obvious to a casual or short-term inspection. Evil men prosper; good men are cast down. Men like Mao Zedong and Kim Il-sung live long, prosperous lives, and men of much superior virtue go unnoticed and unremarked into an early grave.
This world, though, is a world created by God for His own glory. In some sense, history is the original story, and like all great stories, it has an innate moral compass. Unlike all other stories, though, history’s Author is infinite and can therefore create a story without any loose ends or missed portions, where justice is done to all and mercy is pervasive.
Because God created the world, the world is conformed to God’s character. Sin has corrupted it, yes, but the fundamental cloth into which this world is woven is righteous and perfect. As Genesis 1 states many times, “It was very good.” Yes, that goodness has been marred and mauled, but evil cannot create. All that is wrong in the world is a perversion and a twisting of what is right. Ultimately, though, God wins. The world is made anew, made holy. To reiterate the point: all true stories have a fundamental, unchangeable inertia towards justice, towards blessing the righteous and damning the unrighteous, because all true stories are ultimately penned by God himself.
Why then do the wicked prosper? Why do good men die alone and in agony?
The wicked prosper, but that prosperity is a trap of their own making. Their lying tongues and evil acts bring them worldly prosperity, even false happiness, but in the end God brings all this against them as evidence. The ‘transgressions of their lips will ensnare them’; they will be brought low by the words of their own mouths.
This, of course, is their final fate. In truth, many wicked men see the beginning of their judgement long before their deaths. Some find their lives a constant torment. They flail in uncertain waters, having no mooring to hold firm to amid the turmoil of life, and they find no joy in the hollow things of this earth which burn and fade. Some fall in more obvious manners. They lose their worldly power and wealth, and the world around them consumes them, flaying them of all earthly things they desire. Some never had great wealth but instead lived lives most men would call humble. They hated the Lord God, turning to vain philosophies and false comforts in vain. Yet in the end all three of these have the same choice of fates: to turn to God and seek His mercy, should He will them to do so, or to run ever onward into destruction, fulfilling their own evil desires at the cost of their eternal souls.
This answer, of course, still leaves us to wonder why good men suffer.
The answers are several. Perhaps the simplest is the answer God offers Job: God is God, we are not, and our wisdom is not enough to call our suffering evil. Another answer rises from Job, from the law, and from the epistles. God disciplines His people. As Hebrews 12:11 says, “For the moment all discipline seems painful rather than pleasant, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it,” a verse which echoes Deuteronomy 8:5: “Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the Lord your God disciplines you.”
Ultimately, though, God’s people all have a single end. We, being justified by Christ’s sacrifice and clothed in His righteousness, having been adopted as His sons, will be sanctified- made holy- and glorified- made perfect, in short summary- that we may bring eternal praise to God in the light of His glory which is our great reward. In comparison to this final end, all the suffering of earth will not be as a feather is to a mountain or a lump of coal to the sun; it shall be so small as to be beyond metaphor, being a comparison of the infinite to the finite.
God bless.
Sanctuary Functional Medicine, under the direction of Dr Eric Potter, IFMCP MD, provides functional medicine services to Nashville, Middle Tennessee and beyond. We frequently treat patients from Kentucky, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Ohio, Indiana, and more... offering the hope of healthier more abundant lives to those with chronic illness.
