(J8) Discipline & Judgment

Question: What is the difference between God’s discipline, correction and judgment?

These three concepts occur many times in the Old Testament and again, they are often confused or misunderstood. The wise person examines the Bible before making rash comments about God and exposing their own lack of understanding.

1. Discipline

Discipline means training that develops self-control and character.

Reminding Israel what had happened to them, Moses said, “You were shown these things so that you might know that the LORD is God; besides him there is no other. From heaven he made you hear his voice to discipline you.” (Deut 4:35,36).

In other words God’s intention, through speaking to Israel, was to train them to become His people who lived according to His design-laws. [The Laws that God gave to Israel simply reflected the way He has designed humanity to ‘work’ best.]

Indeed later in Deuteronomy He reminded them that part of their training was observing how He had moved in power on their behalf to save them out of Egypt (Deut 11:2-7).

We often think of discipline as punishment, but God always views it as training. It is not destructive but formative.

In the New Testament, the writer to the Hebrews was to comment about God’s discipline:

“No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.” (Heb 12;11)

Note God trains for a good outcome.

2. Correction

The concept of correction is very similar – action taken to bring about change of behaviour.

“The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.” (Prov 29:15)

The whole point of God’s relationship with Israel was so that He could train them, correct them and bring them into a place of understanding where they could see that God had designed the world in a particular way and that He had designed us to ‘work’ in a particular way.

When they ‘worked’ or lived like that, then blessing flowed, partly because God brought blessings, but more simply because they were operating or working (if you will excuse the mechanical sense) as they were meant to, i.e. according to design. Because God is good and God is love, that way meant it is enjoyable and for our pleasure and benefit.

Yet, the truth is that Israel displayed the same sinfulness that is seen in all of mankind and foolishly turned away from God, rejecting all the goodness that is available when we live as designed!

In Leviticus we find God challenging Israel: “in spite of these things you do not accept my correction but continue to be hostile toward me.” (Lev 26:23). The “these things” had been a variety of punishments which were being used as forms of discipline to bring correction (change of behaviour)

3. Judgment

Judgment refers to an act of judging. When it is God bringing judgment there are always two aspects to it:

i) the act of assessing wrong or determining wrong and rendering a just verdict, and

ii) the act of bringing the decreed punishment, where there was an ongoing, established wrong.

Now there is nothing strange about this because we are very much aware of the law enforcement aspects of our own nations:

• lawmakers who decree the Law,
• police who apprehend apparent lawbreakers,
• judges who determine the truth of the situation and determine punishment, and
• prisons that implement the punishment (or whoever is involved in whatever other form of punishment is applied).

In respect of God, He is lawmaker, judge and executioner.

Executioner is in fact NOT the right word but we use it for the moment because it is what many think!

We need to observe, therefore, that punishment can be one of two forms:

i) death – where God sees and knows the person or group are so set in their ways that nothing

will change them,

ii) painful activity not involving death (often another hostile, godless nation) – where God sees that this will act in a corrective manner to bring about good change in them.

God’s Righteousness

Something to be noted along the way is the description of God that occurs again and again in the Bible: that God is righteous and everything He does is righteous.

This simply means that everything about God – His thoughts and His actions – are always exactly right. Because He has total knowledge and total wisdom He never ever makes a mistake.

Now obviously that is a faith statement which is in line with the Scriptural teaching and if you say, “Can you prove that?” I have to reply, “Yes, but only when you die and face God.”

However with a little thought and consideration, understanding can be gained from the study of the Bible in a far greater way that is usually found in people. Mostly we prefer to read little, study even less, and then make shallow comments that only reveal our lack of understanding.

Our difficulty is that we do not have total knowledge and we are so often motivated by self-centred emotions, so that our ‘judgment’ is often wrong – but God’s isn’t!

If we don’t understand the grounds on which God declares judgment (and He always does make it clear in Scripture WHY He is bringing punishment), it is simply that we don’t understand the awfulness of an attitude or action of an individual or group. Instead we foolishly blame God for what we assume (wrongly) is injustice.

(J7) Is God hostile & judgmental

Question:  Various crusading atheists portray God in the Old Testament as angry, hostile and thoroughly unpleasant. Is this what the Bible says about Him?

It is important to observe how God is described in the Bible because the misunderstandings about God and judgment appear again and again in the works of today’s crusading atheists. The truth is exactly the opposite to what is often declared.

