The Punishment of the Wicked

There is a certain climate of opinion that affects the thoughts of most people. Changes may be slight and slow but they can be very sweeping. Thus in the days when crimes were punished sav­agely, with hanging or deporta­tion as penalties for minor thefts, men believed in the Eternal Tor­ments of Hell. Now where Soc­iety sees itself largely to blame for the failures of individuals and seems to seek more for reforma­tion than for punishment, even the conception of a Day of Judge­ment seems to have faded from the religious horizon.

It is, therefore, perhaps natural that in considering God’s dealings with those who offend Him we should now tend to seek for His ways of reformation rather than look for His means of retribution There is of course a purpose to be kept in mind. Justice may be an abstract principal that should be applied with blind impartiality but Mercy Tempers Justice with an end in view.

The wholesale destruction of the native inhabitants of Canaan by the invading Israelites appears to be a savage thing for God to have commanded. Yet there is little doubt of their utter depravity for the evil practices listed in Leviticus 20 and forbidden to Israel were commonly committed by the people of the land. (v. 23) Even so God was not hasty in his pun­ishment for He had told to Abram that punishment of the Amorites for their iniquity was to be delay­ed for four generations until it had reached its climax.

This presents us with a picture of the ultimate judgement on the incorrigible. Even now, in spite of what a responsible newspaper re­fers to as “a curious conscientious belief that punishment is bad” there is a recognition of the fact that some men are habitual crim­inals and as such cannot be re­formed but must be prevented from continuing in their evil ways by such means as long prison sen­tences of preventative detention.

Few would dispute God’s right to destroy utterly those who com­pletely reject His commands, but the reconciliation of the ideas of Love and Mercy with such a final retribution of Justice is difficult, especially when the reformatory element in punishment is consid­ered.

We must, however, remember that the present is a time of oppor­tunity. Peter who vividly pictures the destruction of the world by fire, sees in the seeming delay of the execution of that destruction a token of God’s mercy, for He is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to salva­tion.

The wholesale nature of such destruction raises the same query as Abram had when he heard of the impending judgement of Sod­om. He asked God “Wilt thou de­stroy the righteous with the wick­ed ?” but he was confident that right would be done. In the dis­cussion that follows it seems that Abram would have left to their fate a small number of righteous man, and apparently for his sake would also have delivered all his family. A similar selective deliv­erance was effected too at the Flood so that we can feel assured that the final outpouring of wrath upon a wicked world will not over­throw the righteous and the wicked.

Jesus was frequently reminding his Hearers of a day of Judgement that was coming and in various ways depicts the separation of the righteous from the wicked. Per­haps the best remembered is sheep from the goats. The distinction is quite clear and the consequences are equally distinct. The righteous receive everlasting life and the wicked everlasting destruction.

From the previous examples of God’s dealings with wickedness we should expect destruction. In fact the finality of those earlier judge­ments is emphasised by calling the instrumental fire “everlasting.” Thus Jude speaks of Sodom as suf­fering the punishment of eternal fire, (Jude 7) for although the fires kindled in that day of wrath had long since gone out, their effect still remained and has con­tinued to our day.

In our conception of punishment there is a certain implication that the relationship of the offence to its consequences ought to be ap­preciated by the offender other­wise the punishment is indistin­guishable from any other adverse happening. This is clearly desir­able in the cases capable of reformation, as part of the spur to do better, but it is also needed in the cases which could serve as deterrents to the ob­servers. This deterrent effect is heightened by the fact that the offender is aware of his failure to avoid the punishment. There is an inevitable lapse of time between the sentence and its execution and it is in that interval that the offen­der has his mental anguish ; which ceases on the carrying out of a sentence of destruction.

It is to this waiting period that Jesus refers so frequently as a time of weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, when men be­come aware of the fact that they have been rejected by Him. One of the most graphic descriptions is when He tells his hearers “Ye shall see Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in Kingdom of Heaven and Ye yourselves thrust out.” In such cir­cumstances the degree of punish­ment depends on the one who is rejected —the greater the desire for what has been missed —the greater the grief, or the more savage the anger. Jesus does in­dicate that in addition to this there is a place for an administered punishment varied accordingly to the responsibility of the offender. After speaking of the reward to the faithful Steward and the pun­ishment of the unfaithful one he goes on to speak of the servant who knew what to do and neglec­ted to do it being punished with many stripes and the ignorant servant who did offensive things being punished with few stripes.

As the rejection of these wicked servants is absolute there is no second chance for them —a fact that Jesus illustrates by the figure of the Master of the house shut­ting the door and telling the would be entrants to depart because they were unknown workers of iniquity, there is no reformatory effect on them but only on the observers, who will be the continuing mortal

population. No doubt to them the punishment of the wicked will be a very salutary lesson. Isaiah de­picts the visitors to Jerusalem as going out to see the evidence of the utter destruction of the trans­gressors, whose carcases are sub­ject to a devouring that continues without interruption.

Yet such is human nature, the lesson will not be fully learned. There will be some then, as now, who to avoid the penalties of dis­obedience conform to the require­ments of the law, as the Psalmist wrote “Through the greatness of thy power shall thine enemies yield feigned obedience unto thee” (Ps. 66 v. 3 R.V. mig). Such would soon fall under the influence of the De­ceiver at the end of the Millennium. On them will fall the devouring fire of God. There will be then no need for reformatory punishment, only of removal of offending things, that God may be all and in all.

This is the end to which all God’s dealings with men are directed. His Justice demands that men can­not flout his law and escape his punishment, but His Love and His Mercy ensure that so long as men are capable of instruction he will try to deter them from evil by exhibiting before them the pun­ishment of the wicked, either in prospect as in the New Testament or in retrospect as in the history of the Old Testament. Whichever we look at we must see not an im­placable savage censorious God, but one who is jealous of his Justice but full of mercy and compas­sion towards those who really seek to please him.