Punishment of ABBA is disciplinary.
The root-meaning of one of the chief words for punishment is that of pruning. The Lord of the harvest never prunes to kill, but to help. The persistence of the consequences of sin long after the sin is forgiven by God is doubtless intended so to deepen and burn in the lesson that the cause of punishment may be cured.
God purposes to establish in righteousness, that the creature, even if he could, would not yield to sin. Punishment is meant by God to be self-corrective. This is expressed in Jer. 2:19, "Thine own wickedness shall correct you, and your backsliding shall reprove you."
This still is disciplinary, but it implies that in the punishment itself is a self-corrective element.
Fermentation of liquids tends to their own purification. The principle of the modern disposal plant is that one germ of impurity devours another till all their malignity is destroyed.
God tells us what the harvest of sin is; "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). This denotes all kinds of death, answering to the different kinds of sin. Sin always attempts to kill God. Its culmination was reached when it slew the Christ, but His death overcame "him (satan) that had the power of death" (Heb. 2:14). And through our Lord's death all death has been potentially destroyed, and will be actually and historically destroyed before the end of the ages, when the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father:
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." God has thus limited the extent of the consequences of evil. It, in one sense, wears itself out. Let no one say however that Christ, the Savior, is not needed. The slaying of Him only promoted His plan of redemption. It cut away all our nature of flesh and blood that He had taken, and in Him we and the whole creation were potentially set free from all corruption and all harvests that are the consequence of sin and sins. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2). What more does any one want than a punishment for sin that is fully adequate; that accords with absolute justice; that has the strongest sanctions that can be imagined, because not only of their greatness, but also because of their continuance even after forgiveness; a punishment that is not unnatural and unreasonable but that grows out of the creature's selfish actions; a punishment that so closely and continuously disciplines its author that the release can come only by an utter and forever putting away of the cause; a punishment that is not manufactured by an angry God,but whose cause and development depend entirely upon the creature and a fallen nature; a punishment that vindicates God's character for goodness, for He makes sin, even against its will, work for righteousness and also destroy its own harvest of all kinds of death, through the death that it wrought in His only and first begotten Son! This is a sane and scriptural doctrine of punishment. "For God hath shut them all up for unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again. For out of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things: to whom be glory for the ages. ~Chas. H. Pridgeon
The root-meaning of one of the chief words for punishment is that of pruning. The Lord of the harvest never prunes to kill, but to help. The persistence of the consequences of sin long after the sin is forgiven by God is doubtless intended so to deepen and burn in the lesson that the cause of punishment may be cured.
God purposes to establish in righteousness, that the creature, even if he could, would not yield to sin. Punishment is meant by God to be self-corrective. This is expressed in Jer. 2:19, "Thine own wickedness shall correct you, and your backsliding shall reprove you."
This still is disciplinary, but it implies that in the punishment itself is a self-corrective element.
Fermentation of liquids tends to their own purification. The principle of the modern disposal plant is that one germ of impurity devours another till all their malignity is destroyed.
God tells us what the harvest of sin is; "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6:23). This denotes all kinds of death, answering to the different kinds of sin. Sin always attempts to kill God. Its culmination was reached when it slew the Christ, but His death overcame "him (satan) that had the power of death" (Heb. 2:14). And through our Lord's death all death has been potentially destroyed, and will be actually and historically destroyed before the end of the ages, when the Son hands over the kingdom to the Father:
"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death." God has thus limited the extent of the consequences of evil. It, in one sense, wears itself out. Let no one say however that Christ, the Savior, is not needed. The slaying of Him only promoted His plan of redemption. It cut away all our nature of flesh and blood that He had taken, and in Him we and the whole creation were potentially set free from all corruption and all harvests that are the consequence of sin and sins. "The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death" (Rom. 8:2). What more does any one want than a punishment for sin that is fully adequate; that accords with absolute justice; that has the strongest sanctions that can be imagined, because not only of their greatness, but also because of their continuance even after forgiveness; a punishment that is not unnatural and unreasonable but that grows out of the creature's selfish actions; a punishment that so closely and continuously disciplines its author that the release can come only by an utter and forever putting away of the cause; a punishment that is not manufactured by an angry God,but whose cause and development depend entirely upon the creature and a fallen nature; a punishment that vindicates God's character for goodness, for He makes sin, even against its will, work for righteousness and also destroy its own harvest of all kinds of death, through the death that it wrought in His only and first begotten Son! This is a sane and scriptural doctrine of punishment. "For God hath shut them all up for unbelief, that He might have mercy upon all.
O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out! For who hath known the mind of the Lord? or who hath been His counsellor? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto Him again. For out of Him, and through Him, and unto Him, are all things: to whom be glory for the ages. ~Chas. H. Pridgeon
