#33 If God Cared For Us, He Would Ward Off All Evil From Us: Wrong!

For the purpose of comprehending this consolation the better, we will now speak in general of crosses and sorrows. Our reason assumes that God, if He cared for us and loved us, would ward off all evil from us, whereas now troubles and miseries crowd in upon us from every side; hence the conclusion is that God has either forgotten us, or else He has become our enemy and cares no longer for us; for surely if it were otherwise He would deliver us from our grief and distress. But such thoughts are wicked, and since they are very apt to arise, we must guard against them by applying the Word in true faith, and by following its precepts and not our own thoughts. If we judge our experiences in daily life aside from the light which the Word of God casts upon them, we shall inevitably become victims of error. What says the Word in this connection? Not even a single hair shall fall from our head against the will of God. If we accept this declaration in earnest faith, we will conclude that neither the devil nor the world, no matter how powerful they are, can harm the Christian in the least, if it is not God’s will that they should do so. Christ makes this plain in the parable of the sparrows; these are really useless birds, which do more injury than good, and yet not one of them shall fall to the ground and perish unless it be the will of the Father in heaven, Matt. 10.  Now, if we have any confidence whatever in the words of Jesus, we must conclude from this that God will certainly concern Himself much rather for men than for many sparrows; He therefore will guard them well and will not permit the devil and the world to harm a single one of His Christians against His will. If troubles do come, we infer that God has first given His consent; for against His knowledge they could not arise. Let us well remember this truth, so that we do not think, when evils surround us, that we are forsaken of God; for He has not forgotten where we are, nor is He ignorant of our condition, though He permits sorrows to invest us.  (Luther’s House Postil, Third Sunday after Easter, Volume 2, p. 537)