Some choose to down in it!
#why_gives_lives_and_damns_them?
A Brother echoing a question of his
friend:
I was reminded this morning of a statement made by Pastor: God provides both the righteous and the wicked sustenance of water & food BUT eternal salvation to only those He has given to our Lord Jesus Christ. Often one would ask why give lives to those whose endings are in the lake of fires since He knows from eternity? How would you answer such 'logic'?
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Deep question. Here are my thoughts.
God as the Creator is benevolent to all
His creatures; God the Redeemer is gracious to His redeemed people.
Q: Why give lives to those whose endings
are in the lake of fire since He knew from eternity?
I didn’t mean to ignore these parts of
the inquiries.
Here are some thoughts:
i. God is good and righteous in all His
ways, whether in His office as the Creator, the Governor and Upholder of all
His creation, and the Redeemer – i.e. His work of creation, providence, and
redemption.
- His moral creatures who observe and
obey the Creator’s laws are blessed; He is good and righteous.
- His redeemed children who do the
Father’s will are blessed; He is good and righteous.
ii. Let us retrace our steps way back
in time, and beyond time…
- When the Triune God decreed the
creation of man in eternity (before time began; all divine decrees were made in
eternity even though they were executed in time), the whole human race was
represented by their federal head Adam; Adam was decreed to be the
representative head of the whole human race.
- In time, the creation of man was
executed, i.e. on the sixth day of the creation week. When God had created man,
He entered into a covenant of life with Adam (as the representative head of the
whole human race), upon the condition of perfect obedience (which Adam was
completely capable of, having been created very good): forbidding him to eat of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, upon pain of death (physical death,
and eternal death in the lake of fire mentioned; the separation of body and
spirit, and the permanent separation from God, the fountain of all blessings.
iii. God the Creator entered into a
covenant of life with the whole human race represented by Adam.
This covenant of life was made in the
context of the following:
- Adam and his wife were made perfectly
upright and righteous, i.e. very good. They were perfectly capable of willing
and rendering perfect obedience to the Creator God.
- Adam and his wife were placed in the
Garden of Eden, the most perfect, conducive environment for obedience.
- The condition of the covenant of life
was simple, refrain from eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge good and
evil. I have said many times from the pulpit that the tree is just like any
other tree; it is not poisonous or toxic.
Tot eating of it as the LORD God commanded is to acknowledge that the
LORD God is both the Creator and Ruler and the Sole Arbiter of what is good and
evil; eating it is the rejection of and defiance against the LORD God as their
Creator and Ruler and the Sole Arbiter of what is good and evil, declaring man
as autonomous, the source of what’s good and evil, man declaring himself god!
- This prohibition was preceded by this
exceedingly glorious liberty, “Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely
eat.”
iv. Everything, absolutely everything
was exceedingly in the favour of Adam and the whole human race represented by
him in the covenant of life the LORD God so graciously entered with him and his
race.
- Everything was SO FAVOURABLE to Adam
and his whole race to confirm themselves in the covenant of life and continue
their perfect sinless life in the natural paradise and creation pronounced by
the LORD God as “very good.”
v. BUT ALAS… Adam blew it and damned
himself and brought his whole race into ruin. What was the ruin?
- “… for in the day thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die.” Please note, it does say, “… thou shalt die” but “thou
shalt SURELY die.” Please note too that the serpent didn’t say, “Ye shall not
die” but “ye shall not SURELY die.”
- The emphatic and intensive adverb
“surely” conveys the severity and intensity of the death intended. It is
intended to convey. “in dying, thou shalt surely die.” Simply put – eternal
separation from God, i.e. lake of fire.
- “For the wages of sin is death; but
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Rom 6:23.
vi. With the background above, we may
be able to respond to the question, “Why give lives to those whose endings are
in the lake of fires since He knows from eternity?”
- Why give lives to those whose endings
are in the lake of fire?
- All the human lives that the LORD God
had decreed, and were represented and embraced in Adam in the covenant of life,
to CONTINUE to enjoy the natural life of perfect bliss in this perfect world of
God’s creation.
- Each and every life in the human race
was placed in the perfect sinless “very good” world, with the covenant of life
to confirm themselves to continue in such perfect bliss in the “very good”
world. That was how it began.
- Their probation period was in the
most favourable and conducive environment.
- THEREFORE, it was a man’s own doing that if he should end up in the lake of fire; but wicked men would want to blame the LORD God,
just like Adam blamed the LORD God for giving him the woman whom he had
rejoicingly owned earlier as “bones of my bone, and flesh of my flesh.”
vii. BUT by God’s abundant mercy, He
did not let every one of Adam’s race end up in the lake of fire. It would have
been perfectly just and righteous of the LORD God had He decided to leave the
whole human race to its just desert.
- But wicked men are blind to their own
faults but always find faults with the LORD God.
- “For the wages of sin is death, but
the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
- “Wages” is something one has justly EARNED,
and must be justly rendered. A place in the lake of fire is justly earned.
- “free gift of God” – this is a free
gift indeed, completely, wholly, truly unmerited, and instead bestowed unto the
most ill-deserving rebels.
Why would men who love not God in this
life want to be with God in heaven in the next and whine and bitch about the
lake of fire is a good question to think about (assuming they do believe in the
things presupposed in the question!).
I hope the above helps.
Keep asking.
p/s God's prescriptive will, and not
His decretive will, is the basis for the
conduct of His moral creatures made in His image; God's laws and commands
define man's duties towards Him.
