Does the Punishment Fit the Crime?
Enter at the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who are going through it, because small is the gate and narrow is the way that leads to life, and there are few who find it. (Matthew 7:13-14)
Too often the bible’s perspective on the human condition is ignored or thought of as ancient and irrelevant. The unfortunate part of this narrative is that it is through text that we are offered a deeply profound diagnosis of human nature. God grieves sin, and He has made it abundantly clear that it is not to be trivialized. Society has made a dangerous habit of subconsciously breaking the second commandment. Whether you believe in the words or not, and/or think they do not apply to you since you are not a believer is irrelevant. If I get pulled over for driving thirty miles an hour over the speed limit, I do not have the standing to tell the enforcer of the law that since I don’t believe in the law, it doesn’t apply to me. We break the second commandment by picking apart the bible and extracting only the parts that align with our own standards. In doing so we make a God according to the likeness of our imagination, one that can never judge us, and one who perfectly aligns with our interpretation of what right and wrong ought to be.
Words that are cast aside ever so brazenly include iniquity (crookedness) and transgression (a break of trust.) The more encompassing version of all the misdeeds that fall under those umbrella terms is known as Sin. Khata in Hebrew, Hamartia in Greek. Meaning to fail to meet the goal, fall short of, or to miss the target. But wait, this supposes that humans have a goal. The very first page of the bible tells us how every person is an image bearer of God, hence intrinsically granted worthiness, respect, and dignity. Therefore in this view, Sin would therefore mean to fail to love others and to not treat them with the honor they deserve. In turn you fail to love and honor God. Sin against each other is sin against Him. When you put a picture of someone’s face on a dart board, not only do you deface the actual picture itself, you disrespect the person depicted in the image. This idea of loving people and loving God being equally yoked is conveyed in the ten commandments. Half of which show how one can fail to love God, and half to show how you can fail to love each other.
God grieves sin. As the author of life, He understands how destructive sin is to humanity. He is justified to keep sin and those who rejoice in it restricted from entering his kingdom. He as a loving parent has a duty to protect his children. His children are those who have established a loving and trusting relationship with him. His obligation to protect his children refrains him from inviting those who freely choose to live apart from him into his home. The quote that led off this blog is further articulated in a conversation Jesus had with a person in the book of Luke. “Once the master of the house has risen up and shut out the door, and you begin to stand outside and knock at the door saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open the door for us,’ He will answer you, ‘I do not know where you come from.’ Then you will begin to say, ‘We ate and drank in your presence, and you taught in our streets.’ But he will say ‘I tell you, I do not know you, or where you come from. Depart from Me all you workers of iniquity.’” (Luke 13:25-27)
We are given the free choice to either live for God, or against God, he lays out the directions in black and white on how to live for him. If you choose to live against him, so be it, but realize that it is not him who has sent you to hell. It is the path in which you willingly chose. Just as we see in the story of the flood. God (the redeemer) tells Noah (who walks with him, thus representing the righteous) about the danger and disaster coming, the flood (judgment/ the wages of our sin.) In order to save the righteous, he lays out plan by plan instructions on how to build an Ark (a means of being protected from the judgment.) Then God shuts the door behind him. This was the last time God chose to willingly punish those who live against his will in this particular manner. God realizes that ever since sin entered humanity at the fall, that we as humans alone are never going to be able to completely rid ourselves of sin. So God in his all loving nature, brought himself into the world to offer himself as a sacrifice for our sin. He took the punishment so we do not have to. “For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. He who believes in Him is not condemned. But he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the name of the only begotten Son of God.” (John 3:16-18.)
