Your ShelfYour Projects

What Is the Penalty of Sin?

6%

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Nov 18, 1915

FromReview and Herald, Vol. 92, No. 57.

Read the full edition

What Is the Penalty of Sin?

By C. P. Bollman

C. P. BOLLMAN
NOTWITHSTANDING the fact that the Bible tells us plainly that “the wages of sin is death,” there are found today comparatively few persons who really believe this statement just as it reads in Rom. 6: 23.
The trouble is that too many think of man as a naturally immortal being, incapable of real death, and destined therefore to live on and on to all eternity, like God himself. Believing this, they must perforce believe either in the final restoration of all men or else in the eternal torment of some men. But both views are contrary to the Bible.
The Bible gives no intimation that “the wages of sin” means anything less than loss of life in the sense of forfeiting forever “conscious, intelligent existence.” It may be freely admitted that there are in the Scriptures some things “hard to be understood.” We have no divine warrant, however, for saying that “death does not mean death, but eternal life in misery.”
The Bible, in both the Old and the New Testament, employs the strongest possible language to express utter destruction, when describing that which befalls the wicked. For example, in the thirty-seventh psalm we read: “Evildoers shall be cut off.” Verse 9. “For yet a little while, and the wicked shall not be: yea, thou shalt diligently consider his place, and it shall not be.” Verse 10. “But the wicked shall perish, and the enemies of the Lord shall be as the fat of lambs: they shall consume; into smoke shall they consume away.” Verse 20. “But the seed of the wicked shall be cut off.” Verse 28. “When the wicked are cut off, thou shalt see it.” Verse 34. “The end of the wicked shall be cut off.” Verse 38.
If these expressions do not mean utter extinction of being, it is hard to imagine language that could in a natural and easy way convey that idea. But plain as these statements by the psalmist are, the prophet Obadiah seems to go even beyond him in this respect, when he says:—
“The day of Jehovah is near upon all the nations: as thou hast done, it shall be done unto thee; thy dealing shall return upon thine own head. For as ye have drunk upon my holy mountain, so shall all the nations drink continually; yea, they shall drink, and swallow down, and shall be as though they had not been.” Obadiah 15, 16, A. R. V.
Surely this can mean nothing less than total destruction. But it is objected by some that while it does mean utter destruction, it is the destruction not of individuals, but of nations. We do not believe that such a view can be maintained; but without stopping to show that masses of men and not organized political units are meant, let us turn to a text that leaves no room for any such question; namely, Mal. 4: 1:—
“For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the Lord of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.”
Certainly this can mean nothing less than the literal and entire destruction of individual sinners. Call it “annihilation” if you will, but there is no escaping the fact that it is just what the Scriptures repeatedly assert concerning the end of the wicked.
Passing over to the New Testament, we find the same truth taught in language no less clear and positive. “Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” Matt. 10: 28.
Man can “kill the body,” that is, he can cause temporary cessation of existence, but he cannot kill the soul; or, in other words, cannot utterly destroy the one whose life he seeks. But God can do this, and the implication is strong that he will do so; otherwise the passage is without meaning. There could be no occasion to fear one who neither could nor would inflict condign punishment. But in the words quoted, our Saviour declares that God can destroy both soul and body in hell, and certainly he strongly implies that he will exercise this power in the case of the finally impenitent.
Another text in the New Testament that teaches the utter destruction of the wicked in definite and unmistakable language is Jude 7: “Even as Sodom and Gomorrha, and the cities about them in like manner, giving themselves over to fornication, and going after strange flesh, are set forth for an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.”
Sodom and Gomorrha were utterly destroyed. Their site, if known at all, is now covered by the waters of the Dead Sea. The “eternal fire” whose vengeance they suffered was not eternal in the sense of burning eternally, but eternal in its effects. There could be no return from the condition into which the cities of the plain were reduced by it. Being once destroyed by this fire, they would never be rebuilt. Their ruin is everlasting.
The punishment, the destruction, that shall be visited finally upon the wicked is also everlasting. “These,” said the Saviour, “shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal.” Matt. 25: 46. It is not into “everlasting punishing,” but “everlasting punishment.” It is a condition that admits of no change, no surcease. Temporal death, the death to come to all alike, good and bad, ends with the resurrection. “All that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth.” John 5: 28, 29. But not so with the second death. That death is inflicted by the fires of the last days; it is eternal fire in that its effects are eternal, or everlasting. The death that it inflicts is eternal death, a death from which there is no release.
“God is love.” He knows no malice.There is no revenge cherished in his heart. He kills only because in the very nature of things he cannot keep sin alive. For sin must perish, and with it all shall die Who to transgression cling, who God defy.
God cannot deny himself. He cannot be other than he is. And when he made the world, and ordained the laws of righteousness and life, he just as certainly ordained the results of unrighteousness, and established the penalty—death. Could the Creator put a premium upon sin by promising life to sinners?—No; for God cannot deny himself. God can forgive sins and give eternal life to the penitent soul, but he cannot make sin immortal by giving everlasting life to those who, hating righteousness, cling to transgression. The Lord will have a clean universe.