When You Wonder: ‘What Did I Do to Deserve This?’

“You reap what you sow.”

When my life—or the lives of those around me—is going well, this paraphrase of Galatians 6:7 sounds like affirmation for a job well done. My confidence soars as my work thrives and my community flourishes, which motivates me to keep up the good work.

But on days when I face intense suffering and loss, “you reap what you sow” sounds like a thundering black cloud of condemnation. I wonder if I’m reaping the consequences of a specific sin.

Bewildered, I start trying to figure it out. Was it something I said, a selfish decision, or a sinful attitude that’s caused all this pain?

In the past, I’ve concluded that whether things are going well or going south, it’s probably a consequence for actions or attitudes. And sometimes it is, as my sin causes struggles for me and those around me.

But sometimes, this conclusion involves a truckload of faulty assumptions.

Tit for Tat

Often, I’m assuming that good things happen to me because God is blessing me for doing good. And if something bad happens, God is trying to teach me a lesson to correct some mistake I’ve made. If I can figure out what I’ve done, I may be able to turn things around so all can be well again.

This is exactly what Job’s friends think. They vigorously assert that God doesn’t reject good people; he blesses them. And God doesn’t help bad people; he punishes them—all their hopes come crashing down and are brought to nothing (Job 8:20). It’s simple cause and effect. You do bad, and bad things happen to you. You do good, and good things happen to you. That’s the way God works.

There’s just one problem: Job hasn’t done anything wrong. He hasn’t forgotten God, and God hasn’t rejected him. Yet Job loses everything—all his children, livestock, wealth, health, and reputation. He’s left empty-handed.

He isn’t being punished. But it hurts like crazy.

He isn’t being punished. But it hurts like crazy.

Oozing with sores, Job sits in ashes and weeps. His friends keep telling him to get his act together and make things right so God will restore everything (Job 8:5-7).

In unbearable agony and confusion, Job has so many questions: “Why is God letting this happen to me? Why is God so mad at me? Why has he abandoned me?” He can’t figure it out. It doesn’t make any sense.

Suffering for Good

The truth is, Job is a target—not of God’s displeasure but of the Devil’s malevolence (1:6–2:10). Job isn’t suffering because he’s done anything wrong but because he hasn’t. He isn’t reaping what he’s sown. He’s reaping the opposite.

God allows the Devil to test Job, but the test isn’t a lesson for Job to learn. It’s a test to showcase Job’s devoted faith. Put pure gold in the fire, and it comes out proven pure. Put genuine faith through suffering, and it comes out proven genuine (1 Pet. 1:6–7).

But Job doesn’t know this is why he’s suffering so terribly. His friends assume he’s reaping what he’s sown. Job assumes God has turned against him. But they’re all mistaken, and it leads them to painfully wrong conclusions.

We see this same mistake in the New Testament, when Jesus’s disciples ask if a man’s blindness was caused by his sin or his parents’ sin. Neither, Jesus answers, but “that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:2–3).

This principle plays out again during the crucifixion, when people assume Jesus is getting what he deserves (Isa. 53:4). And as Jesus hangs on the cross, he—like Job—feels abandoned by God (Matt. 27:46). But Jesus isn’t reaping what he’s sown—instead, he’s reaping what humanity has sown. Though completely innocent, Jesus is attacked by the Devil and by people.

God is being glorified through the suffering both Job and Jesus endure. Sometimes that’s what’s going on with our suffering too. 

Job shows us that God is worthy of love and devotion even when life is extremely hard and doesn’t make sense—even when God doesn’t make sense. And even more, Jesus motivates us to be faithful because he wasn’t merely an innocent sufferer, but in his suffering and death, he paid the penalty for all sin. 

Discern Your Suffering

“You reap what you sow” is a general principle, not an absolute law of cause and effect. It’s generally true that sin comes with consequences. If you commit adultery, you may blow up your marriage. If you steal, you may go to jail. If you hate, God may prick your conscience until you’re finally miserable enough to confess, repent, and start loving your neighbor.

But not all suffering is a direct discipline or a lesson to be learned. The apostle Peter says, “Those who suffer according to God’s will should commit themselves to their faithful Creator and continue to do good” (1 Pet. 4:19, NIV).

God is being glorified by the faithfulness of both Job and Jesus through the suffering they endure.

That verse reveals that sometimes our suffering is an assignment from God designed to showcase the authenticity of our trust and devotion to him despite how badly things are going. This suffering magnifies God’s greatness and worth. Those bad things are God’s good purpose for us, a means for him to be glorified in us.

How do we know the difference? If we’re suffering due to sin, God will let us know. He won’t keep us guessing. His Spirit will convict and guide us toward repentance, especially if we ask him to (John 16:8).

But if, like Job or the blind man, we can’t figure out what we may have done to deserve what we’re going through, then God may be demonstrating the genuineness of our faith and glorifying himself by cultivating greater spiritual maturity in us (Heb. 12:6–11). As Henri Nouwen says, “When we are crushed like grapes, we cannot think of the wine we will become.”

Through this crushing, we experience the promise of Psalm 126:5 (NIV): “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.” Instead of our pain-filled tears being signs of God’s discipline, they may be seeds for a harvest of future joy.

We may not experience the fullness of that joy until we arrive in heaven, but like Jesus who endured suffering “for the joy that was set before him” (Heb. 12:2), we can persevere in hope, knowing that “weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning” (Ps. 30:5, NLT).