Sunday, August 10, 2014

Is God Unrighteous Who Taketh Vengeance?

God does not permit sin.  There is no permissive will of God that differs from His declared will--He is not double minded.  I have heard objections to the justice of God considering the omniscience and omnipotence of God in the face of the existence of sin.  To answer this, some men have invented the idea that some sins God has permitted to declare his justice in punishing it.  But I think this is either a terrible use of the word permission or a disgusting view of God's attitude toward sin.  Our poor finite minds cannot comprehend God's nature, but as we stretch the limits of our understanding, we should never get these things confused.

I believe Paul did a fine (yea inspired) job of answering this issue in Romans 3, but before I go there, some thoughts on the matchless ability of God.  Only God is capable of creating a morally responsible creature, and he created a world of them.  Providence teaches us that God often intervenes in the affairs of men to affect some good work or protect some child.  The lawyer in us then wants to make an omniscient and omnipotent God responsible to prevent every tragedy.  Wouldn't I be guilty if, during a brutal robbery  I could have stopped, I didn't? Indeed it is my responsibility to stop every sin I can.  But if we were to apply that standard to God, he would be guilty for every sin ever committed.  That is to say that God wouldn't be able to create a morally responsible creation.  Think about that.  We would be making God like unto ourselves, for man is capable of designing robots which only ever do the correct thing.  So the question returns: Does God permit sin?

So to harmonize the existence of sin with our finite understanding of God, some have stated that God has a permissive will that he looked ahead and chose to allow some sins so that he could use them to bring glory to Himself.  When I stood the watch on my ship, I was responsible to my captain to observe his navigation plan.  If ever I deviated from the plan, I was required to contact him immediately to explain why.  Suppose I looked at the charts and discovered a short-cut through a group of islands and called him with my intention to pass that way.  What if after a discussion full of him explaining how bad of an idea that was to me, he ended by giving me permission to carry out my short-cut?  I would not be disobedient when I did.  When the ship grounded into shallow water, he could not hold me guilty for doing what he gave me permission to do.  Sin is a rebellion against the will of God, and a permitted rebellion is an absurdity.

Let's go to Romans 3:5-8.  But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of God, what shall we say? Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? (I speak as a man) God forbid: for then how shall God judge the world? For if the truth of God hath more abounded through my lie unto his glory; why yet am I also judged a sinner? And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say) let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just. Here in the chapter Paul enters a long indictment against all of mankind showing how we have rebelled against the declared law of God's righteousness and adds in vs 19: Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God.  There, friends, by the preaching of Paul we cannot say that God has permitted our sins, because every line of the law and the prophets have declared the righteousness of God in punishing sin.

So then why does God not block every sin before it can offend Him?  I don't know besides He doesn't desire a world of pre-coded robots.  That wouldn't be very impressive, especially in this day of artificial intelligence where man is fully capable of building obedient machines.  No matter how it may temporarily appear to man, justice is not being miscarried: God Shall bring every work into judgement (Eccl 12:14, Gal 6:7).  I am more thankful for the rest of Romans, though, where we learn that our deliverance from sin comes from the obedience of Christ, and that in believing and confessing Jesus, we can live in peace before the RIGHTEOUS judgement of God.  In declaring His glory, God doesn't need us to sin any more than He needs us to co-operate with the atonement by Christ.

No comments:

Post a Comment