Hello All,
(Just a general disclaimer that I must insert here at the beginning. I am but a lay person, like most of you. And these weekly “thoughts” are but my own. Not the definitive word on this or any topic. Just my own conclusions derived from my own study and faith in God. The greatest hope I have for these weekly “thoughts” is to have them be a springboard for further study on your part. Not to be a weekly treatise to be blindly accepted. So, please read them with this intent, this motive in mind).
This week’s lesson from “The Adult Sabbath School Guide” is titled “Singing the Lord’s Song in a Strange Land”. A good lesson about “how does one live a life of faith in a strange land” (Quarterly for Sabbath). I found each days’ lesson to adequately show that “the psalmists are at times perplexed by the apparent absence of God and the flourishing of evil in the face of the good and sovereign Lord” (ibid). The lessons depict this struggle. But they also depict the honest (and often sinful) declarations of vengeance that come from the psalmist’s words. Sinful, because our God loves His enemies, as we are so directed.
In Thursday’s lesson, the quarterly picks-up this idea of retribution and portrays it as if it is really the way our God operates. “How does the promise of God’s judgment on the world and upon all its evil, give you comfort when so much evil now goes unpunished?” Let’s look again at this idea of retribution. Retributive justice... (or is it distributive justice?)
This is an issue that is not just semantics or the splitting of theological hairs. It is immensely pivotal. Simply stated: Is our God retributive? Is He an exacting judge that scrutinizes His children for any mistakes… for sins that need to be paid-for? Is He a Heavenly Bookkeeper who must assure that there is (or will be) appropriate punishment “paid-back” (the definition of retribution) to the sinful perpetrator… or paid-back to a suitable “Substitute”? Is God our punctilious Judge? Or is God our loving Father? A most vital question for all of us. Almost all of Christianity has pictured God as such a judge. Hence the popular “gospel”. That gospel? That Christ came to “pay the punishment price” for our sins so that we could be forgiven and be freed from the punishment that our sin brings upon us. That the Son needed to “atone” for our sins to the Father. That the Father punished the innocent Son so He would not need to punish guilty you (and me).
For example, in the flood, God was the direct agent of the drowning. Was this killing and destruction by God, punishment? Were these instances (and all other such instances) punishment by a God who insists He is “Love”? Is He a God of love… but? “But watch-out! You can push Me just so far and then retribution will fall”, He threatens??
Are there other explanations of this and other such destructions by God that does not do insult to the other parts of Scripture that assures us that God is not two-faced and that we can rest, assured in His love for us all? Assured of His love… a love that will never fail and never stop? A love from which nothing can separate us (Romans 8: 34-39)? I believe there is another such explanation. And that explanation is found in Christ Himself, who told us again and again that God is our Father and that the Father is just like the Son. By placing the Son as the agent in these acts of Old Testament destruction, do we see love as the motivating principle instead of retributive justice? Love to the very ones destroyed? I believe we do.
First of all, let us be clear about the death God Himself inflicts, the first death. This death He directly causes is not eternal death. It is but a “sleep”. Without a doubt, the Father has “put-to-sleep” many of His children over the millennia. And this euthanasia (from the Greek meaning “good-death”) is almost universally intended to end suffering. God is not out to “condemn the world (pay-us-back for all our wickedness) but that the world through Him might be saved” (John 3:17). All His actions and allowing are for this end, from His heart of love. How dare we claim “pay-back” as a motivation for our grand and glorious Father? Such motivation is fit for bullies and gangs, not for our all-wise and all-loving Father, as demonstrated in the life of His Son.
In my opinion, our Heavenly Father allows Himself to be seen as “Judge” to those who have yet to understand and know Him as revealed in His Son. Before this understanding and trust in our Father as revealed in Christ comes, “we are kept under guard by the law, kept for the faith (trust) which would afterward be revealed” (Galatians 3:23). Therefore, our Father as Judge with His “law, was our tutor to bring us to Christ, in order that we might be put right with God through faith (Galatians 3:24 GNB). Once we are “put right”, our initial understanding of God and law is a thing of the past. And once we are “put right” and have a “right” understanding and knowledge of God as our Father, we come to see all His actions in their true light… we see Him as He is. Not as a punitive judge who reacts to the sinfulness of His children, but as a loving Father who acts for the good of all His children to redeem them from the bondage of sin. He is the maker of man and woman, the Father of Lights, the Life-giver who would die to preserve us, His children. He is the source of love, the Father of the whole human family who would slay us rather than we should live as slaves of evil. A most loving act by our God of love.
