The Loving-kindness of God to sinners

Published in Pasugo, Aug 2005


SOCIETY GENERALLY LOOKS at offenders, especially the callous ones, with abhorrence and repulsion. Which is why, when one commits an offense or an act that is considered to constitute a crime against a person or the society-at-large, the perpetrator is condemned, ostracized, and sometimes immediately punished or meted out with a punitive measure by his fellowmen. Sad to say, more often than not, many offenders are not given by society the chance to reform and redeem themselves from their wrongdoing. Because of this, there are those who have lost hope of changing their life an of being absorbed back in the mainstream society. They think that there is no way out of their predicament but to revert to committing evil, which eventually causes them to ruin their lives completely. However, ever the righteous judge that He is, God has a different way of dealing with offenders or sinners. He continues to extend His loving-kindness to all men, though all have fallen into sin (Rom. 5:12), either through commission – by transgressing His laws or commands (I John 3:4), or through omission – by not doing them (James 4:17; Rom. 7:12). The Bible describes God’s loving-kindness to a person who sinned against Him this way:

“The LORD is gracious and full of compassion, Slow to anger and great in mercy.” (Ps. 145:8, New King James Version)

The testimony of those who have experienced God’s compassion and mercy is this:

“Through the LORD’s mercies we are not consumed, Because His compassions fail not.” (Lam. 3:22, Ibid.)

Because of God’s mercy and compassion, sinners are not consumed immediately. But this does not mean that God is slack toward or is condoning the wrongdoings of sinners. There is something in God’s compassion that keeps Him from allowing the sinners to be destroyed or consumed immediately. Apostle Peter explains:

“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.” (II Pet. 3:9, Ibid.)

God is giving sinners the chance to repent. He does not want anyone to perish on account of sin. Had he not been full of compassion, all of us sinners would not have been given the chance to repent and we would have certainly been destroyed.

God’s judgment on sinners
God does not want the sinners to be judged and end up in destruction, which is why He wants everyone to come to repentance. As the righteous judge, God will, at an appointed time, mete out judgment to every one according to what he has done. He emphatically declared this to His early people, the Israelites:

“Now I, the Sovereign LORD, am telling you Israelites that I will judge each of you by what he has done. Turn away from all the evil you are doing, and don’t let your sin destroy you.” (Ezek. 18:30, Today’s English Version)

Destruction shall surely come on the sinners who do not take heed and ignore the chance God is giving them to turn away from their evil acts and repent. Concerning the stubborn-hearted, Apostle Paul points this out, thus:

“Or perhaps you despise his great kindness, tolerance, and patience. Surely you know that God is kind, because he is trying to lead you to repent. But you have a hard and stubborn heart, and so you are making your own punishment even greater on the Day when God’s anger and righteous judgments will be revealed.” (Rom. 2:4-5, Ibid.)

The sinners who hate God’s great kindness, tolerance, and patience by hardening their hearts and refusing to repent will surely suffer punishment on Judgment Day. They will perish and will be consumed by fire on that day as testified to by Apostle Peter:

“But the heavens and the earth which are now preserved by the same word, are reserved for fire until the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men.” (II Pet. 3:7, NKJV)

The sinners’ conflagration will be followed by the lake of fire, in which they will suffer eternal punishment (Rev. 20:14). Inasmuch as the Bible testifies that all men have sinned (Rom. 5:12) and, because of this, they have been separated from God and have become His enemies (Isa. 59:2, Col. 1:21), it behooves us therefore to rethink our condition to avoid His punishment. We should not ignore the chance God is giving us so that we may avoid the dire consequence of our sins. God calls our attention to this:

“ ‘Yet from the days of your fathers you have gone away from My ordinances And have not kept them. Return to Me, and I will return to you’, says the LORD of hosts. ‘But you said, “In what way shall we return?”’” (Mal. 3:7, NKJV)

Since the fall of man from God’s grace because of sin, he has been separated from God. Hence, he has to return to Him so that God will again be with him. Without returning to God, man on account of his sins will remain in his precarious condition of being under God’s judgment, which is the eternal punishment in the lake of fire.

