Skip to main content

Love and Punishment


And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished....” (Exodus 34:6-7a)

 

       How would you describe God? For me, the 3 "omnis" come to mind: omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient. Today's passage is God's non-visual selfie. It begins with "the Lord" repeated. Repetitions in Hebrew literature tend to indicate emphasis. God isn't just any lord, He is the Lord on an order of magnitude.  On a scale of 1 to 10, He's a hundred, or a million, or infinity. "Lord of lords" might be another way to express this.
        After expressing His loftiness...His grandeur... His transcendence, He immediately expresses His closeness... His immanence. He is compassionate and gracious and slow to anger. These aren't things He does. They are things He is. The things He does come next: He maintains love, forgives, and punishes.
     This is where  some people get confused.  They believe that punishment is inconsistent with compassion, grace, and slow anger. They don't associate punishment with love, faithfulness or forgiveness, but punishment is connected with these things.
     Imagine what it would be like if every time you did something, no one responded or even noticed. What would it be like if nothing you did or said mattered? Imagine, you kill someone and ten minutes later you meet them on the street. They have no injuries, no memory of your having done anything. You steal something, and before you can blink, the person from whom you stole it has it again. Unless there are real consequences for actions, including punishment, you don't exist. You aren't real and what you do isn't real. For God to love, He must also treat you as real and your actions as having consequences, whether good or bad.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
On the Calendar: St. Patrick's Day



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The List

              Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,   through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand. And we boast in the hope of the glory of God. Not only so, but we also glory in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;   perseverance, character; and character, hope. And hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us. (Romans 5:1-5)           Think about it. We have been justified. At least, we could be justified if we stopped insisting that our justification be based on our merits. We have peace with God, or could have peace if we stopped throwing temper tantrums. We have gained access into grace i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Meditations of the Heart

  May these words of my mouth and this meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight, Lord, my Rock and my Redeemer. (Psalm19:14)           As I started writing this post, I noted that the meditations of my heart are all over the mental landscape, from a hub where eight superhighways come together to a lunar or nuclear landscape. Do you see my error? The moment I read the word meditation , I think about thoughts. But what’s described here is the meditations of our hearts ; our wills.           While the meditations of our minds may be all over the place, the meditations of our wills tend to be a little more stable by the time we are adults. We no longer tend to want to pursue the ten separate careers we did in any given day as children. Part of this is humble acceptance of reality. We come to understand that we can’t do it all. I think another part of it is disappointmen...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Way, The Truth, and The Life

              Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me . (John 14:6)           If “I am the gate of the sheep…I am the good shepherd” from chapter 10 is a double whammy, this verse is a triple whammy. And its first victim is the notion that any other so-called god was acceptable or the same as Jesus. He, and He alone is the way, the truth, and the life, and the only way to get to the Father. There is no other Savior, or Redeemer, according to Jesus. Now, to be fair, other religions will claim that their religion or god(s) are the only way. That is the nature of gods and of religions. If this and that are equally good and agree on what’s necessary, then this and that are the same thing, so there’s no need to from the other to one. If that’s the case, then why speak against the other or promote the one? There’s a song I’ve been listening to i...
Post a Comment
Read more