The Domino Effect

Q: What's your thought on the belief some people have that God allows trials sometimes as punishment for past sins or to break them from a current vice?

A: I guess I would ask those people how can they say that God punishes us for past sins and yet, at the same time, say there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus? It doesn't add up. Jesus took the entire penalty for sin and there is none left for us to take. Now, there is a passage in Hebrews (Heb 12:4-6) that some use, because of problems with translation, to say God punishes us for our sins. But, God's discipline is not the same as punishment. His discipline is preparation for the journey ahead of us, not punishment for a wrong committed. But, as you know, we are still subject to the outcomes of our sinful behavior and poor decisions, as well as those of others. That is not of God, but just a byproduct of living in this world. When things are going well it is easy to shout "Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!" from the mountaintops. But, turn things around and we can quickly start saying, "Why hast thou forsaken me?" We have to keep renewing our mind on the truth of who we are in Christ and realize that our right standing before God has nothing to do with our circumstances or our failures, but everything to do with Christ and His success on our behalf.

Have you ever noticed how quickly one bit of error can have a domino effect on everything else we say we believe? If God punishes us then there has to be a penalty for that punishment. What is it? The wages of sin is death. So, do we start eliminating ourselves and each other? We won't go that far, so we will institute other "sacrifices" like confession booths, altar calls, short accounts, rosary beads, 1 John 1:9, repetitive prayers and so on. All of these make the cross of no effect and minimize the severity of sin. The Bible talks about insulting the Spirit of grace. It is the failure to understand the once and for all sacrifice of Jesus that does the insulting. Is it any wonder so many Christians are living in fear (whether they acknowledge it or not)? That is why people talk about being "out of fellowship" with God, that He "turns His back" on us, that we can "lose our salvation," etc. There is no joy of salvation or experiencing God's love when you think He has His fist cocked at you waiting to "punish" you for every sin committed in your life. It is the fundamental misunderstanding of the forgiveness issue that has so many Christians focused on sin.

The major problem that arises when you believe that God is punishing you for your sin is that your entire focus becomes you and your attempts to rid yourself of the sin in your life. For the most part every religion, in one form or another, is designed to help you rid yourself from sin in an effort to reach up to God. The Bible tells us that the power of sin is the law. And what is religion if it isn't law? A friend of mine once said that "A religion is defined by the set of laws it imposes on its congregation." And with every set of laws there must be an equal amount of rewards and punishments for your obedience, or lack thereof, to those laws. How quickly we forget that God already had a system in place for us to try and live up to and to deal with sin. It was the Mosaic Law. And what was its purpose? To show us our sinfulness so we would turn to Christ by faith. Christ's death on the cross did away with sin for eternity so that, raised from the dead, He could indwell us. If our sins were still an issue then we would not have eternal life because every time we sinned that life would leave us.

Do we believe God when He says He "was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men's sins against them (2 Corinthians 5:19)"? He is not counting our sins against us, but we seem to have no problem counting them against ourselves. Furthermore, the Bible tells us that, "Their sins and lawless acts I will remember no more." And where these have been forgiven, there is no longer any sacrifice for sin (Hebrews 10:17-18)." Our sins "have been" forgiven. The use of have been means that forgiveness is a past act. And there is no longer any sacrifice for sin. What does that say to the endless "sacrifices" we perform on a daily and weekly basis in order to get our sins forgiven? Besides, we know that "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness (Hebrews 9:22)." All our attempts to get forgiven by God are not only unacceptable they don't even meet the requirement for forgiveness. The bottom line is that the sin issue is over between man and God. We can't be saved if it wasn't! God is not punishing you for sins He no longer counts against you. When we don't believe God everything else we believe will be incorrect. Correcting what we believe begins with understanding the truth about the forgiveness of sins.