See the following description of God in the Old Testament:

“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. ” (Ex 34:6).

God who is compassionate is also referred to in: Ex 22:27 Ex 34:6, 2Ch 30:9, Neh 9:17, Ps 86:15, Ps 103:8, Ps 111:4, Ps 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2

God who is gracious is also referred to in: 2Ch 30: 9, Neh 9:17,31, Ps 86:15, 103:8, 111:4, 116:5, 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2, with many other references to His gracious acts.

God who is slow to anger is also referred to in: Num 14:18, Neh 9:17, Psa 86:15, 103:8, 145:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2, Nah 1:3

God who is abounding in love is referred to in: Num 14:18, Neh 9:17, Psa 86:5,15, 103:8, Joel 2:13, Jonah 4:2 with multitudinous other references to God’s love.

Now the point is that these descriptions are repeated by many different writers in the Old Testament, and yes the above words often go together and are often repeats of the original, but they go to show that the writers at least had this opinion of God. The above references are strictly those with those exact phrases but the sense of each is repeated many, many more times right the way throughout the Old Testament.

The writers would not use these descriptions if they felt otherwise about God.

(J6) How does killing people equate with a loving God?

Question: How does killing people equate with a loving God
How does love equate with judgment

Answer:

The immediate answer is, yes, God does judge individuals on occasion but to see how and why and to consider it in the light of God being a God of love, we need to consider it quite fully as follows

1. Instances where God did do this.
2. Reasons why He did it.
3. Considerations of judgment and love.

1. Instances where God did do this

Acts 12:23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of the Lord struck him down, and he was eaten by worms and died.

• the crowd has just attributed divinity to Herod
• he failed to refute it and give glory to God.

Acts 5:9,10 Peter said to her, “How could you agree to test the Spirit of the Lord? Look! The feet of the men who buried your husband are at the door, and they will carry you out also.” At that moment she fell down at his feet and died.

• Ananias has just died, apparently without warning but now Peter specifically decrees it with his wife; she immediately drops dead

2 Chron 21:16-19 “The LORD aroused against Jehoram the hostility of the Philistines and of the Arabs who lived near the Cushites. They attacked Judah, invaded it and carried off all the goods found in the king’s palace, together with his sons and wives. Not a son was left to him except Ahaziah, the youngest. After all this, the LORD afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain.”

• Jehoram had led his people into idolatry (v.11) and had also murdered all of his brothers (v.4)
• Note that the judgment came in two forms and both were slow, thus allowing Jehoram opportunity to repent.

Dan 6:26-31 “This is what these words mean: Mene: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. Tekel: You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting. Peres: Your kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians.” That very night Belshazzar, king of the Babylonians, was slain, and Darius the Mede took over the kingdom”

• Belshazzar has a feast where he used goblets from the Temple in Jerusalem and almost purposefully rejects God and worships his gods (v.2-4).
• He is clearly warned by miraculous writing on the wall and then by Daniel’s words and is given time to repent.

2. Reasons why He did it

We believe that when we look at such instances there are likely to be both obvious declared reasons and not so obvious undeclared reasons.

i) Declared, obvious Reasons

Obvious reasons come with each of the instances we have considered above – the sin of the individuals concerned:

• Herod took God’s place and thus led the people very wrongly
• Ananias and Sapphira both lied to God and to the church leaders and thus gave a poor example
• Jehoram murdered his brothers and led people into idolatry
• Belshazzar rejected God publicly and worshipped idols

Those are the clearly stated reasons why God acted in each case.

ii) Undeclared, not obvious Reasons

A starting question that arises is why should God have chosen these particular individuals and not others who were often apparently far worse? The following are merely suggestions:

The Context of Example

In the Old Testament, there is a very clear, strong and obvious principle which prevails.

It is that God has created Israel to reveal Him to the nations.

How they act and how respond to the Lord will reveal to the world something of who the Lord is.

In Scripture we often come across references “for his name’s sake” or similar (e.g. Psa 23:3, 25:11, 79:9, 143:11), meaning something is to be done for the sake of God’s name that it is not to be misrepresented.

Misrepresenting God is thus considered a major sin in the Old Testament period (because, as so often seen, if people get a wrong idea about God they will not come to Him and receive His forgiveness, and blessing).

