John, sin is an infinite offence to God. God hates sin with the purest righteous hatred there is. Sin is the exact opposite to everything that God is. It's the nature if the crime and it's offense that merits the infinite punishment. We even believe this. A guy spends 5 minutes killing someone, and spends the next 50 years of their natural life paying for it. An attempted murder of the President or Queen would be met with a much stricter punishment then would the attempted murder of a homeless guy. Their position and who they are merits a stricter penalty. Our sin is high treason against a holy God.
Also, the two people you used in your example both equally deserved to go to hell. God had mercy on the guy who went to heaven, and pardoned his sin through Jesus Christ.
Also, think of what sin cost. The eternal Son was viscioisly and brutally executed. That's how much God hates sin. You and I deserve what Jesys took for us. Also notice that three hours if suffering cleanses by Jesus countless hours of sins by us.
Matt
Revelation 20:1...
"And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand.
And he laid hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,
and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the thousand years should be finished: after this he must be loosed for a little time.
And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them: and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon their forehead and upon their hand; and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years."
" until the thousand years should be finished:"
.....sounds like a time period for much to be accomplished....a delightful time without Satan/satanic influence.
:coffeeread:
And as much as God hates sin, im sure he hates the cause of sin - the Father of the lie - even more.
But then again -- He created us, knowing full well that two little carbon units would come up against a spirit creature, potentially billions of years old, knowing human weaknesses, and that they would sin and that He would give His only begotten Son as a sacrifice to cover the sin that He knew would eventually manifest.
Sounds kinda, well, weird to place essentially ALL the emphasis on the carbon units -- especially when God knew full well what would happen, when it would happen, how it would happen, and that part of his plan was to give His Son anyway......when really, more emphasis should be placed on satan himself.
Unless of course, God is some kind of sado-masochist. Create something He knew was going to fail and then punish it anyway. :huh::huh::huh:
Im definitely no fan of going to some esoteric afterlife in another dimension. :D:D:D
Mavos, your god is scary to me.
John, sin is an infinite offence to God. God hates sin with the purest righteous hatred there is. Sin is the exact opposite to everything that God is. It's the nature if the crime and it's offense that merits the infinite punishment. We even believe this. A guy spends 5 minutes killing someone, and spends the next 50 years of their natural life paying for it. An attempted murder of the President or Queen would be met with a much stricter punishment then would the attempted murder of a homeless guy. Their position and who they are merits a stricter penalty. Our sin is high treason against a holy God.
Also, the two people you used in your example both equally deserved to go to hell. God had mercy on the guy who went to heaven, and pardoned his sin through Jesus Christ.
Also, think of what sin cost. The eternal Son was viscioisly and brutally executed. That's how much God hates sin. You and I deserve what Jesys took for us. Also notice that three hours if suffering cleanses by Jesus countless hours of sins by us.
Matt
Hi Matt,
I'm sorry, but that's the poorest analogy I've ever encountered about sin.
Especially, the bit about taking 5 minutes to murder someone and 50 years to pay for it. (The time frame for committing the offense and for punishment is irrelevant. Actually, it should be life for life, which is another reason your analogy is poor.).
What a lovely and convienient way to justify eternal damnation.
So much for that elegant and very simple scripture at Romans 6:23
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Oh! But wait, it really doesn't mean death.
Silly me, for taking the scripture at face value.
No, no, we have to read much, much more into what God inspired the writer to write!
Death means unending torment at the hands of an uber-sadistic god for committing sins even though said god knew his "children" were imperfect and inclined to sin in the first place.
Then, some unspecified time later the unfortunate get resurrected, judged unworthy and thrown into an even worse place of unending torment.
Yea, that's just.
"two lepta"
LTA,
John
Hello peeps :love:
Whenever I run into seeming snags between the letter of the Law (justice) and the spirit of Christ (mercy) I think of the account of Jonah and his message to the city of Nineveh. The Ninevites are told that in 40 more days they will all be destroyed...no if, ands or buts. They are not presented with the option of repenting. That was the message!:shocked:
The thing is, the Ninevites took it upon themselves to manifest repentance by putting on sackcloth and fasting -- from the king down to the domestic animals. So God changed his mind. Was that unjust of him -- to change his mind after having Jonah make that announcement?
Jonah thought so. He felt betrayed and embarrassed by God's change of heart. So God had to reason with him. Here's the account:
"In turn Jehovah said: “Have you rightly become hot with anger?â€
Then Jo′nah went out of the city and sat down east of the city; and gradually he made for himself there a booth, that he might sit under it in the shade until he would see what would become of the city.
Accordingly Jehovah God appointed a bottle-gourd plant, that it should come up over Jo′nah, in order to become a shade over his head, to deliver him from his calamitous state. And Jo′nah began to rejoice greatly over the bottle-gourd plant.
But the [true] God appointed a worm at the ascending of the dawn on the next day, that it should strike the bottle-gourd plant; and it gradually dried up.
And it came about that, as soon as the sun shone forth, God also went on to appoint a parching east wind, and the sun kept striking upon the head of Jo′nah, so that he was swooning away; and he kept asking that his soul might die, and he repeatedly said: “My dying off is better than my being alive.â€
And God proceeded to say to Jo′nah: “Have you rightly become hot with anger over the bottle-gourd plant?â€
At that he said: “I have rightly become hot with anger, to the point of death.â€
But Jehovah said: “You, for your part, felt sorry for the bottle-gourd plant, which you did not toil upon or make get big, which proved to be a mere growth of a night and perished as a mere growth of a night. And, for my part, ought I not to feel sorry for Nin′e·veh the great city, in which there exist more than one hundred and twenty thousand men who do not at all know the difference between their right hand and their left, besides many domestic animals?†-- Jonah 4:4-11
Since this was written for us upon whom the ends of the ages have come I see the message for us as:
The bottle gourd plant which sheltered Jonah could be seen as representing the Law covenant with its strict legalism and justice. The worm that killed the bottle gourd was that crimson worm, the towlah, and could represent Christ who put the Law to death by nailing it to the stake/cross. Thus God's mercy triumphed over justice. The New Covenant is an expression of this mercy even though the adherents of the Mosaic Law, like Jonah, were not pleased with the change.
That whole account tells me that our Father will not act in an unmerciful way. He will not waste a drop of his son's precious blood. So I don't worry. It's perfectly safe to leave things in his hands. He will not, can not, act unjustly. If there is a possibility of repentance it will be recognized.....don't you think?
The account of Jonah and Nineveh may well stand for the resurrection of the unrighteous. We'll have to wait and see, of course, but I'm confident that we'll see a good outcome. It's in God's nature to be merciful and in our nature to respond to mercy.
love,:grouphug:
Rez