Reflecting on things I learned in Genesis, and elsewhere in the Bible, I had this thought today. This isn’t the exclusive way God works. He has the prerogative to work however He wills, and we can’t hold Him to a pattern. But, when God wants to get a hold of a person who is not doing what He wants, not going the direction He wants, he often uses one of two things – underserved love, or deserved punishment (see 1st diagram). God often employs people to be the ones through whom the favor or pain come. If you see either of these things in your life, pay attention. If God is working to change you, it’s obviously best to respond to Him, turn toward Him, change.
You may be the person, or one of the persons, God is using (could use) to bring another person to change. If you are doing wrong in God’s sight, bad actions, even though God may use it to bring another person where God want them, God often will likely punish you (see 2nd diagram). If you are doing right in God’s sight, good actions, God will likely reward you, show you favor.
We sometimes see someone who is doing wrong, and so we take it upon ourselves to decide to make them suffer. It is up to God to decide to punish someone. If He decides to use you, then he will guide you to that. That is where the diagram breaks down, because sometimes God uses the righteous justice of people to punish other people, like government or the church are sometimes used for the punishment of the criminal or the unrepentant sinner. But, if we take it upon ourselves to make someone suffer, by our own bad actions, then we are putting ourselves in position to be punished ourselves. Do you want to be punished by God, even if you are trying to get someone else right? No. It may not seem like the right thing to do to be loving to a person who is doing wrong, who needs to change. But, in God’s economy, sometimes that is how God will use you to change that person. For example, 1 Peter 3:1-2 reads, “In the same way, you wives, be submissive to your own husbands so that even if any of them are disobedient to the word they may be won without a word by the behavior of their wives, as they observe your chaste and respectful behavior.”
Comments (0)