It would appear that God sometimes moved against those who failed to represent Him faithfully.

It also appears that in times of revival when the Lord is moving openly and powerfully (as in the early chapters of Acts) He also seems to raise the bar on accountability and thus Ananias and his wife are taken away.

One might add that Paul noted that Corinthians in the early church were dying because they abused the Lord (1 Cor 11:30).

In the wider context of God’s judgment coming on other nations, the reason is similarly that they abused the name of the Lord and particularly in the way they treated God’s people, Israel.

In every such case, one must remember the onlookers who would have been seriously challenged by what they had witnessed and would most likely have turned back to the Lord.

In every situation the Lord is acting for the greater good but there is possibly another reason to be considered.

The “what might have been”

The Bible reveals God as the One who knows everything, absolutely everything, and that must also include what might have been if the Lord had not stepped in.

Thus in the four examples above, we don’t know:

• what Herod might have gone on to do, leading the people further astray
• what the example of Ananias and Sapphira would have had on the early church
• what Jehoram would have gone on to do, possibly leading Judah even further astray
• what Belshazzar might have gone on to do in his growing pride, possibly moving against the Jews in his land

In other words we have to trust that God, who does know all these things, made the right decision.

3. Considerations of judgment and love.

A helpful scenario

Very often we become confused in our thinking and, in this case, see judgment and love as opposites. They are no such thing. Consider the following scenario.

Mark is a Judge in a criminal court. He is early middle-aged and is very happily married. His wife would describe him as the most loving person she knows. He has three children of varying ages, from little Nicholas, aged 4, who sits on his lap while he tells his son stories, to Jenny who is ten and runs and gives him hugs when he comes home from work, to Jake who is seventeen and who appreciates times when his dad just sits and listens to his gripes about college. All the kids would agree with their Mum’s assessment of Mark.

When he sits in his courtroom Mark is known to be fair and just. He applies the law to the best of his ability and when he is confronted by the most heinous of crimes he has no difficulty speaking his mind and about passing sentence exactly according to the Law. His judgments range from severe to mild, according to case. Back at home all that is unknown. He is just known as a loving husband and dad.

Are judgment and love opposites in the above illustration? No, they are simply two expressions of the same man. Merely because his role as a judge requires him to make judgments that affect the lives of many, often in a very negative way (a life sentence can be seen as nothing other than negative), that does not stop him being a very loving person. The two are complementary not opposites.

God’s various roles

When it comes to God, the situation is slightly more complicated. To the sinner, like the criminal in court who knows he is blatantly guilty, the presence of the Judge is a fearful thing. Now supposing the Judge stepped down from the bench and stepped into the dock and took the guilty man’s place, he would become an amazing redeemer. If he freed the man and adopted him and took him into his home he would become an amazing father. Now these are all pictures conveyed in Scripture that apply to God.

In one sense He would much rather act as a redeemer and adopting Father for “I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” (Ezek 18:32). God is more concerned to bring life than to bring premature death, but it is dependant on the person in question. Justice is still justice and God only sets people free when they have repented and received the offer of redemption through the finished work of Christ on the Cross. Their repentance means that justice is done by Jesus carrying their sin, guilt and punishment. Justice is still worked out.

The outcome is in the hands of the sinner

Earlier on we considered the cases of Herod, Jehoram and Belshazzar, each of whom was confronted with their sin and given opportunity to repent. They knew that they faced The Judge of all men, and the sensible thing would have been to repent and receive forgiveness. But none of them did! None of these three criminals called on the mercy of the court. Thus each was sentenced, but that did not stop the Lord being loving; it just meant that He was executing his role as a Judge to dispense justice.

Possibly another aspect of this that we should observe is the Lord’s knowledge of whether this person would ever repent. We said earlier that he knows the ‘what might have been’. The Lord alone knows whether this person will ever repent and if He knows that this person will never ever repent, regardless of how long they are given, then His removing them from the planet is merely a judicial decision of justice carried out now rather than later.

Our own responses

If we do not like that, it suggests that it is more likely that we are upset because we have emotional biases against God, not because we find fault with Him as a Judge. If we don’t like His decisions and get upset by that, we reveal our own folly, because we did not know (and still do not know) the full detail of the cases in question, and perhaps have never seriously thought through the implications and possibilities of such cases. We are more willing to pontificate on the unfairness of God rather than acknowledge that we are limited in knowledge and understanding, and so reveal our pettiness, which does nothing to bring clarity of understanding to these issues.

