Righteous art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgments.
In Scripture we see two sides to God: One is His loving, compassionate, caring side. He is the God who created us and made the supreme sacrifice to offer us eternal life.
Then there is the God of holiness, the God of wrath; the God who judges sin.
I'm afraid the Church today has lost the balance on the teeter-totter between these two sides to God's nature. Too often we emphasize His love and forget that He is just and righteous; He will not tolerate sin.
I don't think we talk enough today about sin and its consequences. The Bible tells us the penalty for sin is hell. These are not popular concepts in our culture of tolerance.
Hell isn't in style today because it represents a couple of things that are repugnant. It represents accountability to someone in authority, and we want to avoid authority. And it represents absolute eternal judgment. We have a difficult time believing that such a place could exist, and we don't want to really believe that everlasting punishment and torment is a reality. And when we no longer see the eternal retribution of our sins, we lose any urgency for repenting of those sins.
So we don't talk much about hell to our children, extended family or our friends.
But hell is real.
To the Greeks, the distance between the bull's-eye and where the arrow hit was known as "the sin." It meant to fall short of the ideal. To sin means to "miss the mark."
God is patient, but He is not tolerant. He is holy. His justice calls for an atonement (a payment, a penalty) for man's sins. Our children must have some understanding that their sins can keep them out of heaven. Their sins must be paid for. And that is what Jesus Christ did for us on the cross.
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