Dear Reader
“For God’s [holy] wrath and indignation are revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who in their wickedness repress and hinder the truth and make it inoperative. For that which is known about God is evident to them and made plain in their inner consciousness, because God [Himself] has shown it to them. For ever since the creation of the world His invisible nature and attributes, that is, His eternal power and divinity, have been made intelligible and clearly discernible in and through the things that have been made (His handiworks). So [men] are without excuse [altogether without any defense or justification], Because when they knew and recognized Him as God, they did not honor and glorify Him as God or give Him thanks. But instead they became futile and godless in their thinking [with vain imaginings, foolish reasoning, and stupid speculations] and their senseless minds were darkened.” (Romans 1:18-21)AMP
“With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful; with an upright man thou wilt shew thyself upright; With the pure thou wilt shew thyself pure; and with the froward thou wilt shew thyself froward.” (Psalm 18:25-26)
In the “Word of Truth” section, we have continued from the last issue some discussion of God’s judgments. Recently I have had experiences among some who charge God with unfairness—either directly, by their words, or indirectly, by the way they justify their course in life. This is true even among those who profess to be followers of Jesus. It has been common in our recent generations to evaluate people’s actions in a significant measure by their background, conditioning, the advantages or disadvantages which were theirs in growing up, etc. This has been a reaction, in part, to the tendency, in earlier generations, to not make any allowances for environment and conditioning in evaluating people’s actions. The earlier generations were excessive in one direction, and ours is excessive in another. But all through time, in every generation, the Lord has made precisely the correct amount of allowance for these things in the life of every individual or group of people, and has judged completely fairly.
The very ability of people to find God “froward” (willfully contrary, not easily managed) when they are froward makes it possible for people to choose for themselves whether they will turn to God or not. If it were impossible to make any choices without a constant, clear revelation to our hearts of what is right and true, our ability to voluntarily choose the right would be severely restricted. If it were immediately and completely apparent that every choice were either right and led to happiness or wrong and led to sorrow, without any effort or desire on our part to find out whether it is right or wrong, then serving God would be completely in our self-interest, and not involve a real moral choice for us.
But consider the room God gives to us to choose our direction—to the people of Ninevah (Jonah 3), God only said that He would destroy them within 40 days. It is said of them that they “believed God.” (Jonah 3:5) But their “believing” involved a decision greater than accepting the truth of the preacher’s statement. They decided to pursue a relationship of peace with a (justifiably) angry God. They sought to turn their direction to living right, seeking mercy and help from God. To anyone who really repents in their spirit, who really wants to stop doing wrong and doing right, the possibility of acceptance with God is revealed to their hearts, as they of Ninevah testified: “Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from his fierce anger, that we perish not?” (Jonah 3:9) They neither took the attitude that God had to change His mind, because they were repenting, nor the attitude that it was hopeless to try to change. In the language of the scripture in Romans, they did “honor and glorify Him as God.”
Let’s honor and glorify God as God.
Love and prayers,
The Editor