Ending on Judgment
A Bible study discussion last week got me thinking again about the not-so-happy endings found in the Bible. Sparked by a discussion on how blaspheming the Holy Spirit will ‘not be forgiven’ (Luke 12:10), the examples of those who never saw redemption (i.e. Judas, Sodom and Gomorrah, Pharaoh, Jezebel) made surface a hopelessness which struck an uncomfortable chord. A hollow and unsettling sense of being unable to amend the loss; of having to grapple with the ultimate ‘irreversibility.’
To our modern Christian sensitivities, no one is “un-redeemable.” It seems nearly offensive to say that anybody is ‘past saving,’ as though God were somehow powerless to bridge each individual back to Himself. And yet God Himself is the One who’s chosen who will see salvation (see Ephesians 1:4).
What’s in question then isn’t His power to save. Instead it seems that His compassion becomes the target of scrutiny, bombarded with questions over how He could allow even one soul to perish; how mercy could run dry, and judgment could secure the final word over 'rescue.'
We were designed for unbroken communion with Him, and even the failure of one life to display that seems a hindrance to the fulfillment of His intent over us. It isn’t that His purpose is swayed, or that His credibility with the Foe somehow suffers loss, but that His not preventing such despair seems contradictory; in a way, a concession to darkness…
…unless our lives aren’t mere expressions of supernatural battle lines; aren’t simply tally marks on an ethereal scoreboard, where casualties and salvages are accounted for, and wars are won by numbers. Perhaps what I miss is that our lives are not as pawns to the forces of good and evil, but that our souls come before our Master with individual clarity… and that, for all that we’ve refused of Him, we’re held accountable (see 2 Chronicles 6: 23).
Until we come up against the One who initiated our rescue, the One who has always wanted us abiding in the life of salvation rather than dwelling in the death of condemnation (John 3:16-17), we choose to reside under the sentence from which He came to deliver us, and set ourselves against Life Himself.
I cannot grasp why He allows despair to stand where He has willed health and wholeness; can’t reason my way through His purposes, as though I could ‘know the mind of God, or be His counselor’ (Romans 11:34). Yet what resounds heavily is the sobering reality that He, Sovereign Judge, knows the heart, and has the final word. When mercy ends and judgment begins, what pointedly comes to light is not some divine refusal to grant life, but the human will which has all along resisted accepting it.
Yet praise be to Him who, even constrained by our free will, 'poured out Himself' (Isaiah 53:12) on our behalf; the only One who fought to the death for us to experience life...
To our modern Christian sensitivities, no one is “un-redeemable.” It seems nearly offensive to say that anybody is ‘past saving,’ as though God were somehow powerless to bridge each individual back to Himself. And yet God Himself is the One who’s chosen who will see salvation (see Ephesians 1:4).
What’s in question then isn’t His power to save. Instead it seems that His compassion becomes the target of scrutiny, bombarded with questions over how He could allow even one soul to perish; how mercy could run dry, and judgment could secure the final word over 'rescue.'
We were designed for unbroken communion with Him, and even the failure of one life to display that seems a hindrance to the fulfillment of His intent over us. It isn’t that His purpose is swayed, or that His credibility with the Foe somehow suffers loss, but that His not preventing such despair seems contradictory; in a way, a concession to darkness…
…unless our lives aren’t mere expressions of supernatural battle lines; aren’t simply tally marks on an ethereal scoreboard, where casualties and salvages are accounted for, and wars are won by numbers. Perhaps what I miss is that our lives are not as pawns to the forces of good and evil, but that our souls come before our Master with individual clarity… and that, for all that we’ve refused of Him, we’re held accountable (see 2 Chronicles 6: 23).
Until we come up against the One who initiated our rescue, the One who has always wanted us abiding in the life of salvation rather than dwelling in the death of condemnation (John 3:16-17), we choose to reside under the sentence from which He came to deliver us, and set ourselves against Life Himself.
I cannot grasp why He allows despair to stand where He has willed health and wholeness; can’t reason my way through His purposes, as though I could ‘know the mind of God, or be His counselor’ (Romans 11:34). Yet what resounds heavily is the sobering reality that He, Sovereign Judge, knows the heart, and has the final word. When mercy ends and judgment begins, what pointedly comes to light is not some divine refusal to grant life, but the human will which has all along resisted accepting it.
Yet praise be to Him who, even constrained by our free will, 'poured out Himself' (Isaiah 53:12) on our behalf; the only One who fought to the death for us to experience life...
posted by Purple at 11:56 PM
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