Those of us who know of God as loving heavenly Father, know that while we hold on to stubborn, rebellious ways which we know to be wrong, there is a breakdown in relationship and we sense Him standing there as a firm disciplinarian who works to bring us to our senses. However, we also know that the moment we repent, the moment we acknowledge our need of forgiveness, He is there to restore us and bless us. We have learnt that actually the One who sometimes acts strongly against the proud, arrogant, hard-hearted, utterly selfish person, intent on evil, committed to that way for the rest of their existence, this One is also there as a gentle, loving, compassionate and caring being whose only desire is to lift us, encourage us, free us and bless us. We have learned that judgment and the expression of love are actually more dependant on the other person than on God. We have learned that we can utterly trust the wisdom and knowledge of this all-knowing, all-wise One who sent His Son to die on our behalf so we could be redeemed. It is the individual who decides whether he will face the Judge or the loving Father. There can never be any blame on the One who holds both those roles

(J5) What Specific Signs are there in the UK?

Question: What  Specific Signs are there in the  UK
If this is so, what signs of social and moral decline are there that conform to this suggested model of God’s judgment in the UK?

Answer:

The difficulty of such an analysis is that a) things change so quickly, b) these are likely to be just large brush strokes, and c) we will thus miss out important issues.

The dangers within those reading such an analysis are rejection of these things because of what we have observed to be either a) casual, careless indifference, characterized by the ‘boiling frog syndrome’ (drop a frog into boiling water and it will leap out; put it in cold water and gradually bring it to the boil and it will accept it and die), or b) naive, blind, humanistic optimism, which is often characterized by “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic’.

As in the previous question in this series, we observe that our answer is likely to be subjective but nevertheless invite you to seriously consider what is said and observe the truth of what is said as then seen in the media of today.

The key question then becomes, is there a relational link between the general behaviour of this country and the judgment of God. All we will say here, is that what follows is very similar to that observed in the Bible when the Lord lifted off His hand of restraint from a country and allowed the ‘judgment’ of unrestrained folly.

We simply note the following:

a) Family Structure Change

Change of family structure over past decades has involved the following that seem to have become acceptable, common and normal:

• divorce,
• cohabitation,
• changes of partners,
• abandoning of families by fathers

The downside of these changes include:

• great financial cost to society as abandoned mothers need support,
• abandoned partners coping with pain and anguish,
• abandoned partners coping with ongoing loss of security and lowering of self-esteem,
• children of divorces or abandonment coping with anguish of loss,
• the same children coping with living two lives if seeing both partners,
• antisocial behaviour growing in such children,
• schools, education and social services, police etc. coping with the strains of coping with these children,
• a future generation who will struggle even more to cope with parenthood and marriage based on the insecurity they have learned.

A word that is applicable over all of this change is “coping”. Partners cope, parents cope, children cope, schools cope, social workers cope, etc. Coping here means we get by – just! But it shouldn’t have to be like this.

Restraint was removed from relational behaviour in marriages and the “coping lifestyle” is the result. Modern psychologists and sociologists are now talking about the “shame” that is under-girding so many lives in modern society, meaning the deep inner feeling of failure. Slowly and gradually, voices are beginning to be heard declaring, there must be a better way.

b) Social breakdown

Whether it flows from the above or whether it flows from the gradual erosion of a ‘standards-based’ society (one that believes in right and wrong as absolutes), or a combination of the two, the result is that we find behaviour in society that was not here in this measure fifty years ago. The following are some examples which all have negative or destructive outcomes for the individual or for society:

• theft at high levels,
• violence in the streets, especially at night, at high levels,
• vandalism of property at high levels,
• drunkenness on the streets not uncommon, especially in towns at night,
• violence from football supporters still known,
• availability of drugs on the streets or in schools in large measure,
• road rage not uncommon
• rapes apparently at high levels, especially associated with drinking

It should be observed that the question here is not whether these things are on the increase at the present, but whether they have increased over the past fifty years. In most, if not all, of these cases, these things have escalated in that period of time. It is very easy to accept these things as the norm. They are not and should not be.

