God would never use mankind to test the value of His Love only to lose a part of mankind forever. Ecclesiastes 3:14. That would be unfair to man, and God is never unfair. In addition, God could never consign humans to hell forever because that would mean that the Devil would have succeeded in permanently ruining the goodness that God originally put into man. God would lose good systems that are based on His eternal set of Perfect Ideas. In other words, the value of the Living Word of God would be in doubt since God could not preserve good systems based on that Word. God must overcome all doubt and fear within His creations or suffer permanent attacks against His very Being. Satan's rebellion put this doubt and fear into God's creations before He created man. But Jesus' victory over sin and the Devil was absolute and complete. This means that God must recover and recreate every good thing that He created in the first place. Colossians 1:15-20; Revelation 21:5.
But this question remains. How can God recover and recreate the goodness that He put into unrepentant sinners when they have no faith that overcomes doubt and fear? II Thessalonians 3:2. The answer is that God proves the absolute and inviolate power of His Love in two ways. First, God proves that His Love can give faith to the repentant sinner so that God can save him by grace. Second, God proves the absolute power of His Love by never allowing sin and evil to ruin and destroy any of the goodness that He has put into man. God has given man a free will that he can use to avoid sin, and so God punishes man for sin. But God also knows that because of man's weakness, sin has become unavoidable in man's life. God cannot permanently punish man for sins that he cannot avoid. That would be unfair, and God is never unfair. Genesis 18:25.
God tests His Love for His good systems called humans by never allowing sin to destroy any good element of those systems. Satan has wagered that if he can subject the goodness that God has put into man to the grossest filthiness of sin and evil, then he can ruin and destroy a part of God's created goodness which, in turn, will demonstrate a weakness in God's eternal Ideas on which His creations were based. This means this test must be absolute and thorough. God must allow Satan to subject man to every form of horror imaginable in order for God's Love to pass this test. Man must suffer temporary sorrow and pain because of sin. But Christ has removed every permanent effect of sin forever; that is, the eternal separation of the goodness of man from God. Job 1:6-12; Job 2:1-8.
God did not leave man alone to try to pass this test by himself. Had God done so, then Satan would have succeeded in destroying a part of God's goodness and thus would have begun the destruction of God Himself. God became a man so that, as a perfect man, He could take on every evil that Satan had ever put into man on Himself on a cruel cross and separate Himself from His Father and then restore that separation in man's place so that all mankind could be reconciled to God. Christ suffered man's separation from God and then the joy of man's reconciliation to fellowship with God either by salvation by grace or by His recreation of man from a recovered pool of God's good elements that He put into man. Job 19:25-27; Matthew 27:46; I Corinthians 15:20-26; Colossians 1:15-20; Revelation 21:5.
Total evil has become a part of man's being only in the sense that germs can make a man sick. Total evil is foreign to man's being. Total evil never repents under any circumstances. Revelation 9:20-21. A man can become temporarily rebellious toward God, but if God can bring him to repentance, then this will show that he became rebellious only because of weakness. This event happened to the Apostle Paul. I Timothy 1:13. God will separate total evil from the being of man and consign it to the lake of fire forever. Revelation 21:8.
No comments:
Post a Comment