We’ve all heard this phrase from time to time – especially when growing up when your brother or sister gets the last donut in the box for breakfast. As time passes we all learn that life isn’t fair.
Becoming a Christian doesn’t change the fact that life isn’t fair. In fact, being a Christian can make you even MORE aware of this uncomfortable truth. Remember when Paul said that all those that live for Jesus will suffer persecution (2 Tim 3:12)?
It’s one thing to hear it from your parents, but it is quite another thing to hear it from God himself. Check out this verse:
Ezekiel 18:25 Yet ye say, The way of the Lord is not equal. Hear now, O house of Israel; Is not my way equal? are not your ways unequal?
In this passage, God explains that if a wicked man who has sinned all his life and sees the truth and repents from his wickedness will have mercy and will be saved from his sins. Yet the righteous who has lived righteously all his life can commit iniquity and do all the things that the wicked man did, but he shall die and all the righteousness that he did will not even be mentioned.
In short Israel was complaining to God that’s not fair!
The answer to Israel is that the wicked man, lost in his sins, doesn’t know better and God will put up with his wickedness in hopes of salvation. The saved man already knows the truth, so God will be less forgiving when someone who is accountable turns from the truth.
Important point – I am not saying you can lose your salvation or be killed and sent on to Heaven if you are saved and slip-up. This verse uses the words “turn from his righteousness” and this implies a willful conscious change of direction towards wickedness, not a momentary lapse in the flesh. This is what Israel was guilty of when God pronounced this judgment.
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December 13th, 2010
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