c) Drink, Drugs, Sex, Gambling & Debt

We’ve grouped these things together because they have each merited the attention of the government and the media in recent years as causing serious concerns:

• Alcohol abuse is high – excessive use of alcohol and the violence that accompanies it
• Drugs – the use of hard and soft drugs is escalating and is considered a national problem. Addiction is particularly a problem for need fosters crime to sustain the habit.
• Sex – the permissive lifestyle largely fostered by the media, has resulted in a major increase in most sexually transmitted diseases. The cost to individuals and the State is excessive, yet few dare suggest an alternative lifestyle. Teenage pregnancies are high as are abortions.
• Gambling – is considered to be a considerable problem for more than a few, yet the liberal policies of the recent governments have opened the door even wider.
• Debt – the figures owed by the average individual are astronomical and if they were told to our forefathers, would probably be received with outright incredulity, yet we accept it as the norm. The ongoing spin-offs of this are being felt in large measure in 2008.

d) Education, Health, Pension Services, Social Services & Justice

Again we have grouped these together because they have merited the attention of the government or the media on a regular basis over recent years, as problems facing our society for which there seem no obvious answers:

• Education – ongoing reports play up achievements, yet we are told that 1 in 5 of children leaving primary school cannot read properly. Reports suggest there are about 35,000 school leavers each year who leave without a qualification. Many schools still struggle with discipline and fail to meet Ofsted requirements. Most schools with greatest success are either private or faith-based.
• Health – Government targets, the media declare, are not being met. As the population ages the problem increases.
• Pension Services – as the population ages the financial demands are becoming out of hand. The collapse of various private pension schemes in recent decades has only exacerbated the problem. It is a problem waiting to explode and may be doing that in late 2008.
• Social Services – in the face of the growth of the variety of problems catalogued above, spending on social services has not been matched and in many places social services are grossly understaffed and unable to meet the demands upon them.
• Justice – our courts are overloaded and means are sought to speed up the system to cater with the breakdown of society and the problems ensuing. For ‘simple’ burglary police rarely even come out, maintaining that their case load is such that only priority crimes can be dealt with. Our prisons are overflowing and alternatives are sought to cope with the ever increasing numbers of those being found guilty of crimes.

Facing the Unpalatable Truth

Read any ‘broadsheet newspaper’ for a month, talk to people in each of the areas itemised above, or search the Internet, and the truth of our situation will be seen to conform to what has been suggested above.

The atheistic humanist has had his day. A society that has rejected its God (and an examination of history shows the reality of that) is now shaking at its foundations. Increasingly journalists are predicting worse to come. Increasingly research shows the folly of the ways itemised above. How long will it take us to come to our senses?

The rejection of the Christian faith in this country over the past fifty to a hundred years, has not been because it didn’t work. It was much more basic than that. It was simply that the grass over the over side of the fence looked more inviting, the grass where there was no accountability to a higher power, only to yourself.

Saying God isn’t there, does nothing except utter empty words into the air. Nothing has changed in that respect. There have always been those who declared, “There is no God!” and they have been declared fools! (Psa 14:1) They have been revealed for what they are by the fruits they produce.

The fruits of godlessness and the ensuing unrighteousness are now plan and obvious to see – well, except for those who refuse to see! Indeed it has to be a certain sort of blindness that fails to see the real state of this nation that once proudly went by the name of GREAT Britain. The Bible calls it a wilful blindness, a blindness that refuses to accept the truth, refuses to acknowledge God, is unable to hold onto goodness, and therefore a blindness that bears the fruit of self-destruction, which is in fact the judgment of God.

It’s time to come back to God. It’s time to cry out for goodness, wholesomeness, faithfulness, honesty, integrity and so much more, to be returned to our national life.

Bankruptcy

At the end of October 2008, Booker Prize-winning novelist Ben Okri wrote an article that appeared in the Times headed, “Our false oracles have failed. We need a new vision to live by.” The following is a brief extract from it which highlights what we have been saying above:

We must bring back into society a deeper sense of the purpose of living. The unhappiness in so many lives ought to tell us that success alone is not enough. Material success has brought us to a strange spiritual and moral bankruptcy.

If we look at alcoholism rates, suicide rates and our sensation addiction, we must conclude that this banishment of higher things from the garden has not been a success. The more the society has succeeded, the more its heart has failed.

