An Overwhelming Need

An Alternate End

Seriously

Two Eternities, Part 2

Sin is not without its consequence in this world, but frankly, most of us are concerned more about the consequences sin will have for us after we leave this world. That's where question 29 of the Larger Catechism comes in: What are the punishments of sin in the world to come?

Let us cut to the chase: scripture tells us (Romans 6:23) that the wages of sin is death. Obviously it isn't talking about physical death, or we would all drop dead the moment we sinned. It is talking about the what scripture calls the "second death" which is God's final judgment against sin: the Lake of Fire.

A lot of people think of Judgment Day as the day God will decide where a person will spend eternity, but that is totally off. Where we are going to spend eternity will have been already decided long before the Day of Judgment; we are (all of us) condemned already on account of our sin (c.f. John 3:18). Judgment Day is simply the day that every condemned sinner will commence his or her sentence; that is, it is the day that guilty sinners will be cast into the Lake of Fire as a punishment for their rebellion against God.

If anyone who has ever sinned is condemned already, one might ask, How then do Christians escape this judgment --aren't they sinners also? Does God simply ignore their condemnation? If so, why doesn't God ignore everyone's condemnation? Well I am glad I wrote this article in such a way as to suggest you are actually asking these questions, because the answer is good news indeed.

God knew that Adam would rebel against Him even before Adam was created. So God chose to redeem some of Adam's race and did so in such a way as to avoid compromising His own righteousness. You see, it would be unrighteous for God to send anyone to hell if God let even one guilty person avoid Judgment. Thus redemption had to allow guilty to receive the full weight of their punishment, and live through the condemnation somehow. So God sent Christ to become a man and live a life so perfect that it would be unjust of God to allow Christ's sinless life to end. In this way (in Christ) God created a bridge (or, if you prefer, an "ark" c.f. 1 Peter 3:18-21 (especially v.21)), by which a condemned sinner could pass through God's judgment unscathed. Those who come to Christ for salvation, are baptized "into" Christ, a spiritual union described as being born again.

Thus when we trust God's promise to redeem us, that is, when we trust that God really did send His own Son to deliver us from this otherwise inescapable condemnation; We are united with Christ (born again), and through this union we are/were crucified with Christ (i.e. we are/were literally condemned in Christ), and we also died with Christ when He died. Through this shared condemnation and death we can say that we literally (as opposed to figuratively or as some kind of metaphor) that we were condemned in Christ. Yet because of Christ's perfect life, it would have been unjust to keep Him in the grave, and because we were still united together with Christ, when God (in order to satisfy all righteousness) raised the innocent Christ from the dead, we also (who were in Christ), were raised (in Him), having become partakers of His life (the very life that was raised). That is how Christians pass through God's judgment.

But everyone else (everyone who is not "in" Christ) must face God's judgment on Judgment Day, and that judgment is a lake of eternal fire. Those who are cast into it will suffer two torments forever: first they will suffer the torment of the flames, but more tormenting than this, they will suffer the torment of being without the same God they spent their whole life rejecting, and this for all eternity.

Two Eternities, Part 1

There's a popular book out these days which tries to make the Bible's portrait of hell, literally, into a mere garbage dump -- a smelly place you don't want to end up in. And in that, this book makes much of the fact that God's love wins everyone in the end, so in effect there is no garbage dump in Heaven.

In making this case, this book makes much of the fact that some passages about Hell talk about the punishment there being "for an age." That is: the view of the author is that whatever it is that is happening in Hell, it's not forever. It's just for an age. No worries.

The problem, of course, is that Heaven -- the Kingdom, the final reward -- is also for that same age. The same words are use to describe the duration of Heaven that describe the duration of Hell.

I'm really not sure how that's comforting, if it's true.

Being like this

Can I admit something here? This is my favorite topic in the whole catechism.  Well, "favorite" is a weird word for this, I admit it.  Besides the Gospel and Jesus and the Church and so on, this is my favorite topic in the catechism to talk about with unbelievers because it's a place where they have no place to hide, and frankly neither do we.

