Future Punishment And The Bible # 3

Future Punishment And The Bible # 3

Such has always been the effect of the doctrine when proclaimed in power and pity and love with the fire-touched lips of holy men and women. But let met in their folly imagine themselves wiser and more pitiful and just than God, and so begin to tone down this doctrine, then conviction for sin ceases, the instantaneous and powerful conversion of souls is laughed at, the supernatural element in religion is called fanaticism, the Holy Spirit is forgotten, and the work of God comes to a standstill.

But some one objects that God is not just to punish a man for ever for the sins he commits in the short period of a lifetime. And thus speaking he thinks of certain acts of sin such as lying, cheating, swearing, murder, or adultery. But it is not for these sins that men are sent to hell. God has pardoned multitudes who were guilty of all these sins, and has taken them home to Heaven.

All men are sent to hell by the weight and pull of their self-chosen evil and discordant nature and character, because they will not repent and turn from sin to God, but choose to remain filled with unbelief, which begets pride and self-will; consequently they are out of harmony with, and are in antagonism to God and all His humble, obedient servants; they will not come to Jesus, that they may be saved from sin and receive a new heart and life. They are dead in trespasses and sins, and they refuse the Life-Giver. Jesus says: "Ye will not come unto Me that ye might have life." Again He says: "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light."

If sinners would come to Christ and receive the gracious, loving life He offers, and allow Him to rule over them, God would not impute their trespasses to them, but would forgive all their iniquities, and their sins would drop off as the autumn leaves from the trees in the field.

But men will not come. They refuse the Saviour; they will not hear His voice; they turn away from His words; they remain indifferent to His entreaties; they laugh or mock at His warnings; they walk in disobedience and rebellion; they trample on His holy commandments; they choose darkness instead of light; they prefer sin to holiness, their own way to God's way; they resist the Holy Spirit: they neglect and reject Christ crucified for them - and for this they are punished.

All this stubborn resistance to God's invitations and purposes may be linked to a life of external correctness and even apparent religiousness. Not until all His judgments and warnings, His entreaties and dying love have failed to lead sinners to repentance and acceptance of the Saviour, and not until they have utterly refused the eternal blessedness of the holy, does God cease to strive with sinners and to follow them with tender mercies.

By obstinate persistence in sin men come to hate the things that God loves, and to love the things that God hates; thus they become as dead to God's will, to holiness, and to His plans for them, as the child destroyed by smallpox is dead to the hopes and plans of its mourning father and mother. And as such parents in sorrow put away the pestilence-breeding body of their dead child, so God puts sinners, in their utter spiritual corruption, away from His holy presence and from the glory of His power.

How could God more fully show His estimate of sin, with His love and pity and longing desire to save the sinner, than by dying for sinful man?

God has done that. But the sinner tramples on Christ's Blood, rejects His infinite mercy, resists His infinite love, and so hardens himself into an eternal sinner; hence he deserves eternal punishment.

If sin is such a crime - and the Bible teaches that it is - then God, as moral Governor of the universe, having provided a perfect way, to place sinners under sentence of punishment. And when God does so my conscience takes God's part against my sensibilities, and pronounces Him just and holy.

Finally, for a man to say, "I believe in Heaven, but I do not believe in hell," is much as though he should say, "I believe in mountains, but not in valleys; in heights, but not in depths." We cannot have mountains without valleys, we cannot have heights without depths, and we cannot have moral and spiritual heights without the awful possibility of moral and spiritual depths, and the depths are always equal to the heights.

The man who chooses the things God chooses, loves the things God loves, and hates the things God hates, and who, with obedient faith, takes up his cross and follows Jesus, will go to the heights of God's holiness and happiness and Heaven; but the man who goes the other way will land in the dark, bottomless abysses of hell. Every man chooses his own way!

Joseph Cook, closed his address at the Chicago Parliament of Religion with these words, which you may put on my tombstone:

Holiness, or Heaven lose.
If what Heaven loves I hate,
Shut for me is Heaven's gate. 
Endless sin means endless woe,
Into endless sin I go.
If my soul from reason rest
Takes from sin its final rent
As the stream its channel grooves,
And within that channel moves;
So does habit's deepest tide
Groove its bed and there abide.
Light obeyed increaseth light;
Light resisted bringeth night.
Who shall give me will to choose,
If the love of light I lose?
Speed, my soul, this instant yield,
Let the light its sceptre wield
While thy God prolongs His grace,
Haste thee to His holy face,
HOW SHALL WE ESCAPE, IF WE NEGLECT SO GREAT SALVATION?
WHATSOEVER A MAN SOWETH, THAT SHALL HE ALSO REAP."

~Samuel Logan Brengle~

(The End)