Tag: eternity with God

The Sun Shines Now on Saints and Sinners

Our lives in this world will end. Then, we will have nothing between us and eternity.

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

This is the fifth in of a series of posts on Putting the Wrath of God in Perspective. I have previously written on the subject of the wrath of God several times. In my last blog, I considered how God is perceived through the filter of human experience: if a person sets his self against God, he experiences what feels like condemnation, anger and rejection; while the person who attempts to draw near to God experiences love, grace and acceptance.

God does not change in this exercise. We do. Where we stand in relation to God determines how we experience Him. If God is the source and giver of life, and if God is love, we should experience life and love when we draw near to Him; conversely, we experience the opposite of life and love when we reject God or withdraw from Him. We experience love or “wrath” depending on where we stand in relation to God.

Taking this a step further, if we love what God loves, we find fellowship with Him, but if we love what God does not love, we find that we are separated from Him by our love of things God does not love.

We don’t naturally love what God loves, so we naturally feel some tension with God. In order to know and understand God, we need to get beyond this tension. There is no tension on God’s part, however; the tension is with us and our posture toward God.

Continue reading “The Sun Shines Now on Saints and Sinners” →

The Wrath of God and Eternity

Our eternities rest on the choices God has given us. This life is serious business.

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(c) Can Stock Photo

(c) Can Stock Photo

This is part 3 in the series of Putting God’s Wrath in Perspective. We started by considering the fact that God is God. We are not God and really have no say in who God is or what He does. He could be nothing but wrathful, but we discover that God is, ultimately, love.

From there we discover that God’s wrath in history is employed to achieve the ends God purposes to accomplish, beginning with meting out justice, but more importantly to accomplish His ultimate purposes. His ultimate purpose is to bless the entire world and to reconcile the world to God and to mete out justice as justice is due.

This can only make sense, really, in the context of eternity. If this world is all there is, a just God would have to accomplish justice within the parameters of time. He would have to accomplish justice for each person during the life span of each person. That would be impossible to accomplish in a world in which individuals have real choice.

We tend to think of justice in terms of our own experiences. We think of justice at first instance in terms of our own lives; then we look out to the world that we know in the time in which we live. Justice is lacking in our experience – both in our own lives and in the world in which we live. In fact, if we are honest, injustice seems to be the norm.

Yet, we have this insatiable ideal and longing for a just world.

Where exactly does that come from? If justice seems so elusive in this world, why are we not simply accepting of the “way it is”? This is all we know. Why do we long for – actually insist on – something different from the injustice that is our experience?

Continue reading “The Wrath of God and Eternity” →

Were They Greater Sinners?

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Depositphotos ID: 79363772 Copyright: mikdam [editorial use only]

“[D]o you suppose that those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them were greater sinners[i] than all the men who live in Jerusalem?” (Luke 13:4)

Before you read ahead and I give the answer, consider that this statement was made in the middle of very seemingly harsh statements by Jesus. Continue reading “Were They Greater Sinners?” →