GOD IS PERFECT LOVE
Sakkie Parsons
Someone wrote to me as follows:
"Hello Sakkie, please help. We just want to know: If you have sinned, the Lord punishes you for it and that is why you are suffering?"
Let me start by just saying:
It is confessing Christians who have asked me the question and I am a confessing Christian and it is then as a confessing Christian that I write to confessing Christians how our Lord look at us and then deal with us.
Firstly, I have heard that someone in some variation makes the statement:
God, or if you do not believe in our Lord, then; " Your God is a cruel God."
Now –
Of the word “cruel” the Dictionary says among other things:
(Cruel): 1. willfully causing pain or suffering to others, or feeling no concern about it: without compassion,
Synonyms: barbarous, brutal, callous, cold-blooded, heartless, sadistic, evil, monstrous..
Personally, it is totally impossible for me to even almost think in that direction about our Lord.
I also cannot imagine myself at all, that someone can say you love someone and then say of that same person, that he:
"Willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it – without compassion, barbarous, evil, heartless, sadistic..”
You may have awe for someone you see as such.
You may fear someone like that, but you can never love someone you experience in your heart as someone who:
"Willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it – without compassion, Barbarous, evil, heartless, sadistic..”
How can you love our Lord, whom you have never even seen, but in your heart you see and experience Him as you have just read.
I only know a loving GOD who has always done for me only what is best for me:
ROM 8:28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
Our Lord has already disciplined me.
HEBREW 12:6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives."
However, I have never experienced it as punishment.
Someone is punished for a crime and thrown in jail, for example, for going there to pay for what he did wrong.
I can never, never through all eternity, never pay for everything I did wrong in my life in the eyes of our Lord – but how wonderful to know!
Our Lord has already paid for everything I have ever sinned and will still sin.
Just read again here what He endured in His great love for you and me:
ISA 53:3-5
3 He was despised and rejected by men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief; and as one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; yet we esteemed him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions; he was crushed for our iniquities; upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace, and with his stripes we are healed.
I, a disciple of Jesus Christ, will never lay before our Lord's door the mess in which this world is and the tragedies that sometimes take place which I, as His child, therefore sometimes must go through.
Firstly, all the sorrows and tragedies we do to one another are due to our sinful nature.
ROM 5:12 Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned–
Then I must also remember, child of God, that my actions have consequences.
If I embark on a long journey with my car and I start my journey with an empty tank, it will result in me standing next to the road and this in turn can have a legion of other consequences, which even can be tragic and then I cannot, because I did not use my common sense which our Lord gave me, now say that it happened because of a God who are:
"Willfully causing pain or suffering to others, feeling no concern about it – without compassion, Barbarous, evil, heartless, sadistic..”
If anything comes my way that I do not understand, I will never attribute it to our Lord punishing me.
Sometimes I experience it as our Lord disciplining me, to just help me in line again and other times when I do not understand why it is happening to me, what is happening to me and because I know for sure that the god of the evil especially concentrating on our Lord's children – I have this wonderful certain knowledge:
1 COR 10:13 No temptation (or tribulation, trials) has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and ,He will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation (or tribulation, trials) He will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
Unfortunately, it is human nature –
Just look at the people around you and feel free to include yourself in the ones you are looking at.
The more comfortable and enjoyable most of us go through life, the weaker our relationship with our Lord becomes.
Therefore, before you think:
"God punishes me."
Then remember:
JAMES 1:2-4
2 Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds,3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.
When I remember this, I also remember what Jesus himself says to us in His Word:
JOHN 16:33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world."
To summarize in short:
The, to put it this way, bad things that happen to us, our Lord's children, happen in my opinion mainly due to three reasons:
Firstly:
Because we live in a sinful world and man, not only I but all the people around me, has a will of our own and most people around me wilfully and knowingly want to use their free will to live ungodly and do ungodly things which can sometimes have consequences and sometimes even tragic consequences for us, Jesus' disciples.
Secondly:
Things sometimes happen in our lives because we just make wrong decisions and did not consult our Lord in the matter and then sometimes, even after we consult Him in the matter, we still follow our own head and make wrong choices.
Thirdly:
Sometimes our Lord allow things in our lives to keep us close to Him, or to discipline us:
HEB 12:6 For the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and chastises every son whom he receives."
However, since I was converted there in 1973, I have never experienced anything in my life as "God's punishment."
For that, my experience is, He loves me, His child, far too much and the closer I live to Him and live out His love for my neighbour, the more wonderfully I also experience His love in my own life.
1 JOHN 4:7-10
7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God.8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.
10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
Greetings,
Sakkie