Over at my church’s youth blog some of us have been having a discussion on if and how God punishes. It arose originally from a statement that went something like this – well here, I’ll quote it for you, “Give thanks with a thankful heart, or some day God will take away all that is thank worthy, to make one see how thankful they were.“ Maybe I should not have stirred the pot because from the sounds of one youth’s comment, (“OMG! Do you people have lives! Geese look at those bloody paragraphs. And you guys are arguing about something that no body cares about!”) we are discussing stuff they don’t care about anyway. But it was another youth who started out commenting so here goes. And don’t get me wrong I am not doing this out of disrespect for our youth leader just it is a topic I am passionate about.
I am passionate about this because – if God is not a God of grace then I’m done for. I have experienced the grace of God and no arguments can change the reality of it for me. I could never return to trying to follow the rules (not because the rules are bad), or trying to work hard enough to earn my way, simply because I would fail again. Then, if I had to take the punishment I deserved for breaking the rules – well you can see maybe why I need to rely on grace.
My argument in this whole discussion is that when I look at Jesus’ life and teachings, I do not see him punishing. I see Jesus loving and forgiving – even those who by all rights under the law should have been punished by death. Actually, he is very hard on one group of people the Pharisees and hypocrites but exceptionally gracious to sinners (and I feel that I fit into this class).
This morning, I began reading the Gospel of John again. I just finished Luke and it sort of follows. Within the first chapter these are the words I encounter;” The Law was given through Moses, but loving and truth came through Jesus Christ.” (Verse 17NLT)
Then, I flip back to where I am reading in the Psalms and I read Psalm 103. 2Praise the Lord, O my soul. And forget none of His acts of kindness. 3He forgives all my sins. He heals all my diseases. 4He saves my life from the grave. He crowns me with loving and pity. 5He fills my years with good things and I am made young again like the eagle.(NLT)
I am not trying to imply that there is no punishment for wrong. Just, I believe that in the here and now of our lives that we punish ourselves, having to live with the consequences of our sin. I know there are instances where God punishes people outright at the time when they sin but these instances seem a lot more frequent in the Old Testament. Jesus’ stories of the Kingdom of God are full of forgiveness. Lives are changed by his compassion.
I think I know where the guys that I am in discussion are coming from. I was there too. One thing about age is that it gives you time to learn a lot. I can remember thinking, as a teen and young adult, that most “Christians” treated God cheaply – that they should take him more seriously and be more obviously devoted to God in their lifestyles. And of course for me that meant following certain rules – rules that I had grown up with that just seemed to be equivalent to proper living out of one’s faith. And these things that I believed Christians should do were good things involving service to others, treating others fairly, using resources economically, being generous, etc. I took my faith seriously, worked hard at behaving like a Christian and I thought that everyone else that called themselves Christians should do the same.
And then God started to work on me. He began to show me that following the rules is not faith. I began to learn about the artificiality of the rules that I and other Christians followed – or didn’t. Even doing good things does not add up to faith.
God used someone I had helped come back to faith to teach me. I had to sort out what was faith and what were just rules. I learned both good and bad things about myself. I saw that some of my legalism was detrimental to the living out of my faith and also deterred others. So, I began to change my understanding of just what was essential.
Then I found myself in a sinful situation that I did not want to get out of. Well, I did but didn’t at the same time. All my beliefs in the necessity of working hard to follow God, doing all the right things, I ignored – deliberately. Instead of punishment, which I certainly deserved, God rescued me, forgave me and life went on. But I carried the knowledge of my disobedience around like secret baggage. And other stuff I added on as I went. It has taken me years to dump it all, as it were, on Jesus and accept the fact that he loves me, really loves me, just as I am. And that what I do, how my children turn out, etc. doesn’t increase or decrease the love that God loves me with. I am passionate about this – this realization of the grace of God and what it feels like.
So, I wish all of my children and their friends, and all the youth in our congregation would encounter this God of incredible grace and love. That they would learn that they don’t need to haul around big garbage bags to hold past sins or put their new sins into. Kind of nice when God says to us, “Here, let me take care of that trash for you.”
God does not want them to come to him so he can punish them like they deserve. He just wants them to come and hand him their trash and be free of it.
If they do, I think we will not need to worry about the obedience to God. The obedience kind of flows out of a grateful heart. If they encounter this God of grace, and experience this kind of forgiveness, they will know that there is no other God like him.
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