vs 12: Now no chastening seems to be cheerful for the present,but grievous,nevertheless,afterward it yields the peaceful fruit of righteuosness to those who have been trained by it.
or
who sinned? this man or his parents
There are exceptions.
Why do people suffer?
Their own stupidity, a smoker gets lung cancer.
Someone elses stupidity, relative killed by a drunk driver.
Jn 10:10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
Jn 10:11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
When you find out what your covenant promises and what you are redeemed from, jn 10:10 takes on a different meaning.
PJ I have been following the threads and I don't remember anyone saying that illness, disease, calamity, war, etc. are a direct result from God. God does not cause evil, but He allows it. He allows it so He could put His judgement, justice, veneance, and wrath on display. He also allows it so He could put His grace, mercy, kindness, forgiveness and redmption on display.
Someday God will destroy all evil and glorify Himself in doing so.
I have been thinking about everyone's comments and trying to find something that would be helpful and spark some interest. I do not think much of what is on the top ten list at the Christian bookstores. most of it is shallow "feelgood" stuff.
There was a book written in
the 70's that I think will stand the test of time and be considered a classic. It is titled "Knowing God" and it was written by J. I. Packer. The 16th chapter is called "Goodness and Severity". Packer is a great author and I would recommend anything he has written.
'Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God,' writes Paul in Romans 11:22.
The crucial word here is 'and'. The apostle is explaining the relation between Jew and Gentile in the plan of God. He has just reminded his Gentile readers that God rejected the great mass of their Jewish contemporaries for unbelief, while at the same time bringing many pagans like themselves to saving faith. Now he invites them to take note of the two sides of God's character which appeared in this transaction. 'Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but towards thee, goodness.' The Christians at Rome are not to dwell on God's goodness alone, nor on His severity alone, but to contemplate both together. Both appear alongside each other in the economy of grace. both must be acknowledged together if God is to be truly known.
>
> Never, perhaps, since Paul wrote has there been more need to labor this point than there is today. Modern muddle-headedness and confusion as to the meaning of faith in God is almost beyond description. Men say they believe in God, but have no idea who it is that they believe in, or what difference believing in Him may make The Christian who wants to help his floundering fellows into what a famous old tract used to call 'safety, certainty, and enjoyment' is constantly bewildered as to where to begin: the fantastic hotch-potch of fancies about God that confronts him quite takes his breath away.How on earth have people got into such a muddle? he asks. What lies at the root of their confusion? And where is the starting-point for setting them straight?
To these questions there are several complementary sets of answers. One is that people have got into the way of following private religious hunches rather than learning of God from His own word; and we have to try and help them unlearn the pride, and in some cases, misconceptions about Scripture which gave rise to this attitude, and to base their convictions henceforth, not on what they feel, but on what the Bible says. A second answer is that modern man thinks of all religions as equal and equivalent, and draws his stock of ideas about God from pagan as wall as Christian sources; and we have to try and show people the uniqueness and finality of the Lord Jesus Christ, God's last word to man. A third answer is that men have ceased to recognize the reality of their own sinfulness, which imparts a degree of perversity and enmity against God to all that they think and do; and it is our task to try and introduce people to this fact about themselves, and so make them self-distrustful and open to correction by the word of Christ.
A fourth answer, no less basic
> than the three already given, is that people today are in the habit of dissociating the thought of God's goodness from that of His severity; and we must seek to wean them form this habit, since nothing but misbelief is possible as long as it persists.
The habit in question, first learned from some gifted German
theologians of the last century, has infected modern Western
Protestantism as a whole. To reject all ideas of divine wrath and
judgment, and to assume that God's character, misrepresented
(forsooth!) in many parts of the Bible, is really one of indulgent
benevolence without any severity, is the rule rather than the
exception among ordinary folk today. It is true that some recent
theologians, in reaction, have tried to reaffirm the truth of God's
holiness, but their efforts have seemed half-hearted and their words have fallen for the most part on deaf ears. Modern Protestants are not going to give up their 'enlightened' adherence to the doctrine of a celestial Santa-Clause merely because a Brunner or a Niebuhr suspect this is not the whole story.
The certainty that there is no more to be said of God (if God there be) than that He is infinitely forbearing and Kind, is as hard to eradicate as bindweed. And when once it has put down roots, Christianity, in the true sense of the word, simply dies off. For the substance of Christianity is faith in the forgiveness of sins through the redeeming work of Christ on the cross. But on the basis of the Santa Clause theology, sins create no
problem, and atonement becomes needless; God's active favor extends no less to those who disregard His commands than to those who keep them. The idea that God's attitude to me is affected by whether or not I do what He says has no place in the thought of the man in the street, and any attempt to show the need for fear in God's presence, and trembling at His word, gets written off as impossibly old-fashioned--'Victorian', and 'Puritan' and 'sub-Christian'.
Yet the Santa Clause theology carries within itself the seeds of its
own collapse, for it cannot cope with the fact of evil. It is no
accident that when the belief in the 'good God' of liberalism became widespread, about the turn of the century, the so-called 'problem of evil' (which was not regarded as a problem before) suddenly leaped into prominence as the number one concern of Christian apologetics.
This was inevitable, for it is not possible to see the good-will of a
heavenly Santa-Claus in the heartbreaking and destructive things like cruelty, or marital infidelity, or death on the road, or lung cancer. The only way to save the liberal view of God is to dissociate Him form these things, and to deny that He has any direct relation to them or control over them; in other words, to deny His omnipotence and Lordship over His world. Liberal theologians took this course fifty years ago, and the man in the street takes it today. Thus he is left with a kind God who means well, but cannot always insulate His children from trouble or grief. When trouble comes, therefore, there is nothing to do but grin and bear it.
WOW! I just did two post on here and it went to another thread somewhere on the forum... and I have no idead as to where it went ...geeezzzz. Unbelieveable!
Technology...a wonderful thing until satans gets a hold of it and messes wit ya...Oh well ET...GOD will send yer posts where they will best be needed by someone...:excited:...xo
I Peter chapters 3-5; Romans chapter 2; Hebrews chpater 12.
Hope this helps to know that God is a God of love, mercy, and grace... BUT he also is a God of Wrath and will punish us when we sin... if Jesus had to suffer for our sins, and He was innocent. OH waht about us suffering the consequences of punishment of our sins, and there are times when we also suffer the consequences of other's sins at large. The innocent at time must also suffer with the guilty... that's Bible and it is written, as Jesus is out surpreme example.
:excited:Jude, you musta read or heard my words I just spoke out. I saidi oh, well only God knows where my posts went, so maybe they went where God wanted what I had written to be heard somewhere else on the forum!
Grrrrrl, you IS... #!:applause::glow:...love you Ms. Boo!