What does it mean when you hear sin entered humanity at the fall? And why would God ever allow Adam and Eve to sin? Although sin is manifested in our actions and that is how it rears its ugly face, there is a level of sin that goes a bit deeper. It is also our ability to deceive ourselves into thinking we can redefine our bad decisions and label them as being good. This is where the root of sin comes into play. This concept is demonstrated in the physical world when Adam and Eve chose to define what is right and what is wrong by their own standards. They quite literally ate from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. It was not His will that they had sinned, but in order for them to choose to listen to God, the choice to not listen to God must exist as well. Or else it wouldn’t be a choice, and we would be robots. Just as heat has to exist in order for there to be cold, the option to live against God has to exist for there to be an option to live for God. He did not want them to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil because he knew that once sin entered mankind, it is so potent, and contagious that it will continue to plague all further generations to come. But instead they made the conscious decision to go against God. God was then justified in removing them from paradise so that they may not continue to destroy it, just as a person would remove cancer from their body. The implications of this ‘original sin’ is that since then, every person who has been born into the world is stained. Born with an inherent nature towards sin (well… there was this one guy.) We as humans have a proclivity to sin, to be selfish, greedy, manipulate, etc. and have to be taught how to distance ourselves from it. Take a young child for instance, a good parent does not teach the child how to lie, scream “I hate you,” pit the two parents against each other, be selfish, steal a candy bar… so then, where are these traits being picked up from if they don’t in fact come naturally?
A tool that can be used to help understand how the punishment may fit the crime can be displayed in something called ‘The Authoritative Ladder.’ If you lie to your child, there is relatively zero punishment. Lie to your boss, you can get fired. Lie to your wife enough and she’ll divorce you. Lie to the government, they can toss you in jail. As we climb the ladder of authority all the way to its logical extreme, that is where we are faced with God. When you sin against the ultimate authority, it makes sense that you would receive a reciprocal punishment.
Sin is not to be trivialized. Just because we may not understand why something is deemed a sin, that does not unburden us from the repercussions our actions may have. Whether we are able to see the direct results of our actions, does not mean they do not exist. A great example of this is seen in 1Samuel when David goes to Nob. David, on the run from King Saul, stops in Nob in search of food, weapons, anything that may help him. In order to attain what he needed, he lies to the priest Ahimilek. He tells the priest that he is on a secret mission for the King, and fails to mention how he is actually evading persecution. What may have seemed like a white lie at the time, harmless, and uneventful would prove to be anything but. While in Nob, David is seen by one of King Saul’s lackeys (Doeg). If David was honest with Ahimilek, Ahimilek would have ensured Doeg was not made aware of Davids presence (as Ahimelek was a fan of David.) But since Ahimilek was left out of the loop of the real situation at hand, Doeg told the King that David is here in Nob and that the priests are aiding him in his efforts against you. To say King Saul made an example of Nob would be a gross understatement. Ahimilek, his fathers household, eighty five priests, women, children, babies, oxen, donkeys, and sheep all fell to the sword by order of the King.
Often in the bible, sin is depicted as a wild hungry animal frothing at the mouth that only desires to consume humans, and if you don’t go out of your way to choose and cling to what is objectively good and right, khata is lurking and crouching, ready to spring. Our tendency of self deception runs deep and is rooted in our desires and selfish urges that force us to act for our own benefit at the expense of others. Thus breaking the human to human relationship thus intrinsically breaking the relationship between human and God.
Your time on earth is a grain of sand compared to the beach that is eternity. Do not let how you choose to live in this incomprehensibly small time period keep you from eternity in heaven. God is the ultimate judge, but He is also the ultimate redeemer. Whenever He casts judgment, whether it be the casting out of mankind from the garden, or sending the flood, He never fails to provide a lifeline, a covenant, a way back intorelationship with him. This brings about the importance and relevance of the Jesus story. The creator becomes flesh who does not fail to love others and God. He who was without sin, took on the responsibility for all of man’s sins. Gifting us with the free gift of salvation so that we may not live eternity apart from him. Accept the free gift, repent of your sin, leave it behind, don’t live for it anymore, be born with a new heart that rejects that which separates us from Him, humble yourself and live for the will of the one who saves us from damnation. “He committed no sin, nor was deceit found in His mouth. When he was reviled. He did not revile back;when he suffered, He did not threaten, but he entrusted Himself to Him who judges righteously. He himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should line unto righteousness. By his wounds you were healed.” (1Peter 2:22-24)
In Dedication to my beloved Godson, Tripp James Daly.