The path leading back to God
God, ever loving and forbearing, teaches us what to do in order to avoid punishment and find rest for our souls. The Bible records:

“Thus says the LORD: ‘Stand in the ways and see, And ask for the old paths, where the good way is, And walk in it; Then you will find rest for your souls’. But they said, ‘We will not walk in it’.” (Jer. 6:16, Ibid.)

God instructs man who has turned away from His ordinances to look for the good way. Once he has found the good way, he should walk in it to find rest for his soul. Our Lord Jesus Christ testified that He is “the way, the truth, and the life” that would lead man back to the Father (John 14:6). For man to benefit from Christ as the way to God, it is not enough that he profess faith in Him as His Lord and Savior. He must prove His faith by coming into the fold through Christ as the doorway. As the Lord declares:

“I am the door; anyone who comes into the fold through me will be safe. …” (John 10:9, Revised English Bible)

Those who have come into the fold through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ are His sheep in His flock (John 10:16), which is the Church of Christ as testified to by Apostle Paul, thus:

“Take heed therefore to yourselves and to all the flock over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers, to feed the church of Christ which he has purchased with his blood.” (Acts 20:28, Lamsa Translation)

Therefore, in order to return to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, one should join the sheepfold of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Church of Christ, which He redeemed with His precious blood.

The need to be redeemed
The importance of being redeemed by joining the Church of Christ can never be overemphasized. Apostle Paul eloquently essayed that this is God’s loving-kindness to sinners – His mercy in order for us not to perish in God’s anger”

“But God has shown us how much he loves us – it was while we were still sinners that Christ died for us! By his sacrificial death we are now put right with God; how much more, then, will we be saved by him from God’s anger!” (Rom. 5:8-9, TEV)

Those redeemed by our Lord Jesus Christ through His precious blood are forgiven of their sins. Through Christ’s sacrificial death, they have been put right with God – back I His grace and loving care – and thus they are assured of their salvation from God’s anger or from perdition on Judgment Day. Although any Christian-professing person would readily claim that he has been redeemed by Christ by virtue of his faith in Him, only those who are in Christ’s Church have benefited from His sacrificial death. This, Apostle Paul clarifies:

“For a husband has authority over his wife just as Christ has authority over the church; and Christ is himself the Savior of the church, his body.” (Eph. 5:23, Ibid.)

Christ the Savior will save the Church which is His body. So if one is not in the true Church of Christ, he will not benefit from the sacrificial death of our Lord Jesus Christ. On the other hand, if a person joins the Church of Christ, this means that he does not discount God’s loving-kindness and compassion for the sinners.

Not a license to sin
That members of the Church of Christ have been freed from the bondage of sin through the redemptive act of our Lord Jesus Christ does not mean they are already free to commit sin. On the contrary, Apostle Paul emphasized that this is the very reason they should no longer live in sin:

“What shall we say, then? Should we continue to live in sin so that God’s grace will increase? Certainly not! We have died to sin – how then can we go on living in it?” (Rom. 6:1-2, Ibid.)

Thus, the true members of the Church of Christ strive to renew their lives completely in order to enjoy God’s loving-kindness and not to waste their opportunity to be saved. Never do they take their membership in the Church as a license to commit sin for they know that if they sin willfully after having received the knowledge of the truth, “there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a certain fearful expectation of judgment, and fiery indignation which will devour the adversaries” (Heb. 10:26-27, NKJV).

And if sometimes they still fall into sin, despite their striving to fulfill God’s commandments an to live a life that is worthy before Him, Apostle John writes them this reassuring lines:

“I am writing this to you, my children, so that you will not sin; but if anyone does sin, we have someone who pleads with the Father on our behalf – Jesus Christ, the righteous one.” (I John 2:1, TEV)

Indeed, the members of the Church of Christ are truly fortunate, for even if they also sinned, they have received God’s loving-kindness and found redemption and forgiveness of their sins in the Church. And should they fall into the sin of either commission or omission, God will cleanse them if they sincerely repent, and earnestly return to Him, and turn away from their evil and wicked ways, for Apostle John says assuredly that “if we confess our sins to God, he will keep his promise and do what is right: he will forgive us our sins and purify us from all our wrongdoing” (I John 1;9, Ibid.)