Look: this is the topic that proves out a lot of things about the way things work in this world. The Gospel doesn't prove out how things work -- the Gospel is sort of in spite of how things work. You can't expect or explain the Gospel except with a real God who is personal and intentional and loving.

But this topic here -- this is the question which every non-Christian and every Christian comes back to almost daily: why does it have to be this way?

Yeah, us Calvinists: we have to frame it as a systematic question with all the categories squared up like a set of box-cut corners. But anyone you meet has this question practically on the tip of their tongue: why does it have to be this way?

That is: Why did Leiby Kletzky have to die on his first day walking home from day camp - the first time his mother let him walk on the streets of NYC by himself? I mean: he was 8. And he was cut to pieces by a man who didn't even know him, didn't even want anything from him, didn't even mean harm to him at first (or so it seems).

Why does a 15-year-old-girl get murdered on vacation with her family?

This is the foundational question of everyone who isn't a sociopath, who isn't living in an emotional or relational box: why does this stuff happen? Where is God, Gospel person: where is God in a world where every manner of evil, from the mocking of children to the murder of thousands, is allowed to happen?

Listen to me carefully, dear reader: it is not merely allowed to happen. It happens for two reasons, which is to say two intentional purposes.

The first is because people are under a punishment from God. I know it's not popular to say it. I know it makes Francis Chan uneasy to come to grips with the fearsomeness of God's justice. I know you personally probably didn't tune in today to get a dose of the old-time religion, but facts are facts: the only foundational explanation for the evil in this world is rooted deep in the fallenness of this world as human-kind's punishment for sin.

And it's right, by the way, to hang that on Adam in one sense, but you have read the book of Romans, I am sure: we have this punishment on us because we are just like him. Whether we have the law in a book or in our conscience, we are the ones who do evil things -- so the world we live in is full of the evil we do.

It is what comes out of a person which defiles that person, and the curse just wells up from inside us. So the first reason the world is like it is is because we are under God's punishment for being like this.

But the second reason is less theoretical and more practical: the world is this way because we like it this way. This is a terrifying thought -- and it may never have occurred to you. I can beat you up with another part of Romans to prove it out to you, but why go that far? This is something nobody needs to be tricked or educated into believing.

Just think about the last time you did something you know was wrong -- and don't give me that laughable platitude that you never really do anything wrong. Really? Never angry and rash, never jealous or envious, never disobedient or false in any way? I don't believe it, and you know you don't believe it -- so let's cut past that lie (see: not even out of the gate, and you're lying) to the point.

When you did that thing you know is wrong, did you want to? I mean: didn't it seem right and proper and maybe just and pleasing to you? You wanted to do what you did. That is: that's the kind of place you wanted to make the world right then.

So believe it: complaining about this world and its state when this is how you want it to be is more than a little despicable. It's a lot more than that.

Sizing one's self up

There is an obvious comparison when we consider the relationship between sin and punishment. Those who choose not to continue knowing God -- which is the only way to get real wisdom -- Paul says that God gives them a perverted mind which therefore chooses nothing at all which is right.

So when Paul says "they chose not," it is the same as saying that not only did they not do what they ought to have done (seek to know God), but they have determined actually not to know God, to quit God if such a thing is possible. And it is this choice, says Paul, that begins all manner of vain choices -- "vain" in the sense of self-exalting, self-exaggerating, rather than sizing one's self up against God, who is much greater -- and therefore sinful or self-serving (rather than God-serving) choices.

And because they want to turn from God, they want to turn from what is right.

So Paul, rather than leave it to the imagination by saying "all kinds of abominable things," instead gives us a list of the things men do to this end. This is not a common practice -- to make sure the reader would know exactly what he was talking about. Because though every fault isn't found in every person, everyone is guilt of these kinds of things, and we should know it -- because each of us are guilty of some of it, we are all guilty of all of it.

And note: Paul says these things are not right, meaning not only are they against God's judgment, but they are also against our own good judgment, and a bad idea just from the perspective of our common obligations to each other. This is the evidence of how badly our minds are bent, he says, that we are not just attracted to these violations of God's law, but that we are addicted to them. If we had any common sense we'd renounce them, but we never think about that.

