Natural Consequences or Judgment?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions about our recent sermons. We always have a lot of fun researching these and hearing what you heard and how you are interacting with it. So thank you for sending in your questions. The question this week comes from the sermon just this last week where we talked about the fear of God and also that we should fear not that God is both the storm and the shelter from the storm. And lastly that God goes out into his own storm.

He bears his own terror so that we can come into the shelter, which obviously God did in the person of Jesus Christ. So the question this week has to do when we leave the shelter of God and we go out into the storm, is the pain that we experience when we run away from God, is that pain just the natural consequences of getting involved with behaviors that we shouldn’t be doing? Is it just natural consequences of action? Or is it the judgment of God on our life? And so first, I would say it is at least the natural consequences of our actions.

Galatians Six we reap what we sow. Of course, there are always going to be consequences when we run away from God, when we run away from life, when we run away from the source of life, we will experience some kind of death, right? Death of a dream, death of a relationship. Some kind of pain will result in that. We reap what we sow.

Galatians Six? Absolutely. And then we come to the question of judgment. Is it more than just the natural consequences of our actions? Is God taking an action?

Is he judging us for what we have done? And I would say first we need to define what we mean by judgment if we’re answering that question. If judgment means some kind of punitive wrath, if we are Christian believers, then there is none of that, right? Romans Eight One there is now therefore, no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. If we are Christian believers, Christ has taken all of the punitive portion of the penalty that would be coming on us.

He’s taken all of the wrath of God away. All of that is gone. So there is none of that, if that’s what we mean by judgment. However, if what we mean by judgment is what scripture calls discipline, god’s discipline on us. Hebrews twelve, right?

God disciplines all those. He accepts his sons. So if God has adopted us into his family, we are his children, we are believers in Christ, then he will discipline us just like a good parent would discipline us. And just like a parent, if the parent let the child do whatever the child wanted to do without any kind of response from the parent, then that would not be loving at all. There actually has to be action taken against the child.

Whenever the child misbehaves in some way in order for the child to learn. And we understand, even though that might be unpleasant, it is part of love that a parent offers their children, right? So in the same way God disciplines us, that can be physical pain, it can be deterioration of our bodies, it can be the death of a relationship, it can be circumstances stacking up against you in order to teach you something. But yes, God could really be taking action against us. It’s for us.

But God could be taking action to stop us from doing whatever we are doing and to teach us the right way to go. He can absolutely do that. And that is part of his loving nature toward us, that he has adopted us, his son. So if that’s what we mean by judgment, if what we mean is discipline, then absolutely, God can be very active, very proactive in our lives when we are running away from Him. And the pain that we experience could definitely be discipline and not just the natural for our actions.

So, hey, thanks for sending in your questions again. Keep them coming so that we can be interacting in this way in the weeks ahead. Thanks again. Bye.