We know God is a moral, virtuous, and holy God. And we also know that we’ve fallen short of what God requires of us. So, justice demands we must be punished. But the punishment we deserve would put an end to us. Why hasn’t God punished us yet, if not to give us the opportunity to repent? This gives us hope, and this hope is confirmed by what the Bible teaches.
We are guilty!
God has rendered a guilty verdict on mankind because “light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil” (John 3:19) So, he deserves condemnation and eternal punishment. But wait, He hasn’t punished us yet. Why not? Let’s see the answer that the God of love provides.
We should all expect to be punished by God since we know God is holy and we are not. We don’t know anyone who hasn’t been afflicted by a guilty conscience.
No one has always, if ever, done what is right. God not only judges our outward behavior, He also judges our words and the innermost thoughts of our heart. If we have not loved God with all of our heart, with all of our soul, with all of our strength, and with all of our mind, we have sinned against God. And if we have not loved our neighbor as we have loved ourselves, we are guilty of disobeying God’s commandments and deserve to be punished.
If we break even one of God’s commandments just one time, it’s as if we have broken them all. To earn God’s approval, we must be as perfectly righteous as He is. God does not judge you based on how well your life compares to the lives of other people, and He does not look to see if your “good” outweighs your “bad”. God’s standard is perfection. You’re not entitled to any mistakes.
Why has God not yet taken out His punishment on us?
Since we can’t live up to God’s holy standard, we should expect to be punished. But we haven’t been punished yet. In fact, sinners feel so little punishment that they think something is wrong if they suffer at all. And when they do experience any pain or suffering, they even tend to think there’s a so called problem of pain. Some of the best minds through the ages has wrestled with this apparent problem. Certainly, there is no problem with pain, the problem is the problem of pleasure. That we suffer is no question. The problem is why we don’t always suffer. Pain should be expected. What’s amazing is that we have so little of it. This shows just how shallow our self-judgment can be.
So, why doesn’t God deal with us as we deserve to be judged by His absolute holiness? God’s divine forbearance is amazing, and it gives us hope. We’re not in hell now. God has not taken vengeance on us yet. In Scripture, He says “Vengeance is mine, I will repay”, but He hasn’t repaid yet. So, there’s hope for us now. We know that when He does repay vengeance, that will be the end of us. Why is there so much pleasure in a life when God is infinitely angry with the wicked every day?
God’s forbearance give us time to repent of our sin
Divine forbearance gives us the opportunity to repent, and we know that must be the reason for God’s forbearance. How could it be anything else? God isn’t tolerating sin; He’s not indifferent, and He can’t be pleased with the wicked just because He lets them prosper. God must be giving us a chance to escape His wrath. We must be ashamed of what we do and who we are, since we know these evil thoughts and actions come out of a evil heart. And we must repent of it.
This hope is greatly encouraged by the good news that the Bible speaks about. It gives us the information we need, that while we have this opportunity to repent, salvation is available. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.” Nature could lead you to believe, God may be giving us time to repent, but how can we repent? How would repentance remove the guilt? You would never get the answer to these questions from nature. But you could hope that there would be something like that. It would have to come from Him. But what you wouldn’t know is if He would do it, and what you would never be able to guess is how He would do it.
God must provide an acceptable remedy for man’s sin problem
There would have to be a sacrifice for punishment. God is holy. He can’t clear the guilty. As a sinner I have to be punished, but how can I be punished and be saved? Punishment is damnation. In order to do save me, God would have to provide an acceptable substitute who can undergo my punishment, survive it, and save me. This substitute would have to be a man in order to suffer for me, but He would also have to be God, who could take my punishment and survive it. He would have to be God as well as man. There is only one Person who has ever lived that meets those job requirements and that is Jesus Christ, the one who has proven to be both truly man and truly God.
Who would ever guess that a Person in the Godhead would unite humanity with deity and suffer in that humanity, and yet as deity survive the wrath of the Godhead? When you read about it in the Bible, you just know it has to be true. It can’t be fictional. It’s so strange, so wonderful, so beyond human anticipation that it has to be a God-given reality.
So Christ redeems some, but not others. We know this because some people accept Him and others do not accept Him. If they spurn the only substitute, the only savior who died so that they may be saved forever, they’re asking to undergo the wrath of God themselves. And they’re going to get their request.
I’m inviting you to place your faith in Jesus Christ. I ask you to believe it because it’s true, and I hope to prove it to you beyond any doubt in the upcoming posts.
Discover more about God and our relationship to Him
If you’re now ready to know what your relationship is before God, Ask yourself two very important questions. First, are you sure that you’ll go to heaven when you die? Secondly, are you certain why God should let you into heaven? If you don’t know for sure, you can settle that matter today. Visit my post, How to Begin Your Life Over Again and you’ll know where and how you’ll spend eternity.
And for crystal clear YouTube presentations of the gospel message from several trusted sources, click here.