Everywhere parents are puzzled as to what to do with their children. Everywhere the children are puzzled as to what to do with themselves. The question everywhere is, you get your success and then what?

What was sad about this article was that, although there were various Biblical references, there was nothing about the spiritual bankruptcy that has brought about the other things.

(J4) What General Signs are there in the UK?

Question: What General Signs of these things are seen in the United Kingdom?
How do you say this has happened in the UK?

Answer:

This is going to be a very subjective answer and you may well disagree with what follows, but we simply ask you to think about what is said here and see if it ‘fits’ with what is appearing in the media on a regular basis.

i) The move towards godlessness

There are signs of this in other so-called advanced Western nations, but we will focus on the United Kingdom here. The first stage of decline, we said, was godlessness, a turning away from God. A century ago, people referred to Britain as a Christian nation; no longer so. What they meant by that was that, as a nation at least, we adhered to a Christian value system based on a knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. This was not to say that the nation was perfect, or especially religious, merely that the general underlying foundation was as just described.

Forces of modernism, unable to be countered by weak theologians at the time, meant a rise in scepticism and a fall in confidence in the church. After two world wars, the fifties and sixties saw a youth and music revolution which, alongside a gradual technology revolution, further challenged traditional religious belief. The eighties saw the arrival of the computer revolution and the nineties saw ever increasing affluence and materialism. Much of the church retreated into an enclave to preserve the religious ways of life that were now being abandoned rapidly by the majority.

Although the church was revived in small measure by the renewal movement, the charismatic movement, the Restoration movement, Toronto Blessing, and the advent of Alpha Courses, by and large, the majority of the nation remained untouched and church attendance figures continued to fall among all except the ‘new’ churches and black churches. Attendance on a Sunday morning varies from 3 to 7% depending on who you believe.

In the new millennium, parts of the church have been working into the community as has rarely been seen for a long time yet, numerically at least, there is little change for the nation at large. Although about three quarters of the population would declare a belief in God, that is a passive belief with no practical outworking. As a nation therefore, we have rejected God.

ii) The Advance of Unrighteousness

Unrighteousness should not be seen as a simply religious concept. It has its origins with God and relates to God, but it is a practical word that refers to living in ways that are out of kilter with God’s design, contrary to it. The Bible declares that God designed and created this world, including the people on it. That design means that, in the same way that say Ford design a car to work in a particular way, so God has made human beings to ‘work’ in a particular way, and when they refuse to do that, they ‘break down’. With the arrival of godlessness, that can be observed in a variety of forms of social breakdown.

We now consider some of those observed forms of social breakdown, especially in the light of our earlier comments on them being expressions of God’s unrestrained-sin form of judgement, that go from one level of self-destruction to another. What follows is only a random selection which will only receive a very shallow comment in order to simply paint an outline picture rather than a fully detailed and conclusive panorama. To maintain this as simply an overview exercise, we will not quote statistics but will simply suggest that they are there, and the comments being made are made in the knowledge of those figures. They are there on the Internet if you wish to go looking for them.

(J3) How does a Society decline?

Question: How does a society decline to then bring God’s gradual judgement?
What are the stages of decline that brings God’s attention and activity?

Answer:

Stages of Decline of a Society

The first stage in any society’s decline is godlessness. Jeremiah explained it prophetically thus as a word from God: “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water.” (Jer 2:13). The first sin was the abandoning of God – They have forsaken me. This is godlessness, the rejecting and ignoring of God.

The second stage is always unrighteousness, wrong behaviour. In the graphic language of Jeremiah’s prophecy, it is that having turned away from God who is the source of all life, they seek to create structures, or schemes, or philosophies or whatever, that can sustain their godless lives – and have dug their own cisterns. This is exactly what atheistic, materialistic humanism does.

Observe any society and these will be preliminary signs of decline – a  nation that ignores God and relies on  its own  efforts (godless), and which then subsequently adopts  behaviour patterns contrary to God’s design for humanity (unrighteous).

(J2) What is the Purpose of God’s Judgment?

Question: What is the purpose God’s judgment?
So if God does judge, why does He?

Answer:

God does not, according to the Bible, bring judgment hastily or nastily. There is always a clear-cut reason and it is always to do with people who are destroying themselves and one another by the godless and unrighteous lifestyle which they have chosen. However, when we ask about ‘reason’ we might do well to consider God’s apparent PURPOSE in acting as He does.

