3261.— God's Way and Man's Way
A correspondent (T. B.) says: “If I could create man and give him life and all good things, and gave him my commandments to keep, and the man rejected my words and would go on doing wickedly, I would not want to destroy him. I would have to punish him with bad things to make him understand who was boss, I or he. I could not stop him from his evil work by giving him good things, I am sure.” We are sorry that our friend has such a conception of God as that. The beloved apostle bears witness, “We love, because He first loved us.” 1 John 4:19. And Paul declares, “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” Rom. 2:4. Sometimes God permits the consequences of our sins to come upon us. Sometimes He permits the enemy to trouble us. Sometimes He lets the fair-weather friends forsake us. He permits us to know by experience that all our hopes built on earthly things have for a foundation only shifting sand and are bound to bring bitter disappointment. At the same time His infinite mercy pleads with us to come to Him and find rest, and peace, and joy; but if we refuse that—refuse to yield to His love, to respond to His goodness, to use the life which He gives us, in enmity to His government, there is but one more thing that He can do, and that is to take from us the life, the gift of God which we have abused, and let us die. The wages of sin is not eternal life in misery, but “the wages of sin is death.” It seems to us, in the light of all this, that our friend could not do otherwise than believe that God in His goodness would destroy those who are a curse to the universe and to themselves.