Paul's wasn't trying to puzzle these vices together, as if they were dependent on each other. He simply made a list of them. But what each of them points to is this: Because we have given up the God in God, we have also given up on the image of God in man, and are resigned to all manner of vices.

What we Don't Know

What punishments are there in this world? Of all the pain and sorrow that is our lot, perhaps our greatest misery is ignorance, or therein lies the source of all our sorrows and all our miseries.

When a father holds his lifeless son, the pain he feels comes from ignorance. He cannot know why his son has died, he may not know where his son has gone, and so he writhes in the agony of ignorance. There is tremendous agony in the why, the where, and the what for.

It is felt when the lover is abandoned by the beloved; it is felt in the fear of disease. We feel it in the hour of commitment. We worry our plans will fail, or our partner will betray us, or that the economy will crumble. The farmer feels it when he plants his crop, the policeman when he goes on patrol, and the soldier as he faces battle.

Is ignorance really the greatest punishment of all? It is indeed. Our folly is all rooted in one great ignorance, and it is truly the greatest rebuke and sorrow that God could give: He has with held from us Himself. This is our curse and the source of all of our troubles, that we are fallen from God, that he has withdrawn himself from us and left us to wallow in our ignorance of his glory.

And herein lies the greatest hope for the grieving father, the nervous soldier, and the hard-working farmer: “And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (John 17:3).

Already and Not Yet: Part 1

The Westminster "Divines" asked the question this way because they wanted to identify (and explain) the persisting consequences of the fall in our everyday lives as contrasted against the consequences of sin that persist beyond this present life.

When God breathed life into that body he had just formed for Adam, Adam became a living soul who was dependant upon God for the sustaining of the life that had just been breathed into him.

When Adam sinned, God did not take this breath of life away from Adam, even though that was what God had promised He would do should Adam rebel against the command. Yet when Adam did usurp God's reign in his life, God did not immediately execute the promised condemnation that God had obligated Himself to perform. This has led some to imagine that God had relented of the original judgment, and instead merely banished Adam and Eve. But that isn't what happened. God did not set aside the condemantion He promised Adam, rather He postponed it, setting a day on which that judgment would fall - Judgment Day. The reason God postponed this judgment was because He, in His mercy, determined to save a remnant of Adam's race whom He had elected beforehand for this act of grace. Adam did not drop dead the moment he sinned because God was extending mercy to generations who had not yet been born; thus the judgment was postponed; nevertheless Adam became "dead" in his trespasses/sins the very moment he rebelled against God's rule.



Even though God's judgment against sin awaits the coming Day of Judgment, Adam's sin was not without consequence in the present world. Above all else, mankind lost the privilege of having direct access to God. Access to God, from the moment Adam fell has been (and presently is) mediated through Christ. No person has access to God through any other means. This was a veiled truth in the Old Testament, but now it has been revealed in Christ.

Given that Christ was (and is) the only gate through which a person has access to God, every person who is born into this fallen world is born blind, ignorant, and dead in their trespasses. This spiritual stillbirth is the primary consequence out from which flows almost every other sinful effect in the world; but there is more. God cursed all creation on account of sin, so that we are not only born spiritually bankrupt, but we are born into a world that cannot sustain us indefinitely, we grow old, we die, we get sick, we toil for limited resources, and having been left to ourselves, we define the purpose of our existence as nothing better than continuing to exist at all costs. Adam's rebellion left mankind dead in sin, and corrupt in body. We have inherited both the curse of Adam (separation from God), and the cursing of creation. The curse against us personally is removed when we come to Christ, but the world, and the things in it will remain cursed until Christ returns as our Judge on the Day of Judgment. Until then Sin has left us in sickness and poverty with death and with suffering, even after-and-if we have been reconciled to God through Christ.

No Mark on our Faces. Yet.

There's a billboard here along the highway which has an anti-meth advertisement. It shows the meth addict's mouth in a before-and-after fashion, demonstrating the destruction that takes place over time from the drug. (Something similar can be found here.) I have to admit, it is an extremely effective illustration of the external effects of sin.