The Reason for God’s Judgment

The obvious reason for God’s judgment is the sin of people but behind that it seems that there are likely to be two objectives that God has in bringing this judgment.

i) Curtailing the Sin – total destructive judgment

Without doubt God sometimes brings destructive judgment, whereby the end result is total destruction, to stop the further spread of sin in an even worse way. The implication behind Gen 6:5 was that the sin on the earth had reached such proportions that the only course open was to remove the vast majority of the population and start again from a single family. Whether this was worldwide (as some geological commentators suggest) or whether if was limited to the area that we call the Middle East is unclear. Only the reason seems fairly clear. A modern parallel would be a surgeon cutting out a cancerous organ to save the rest of the body.

Similarly the deportation of the northern kingdom of Israel and the later destruction of Jerusalem and the deportation of people of the southern kingdom, seem to be cases where God was basically saying, enough is enough, this can’t go on any longer, we need to start again. In both cases it was not a hasty judgment but one that came after years and years of warnings through the prophets.

ii) Chastising the people – limited self-destruction

The form of judgment that Romans 1 refers to, means that God lifts off His hand of restraint from a people so that they are allowed to continue to do the sinful things they want to do without hindrance, and self-destruction takes place. A similar idea is spelled out in 1 Cor 5 where the apostle Paul instructs the church at Corinth to put out of the assembly the man who was blatantly sexually immoral, and having no sense of repentance. The purpose of putting him out, would be that he no longer comes under the protection of the church so that Satan would have free access to him, and would no doubt push him further and further into sexual sin until it would become self-destructive when, it was hoped, he would come to his senses, repent and be restored.

Thus the purpose of this form of judgment is to bring people to their senses and back to God. Yet, observe it carefully, it is simply a judgment of people being allowed unrestrained activity. We foolishly think that we can control ourselves, but the reality is that once God takes his hand off us, the pressures of the temptations of Satan become so great we go further and further into the sin, until it is completely destructive of us. The only way to save ourselves from complete self-destruction is thus to call on the Lord for His salvation.

(J1) What does the Judgment of God mean?

Question: What does it mean to speak of the judgment of God?
Some people say our nation is under the judgment of God. What do they mean by that?

Answer:

This subject is clearly not one that is purely academic. It is one that has stirred the anger of atheists and the embarrassment of Christians. We’ll deal later with how a God of love can bring judgment but for now we’ll examine what the Bible indicates and then seek to apply that to modern day life in the United Kingdom. (Other Western countries could possibly apply the same analysis)

The Nature of God’s Judgment

In the Old Testament, most people would see God’s judgments as direct acts of divine intervention of a destructive nature, e.g. destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Gen 19).

However there are instances where God’s judgment is more in the form of a releasing of the wickedness that is already there (e.g. Isa 9:18,19). This conforms to the revelation that Paul had when he spoke to the church at Rome about God giving people up to their sins (Rom 1:24,26,28).

The Problem of Talking about God’s Judgment

The Bible IS clear that God does act to bring about what we are referring to as ‘judgment’ but the difficulty comes in applying the revelation. Does God still judge nations today? Are events happening in our world judgments of God?

One of the things about judgments that appeared (mostly in the Old Testament period) in the Bible, is that they only came after God had spoken through His prophets so that the leaders of the nation at the very least, heard and understood the warning. Such warnings came again and again before God acted.

Today, in the largely godless areas of the world, there is a dearth of such prophets and therefore warnings are not coming to national and other leaders. Does that mean that God does not judge nations? The probably answer is, no, for the purpose of the ‘releasing-the-wickedness’ form of judgment referred to above, is to bring a people to their senses gradually by allowing them free reign to get into a deeper and deeper mess until they come to their senses. Thus it is more of a process of correction rather than an act of destruction.

Are climatic catastrophes acts of God? Maybe they are simply acts of a world that is breaking down where sin has an effect beyond our understanding into the physcial realm, maybe they are specific acts brought by God to hasten our ‘coming to our senses’.

In all of these considerations we need to remember the prophetic declaration from the Old Testament, “I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign LORD. Repent and live!” (Ezek 18:32). God’s objective is to bring life and not death wherever it is possible.

We will deal with other aspects of this in other questions and answers.