“These things you have done and I was silent; you compared me with yourself. I rebuke you! And I lay it before you.”

(Psalm 50:21)

I am grateful that God does not punish me for every sin that I commit. Were he to have done so, I would have been dead long ago…we all would be. Our problem is not that God does not punish every sin immediately upon us (that is a grace), but instead, our problem is we take his restraint as lenience. Just because God does not immediately discipline his own for sins committed does not mean the sins are not sins and outright rebellion against God — they are. It just means that God has chosen to exercise forbearance in these cases.

Our tendency, like the people of old, is to take this restraint for granted and to assume that God’s character is more like ours and is not as the Bible presents him. Man has a tendency of making gods in his own image — the term for these little gods is “idol.” They are puny and impotent and the God of the heavens will not stoop down to even be placed in the same category as these false gods. Yet, when we take God’s forbearance as lenience, then we essentially do just that — place the one true God in and amongst the gods of our own creation. And this God holds against us — he “lays it on the table” as it is part of the prosecution’s case against God’s own.

There is no question that Jesus died for our sins if we are born again believers in Jesus Christ. Yet, that does not mean we ought to live like those under condemnation. Let us live in the joyful obedience of those who submit to the mighty design of God. Let us not assume that He is like us but recognize that God’s ways are not man’s ways and stand in awe of Him.