There are many things that have penalties. At present I am suffering the penalty of loving sugar than I should. We find penalties for poor diets. We find penalties for failing to recognize the limits of our bodies, perhaps after spending the day hiking and not bringing enough water. Maybe we’ve learned about penalties because of poor spending habits.One thing we notice though is that penalties inherently bear negative consequences.
The word penalty comes from the Latin word “pain.” Penalties come in the form of pain which comes after the penaltyb breaking a law, rule, or contract at least according to the dictionary.
Do the Scriptures warn us about penalties? Well, that depends on who you ask. In our ordinary lives, we get a variety of answers to the same question. For example, “What do you think about the president? Unlike the ordinary spheres if our world, In matters of being a believer in God, we don’t want to merely gather together the opinions of others. We don’t want to make assumptions. We want the truth. So with that in mind, what does the Bible have to say about penalties?
Every penalty in Scripture in connected to sin. Sin is our unwillingness to love God. Sin may involve failing to do what is right. But in all things, sin is dishonoring the name of God, it is an undervaluing of His character and a rejection of what He stands for,
All sin deserves eternal punishment and separation from God forever. Sin is easily overlooked in our world, but God sees all things and cannot ignore unrighteousness. He would have to deny His nature. God’s holiness necessitates that sin be punished.
Jesus speaks about the future punishment of the wicked in a parable of the marriage of the king’s son in Matthew 22:13, “Bind him hand and foot, and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” The same end is echoed in other scriptures, but what is sufficiently presented is that everyone who denies Christ, who fails to repent of their sins and believe in Him, shall receive the penalty of their sins, which is death – not physical death, but spiritual death. “For the wages of sin is death” -Romans 6:23.
Why do those who are believed talk about punishment at all? It’s done for the sake of love. Love drives us to yell in the middle of the night when we find a neighbor’s house is on fire. Love leads us to pray every day for our children when we know they are lost. Love calls us to action. All sin leads to death, and if we are indifferent about reality we ought to wonder if our hearts are for flesh or stone.
Just in America in 2023, 510,000 abortions were estimated to have been aborted. And people wonder why what’s happening in America got so bad. You can’t kill that many human beings and God sit and do nothing. Isaiah 59;7-8 tells us,
“Their feet run to evil, and they are swift to shed innocent blood; their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; desolation and destruction are in their highways. The way of peace they do not know, and there is not justice in their paths; they have made their roads crooked; no one who treads on them know peace.”
Deliberate sin is a conscious rejection of grace. We shouldn’t be surprised when sin leaves us lost in fear and doubt, feeling like we have been cast away from God. Jonah literally ran from God, and God chastened him for his sin. (Jonah 3:4).
Judas’s sin was collecting blood money, that dripped pure and red from the righteous Lamb Himself. Still, that same blog could’ve covered his sin if he had repented instead of just feeling guilty. The end result was Judas hanging himself.
When you start reaping the whirlwind of of the sin you have down, remember God is merciful. We must own our sins and recommit to walking God’s path, believing that His Fatherly face will again shine on us.
Sin is never free. There is always a cost.
Failure to start on God’s path will result in serious injury. Reflect on on the manifold cost of sin can warn souls against wandering from the safe path of faithfulness.
From Pity to Praise 