The second death, the final consequence, the final separation from Him alone who is life is still future for all. For all but One. Christ experienced that final separation from the Father, on the cross. A separation so terrible that God Himself would come to demonstrate it… so that none need experience this separation for themselves. A death that was brought about by no direct intervention by the Father. On the contrary, Christ Himself proclaims from the cross exactly what the Father is doing to the Son… “Why have You forsaken Me” (Matthew 27:46; Mark 15:34)? “Why have you given me up… why have you handed me over”? A death that was brought about because the Son “was made to be sin who knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21). The Son was treated as if He was a hardened rebellious sinner who would never come home. And as such, the Father must sadly and sorrowfully (Genesis 6:6) give up His Son and let the Son go. The same as He will do for all His rebellious children who will not come home and want no part of their Father… ever. And when we are let-go, we will die. The natural consequence of despising Him who is Life and rejecting His love. And when we finally turn away, never to return, will our God exult over this loss? Will our Father gloat and rejoice over the eternal loss of His children? Will He say, “Finally, those sinners have been paid-back”! No no! He will weep along with all good men.
Both the first death of sleep and the second final death of separation are but loving measures from our God of love. The first death effected by a Father who knows what is best for the entire universe and loves the very victims of that necessary death. The second death allowed by a Father who cannot force His children to come home into union with Him. Both are not retributive punishment for wickedness from a retributive judge. This understanding belongs to those who do not fully know and understand our Father… yet. Both deaths are motivated by love, misunderstood by us self-centered, brain-damaged, rebellious children who do not trust our all-wise and all-loving Father.
This is really the debate issue between Job and his “friends”. The “friends” address Job’s suffering from the perspective of God as a retributive “just” judge. Job addresses his suffering from the perspective of God as a loving “righteous” Father. And in the conclusion of the story, God honors Job’s trust in this Divine Father/child relationship.
This is the over-arching reason why Christ came to this earth as one of us. To clear-up all the misunderstanding about our God. As with Job’s time, the religious establishment of Christ’s time did not understand (do we in our time?). They rejected the notion of a loving Father whose justice is distributive; in favor of an exacting judge whose justice is retributive. They did not want a familial relationship where sin and self are purged in the fire of Fatherly love and affectionate passion. They favored a legal relationship where innocence is legally declared and where the “fire” is escaped (thereby leaving self intact). They did not want to become intimate to the purging fire-of-love… to become “one” with the fire-of-love. The death of self with God was rejected in favor of a vicarious substitute who would die so that self-need not die. Oh, the lengths self will go to survive! Even to fabricate this bit of legal fiction, which vilifies the very character of our loving Father and Son in order to save self… at all costs.
So, as you study this week, place Christ in the Old Testament. Christ as the One who destroyed all but eight in the flood, who destroyed Sodom, Gomorrah and the cities of the plain, who opened-up the earth which swallowed Korah, Dathan and Abiram, who commanded the stoning of Achan and his whole family, and so forth. And then look into the all-loving face of Christ and ask Him “why? Why all the slaying, all the bloodshed, all the killing at-your-hand or at-your-command”? I pray you hear His response. I believe you will hear love unfathomable as His motive, not retribution or pay-back. A motivation of retribution is beneath our Lord. A motivation that we sinners fabricated. A motivation that needs to be discarded. Is our God a stern Judge or a loving Father? When people ask you of the blessed hope that burns in your heart, do you tell them of a retributive judge coming to pay-us-back for all we’ve done? Or do you tell them of a loving Father who is coming to take us Home… as many as who want Him? What do you say? I pray that God will commend you and me with the words He used of Job: “he has said of me what is right” (Job 42: 7,8).
With brotherly love,
Jim