The Fear of God and the Consequences of Sin
by Jay Wegter
Ever since the Lie was uttered in Paradise, fallen men have woven the Lie into their philosophies, and into their world and life views. We see modern permutations of the Lie in the prevalence of philosophic naturalism—a worldview which makes God a ‘trespasser’ in a materialistically conceived cosmos. Nonetheless, modern man finds that moral cause and effect fills his daily experience. He understands that a civilized society, in order to remain civil, must have laws with penalties commensurate with the gravity of the crime. For, a just society must have a penal code which describes how evil is to be restrained.
Yet, in spite of the inescapable connection between crime and punishment, modern men entertain the fantasy that sin has minimal consequences. One could accurately say that liberalism, secular humanism, and progressivism have all labored to purge a Christian way of thinking from our collective consciousness. This begs the question, why does sin have consequences? Why is every movie that is worth its salt have a plot about the conflict between good and evil, between an antagonist and a protagonist? Or, an even deeper question, why is it evident that this is a moral universe in which the wicked are more often caught than not? After all, if Darwin is correct, then why shouldn’t might make right, instead of what’s right make might?
Does sin have consequences which are eternal and ultimate, and not merely temporal? When we think of sin’s eternal consequences, the Scriptures allude to effects such as alienation, crushing suffering, misery, disintegration, fragmentation, etc. (see Rom 1:3-9). The cruel irony concerning sin’s deceitful offer is that it proposes integration and fulfillment, when it actually fragments and produces disintegration. Since the Lie in Eden is still alive and well (namely that sin’s consequences are minimal), it is no wonder that the progressives demand we believe in a godless worldview of naturalism in which moral consequences are merely constructs. The humanists desperately want an amoral universe in which sin has no eternal, or ultimate consequences. By contrast, God’s Word teaches us the fear of God. “And to man He said, ‘Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom; and to depart from evil is understanding’ ” (Job 28:28).
In so much of the O.T., we see the moral cause and effect of redemptive history ‘sped up’. In other words, in a few short chapters we witness the earthly end of the impenitent. A wicked king takes the throne, and a page later he meets a violent end. But, . . . we’re only seeing the temporal consequences of sin. We do not see what sin does to the image of God in eternity. It is at this juncture that pastors tend to be shallow and squeamish. Countless pulpits exhibit an insipient relativism, for in their homilies, sin is described in relation to the person, and his existential situation, and not truly in relation to the character of God Himself. When we hear these sermons, it’s easy to wonder if the unsaved hearers are thinking, ‘are God’s commandments and laws merely arbitrary?’ ‘Is He envious of our freedom of expression?’ ‘Are His laws primarily to control us?’ Pastors do not say these things directly but, . . .in what they don’t say there is ample room for these misconceptions to hide. For, to actually come face to face with God who is transcendent in holiness is of necessity traumatic for the fallen creature.
If a man does not earnestly fear God, he will tend to be lazy in the pulpit, he will won’t take the time and effort to define sin in relation to God. For, sin as defined by Scripture is characterized by the following: it opposes who God is, it mocks God, it is rebellion against the moral code which expresses God’s character, it is lawlessness, it is the love of death. What the post-modern evangelical has a weak grasp of is this; namely that this universe is ordered by, and operates in accordance with, the omnipotence, omniscience, and omnipresence of Almighty God who is transcendent in holiness. Thus, a thrice-holy God is man’s environment! God is the immutable reference point, and focal point of all reality. The Lie in Eden extinguished the proper fear of God, for it proposed that you have every right to go after what God is ‘withholding’ from you. Thus, presumptuous sin paints a distorted picture of God as a miser who is reluctant to bless. As such, sin throws mud in our eyes. We cannot see God’s loveliness and generosity.
In today’s world sin is equated with freedom, a ‘life option’ relative to the individual that lets you be true to self. But, actually sin degrades, subjugates, enslaves, corrupts, and destroys. It distorts, it warps, it deepens our suspicion of God, it pollutes our desires, and increasingly conforms us to itself (Ps 115). Sin does not create a new reality, but puts us into an orbit of destruction. Its power to deceive is so great that it is impossible to hold on to sin, and at the same time, retain God’s truth for more than a few moments. In view of the above, should not pastors be warning their flocks far more than they have been? What pastors are seldom telling us is that because this is God’s world (His moral universe), sin contains much of its own punishment and consequences. One can no more ‘undo’ those consequences that undo the effects of gravity. Those who truly fear God do not tiptoe around the subject of the consequences of sin.
The devil who hates God, hates the image of God—the evil one mangles the image of God in man through the mutilating effects of idolatry. Do you suppose that the mangling of the soul stops when the reprobate dies? My friends if there were a drop of mercy in hell, that might be the case. But, in perdition where sin is unabated, unrelieved, and unchecked by common grace, it continues to accumulate and advance. The consequences it produces in eternity will continue to shred and fragment the soul. This is the second death, the disintegration of the faculties of the soul. Do not imagine that the damned cease to sin in hell (Lu 13:28). Do not imagine that their continuance in sin will not reap added consequences. Eternal hell will be a monument of what sin does to a human being; an object lesson to the rational universe of what iniquity deserves.
The reprobate who is yet alive on earth does not allow himself to think upon the fact that his own conscience will be a voracious worm that torments him forever (Mk 9:43-48). For, even in endless hell a man can never change the fact that he is created in the moral image of his Maker. Oh, we must allow that to sink in, hell will be hell, because the image of God is there, and because a Holy God is there. And, because the lost man’s conscience is formed in God’s moral image, it will gnaw at him, shouting that his pain is just, that his agony is the recompence of a life of impenitence. Let this stagger you, the reprobate carries in his conscience the instruments of his own eternal torment. Your Creator does not have to think up punishments for sin in hell, for one’s conscience will generate the instruments of one’s agony. Bodily misery will torment, but in addition, the conscience will proclaim ceaselessly, “This agony is what you deserve, this is just.” Enough with insipid, soul-destroying preaching that, ‘sin is merely proneness to error—so you ought to give Jesus a chance!’ No, flee to Christ as your life. For, without Him you will sink into a bottomless ocean of crushing wrath and suffering.
My friends, do you not see the horror the impenitent will face? Let me tell you why men are so blind to their predicament. It is because they are able to play tricks on the conscience. By nature we are masters at bribing the conscience to silence it. I’m going to tell you what is going to happen to those who will stand before God without Christ as High Priest. Here is what will take place: God’s books will be opened with the record of one’s deeds, God’s Law will expose all of a person’s sin, and God’s verdict will be eternal condemnation. Now, here is the shock. For the very first time in a person’s life, his conscience will be in complete agreement with God’s books, with God’s law, and with God’s verdict of hell. At that very moment the lost man will experience terrifying amazement when God introduces a spark of His holy wrath into the conscience; for then that man’s conscience will rise up to its full stature as the moral image of God and begin to takes its eternal revenge against its ungrateful host.
The reprobate in perdition is not merely an object of wrath, but a display of God’s wrath (that is what a man’s torment will be), a ‘vessel’ that contains wrath. Fellow pastors, you need to confess and repent of pulling your punches! Perhaps your retort would be, ‘but, should we seek to frighten men into Christ?’ Doubtless, a true fear regarding one’s lost state does play a part in a man’s conviction of sin, and in his salvation. But, to truly see by faith, the welcoming arms of Christ is to be in radical sympathy with God’s great purpose to glorify the moral majesty of His infinite holiness in both damnation and in salvation. Thus, to believe savingly upon Christ, is inseparable from the desire that one’s life be brought in line with God’s purpose to glorify His holiness and grace. Thus, a truly penitent person has seen his sin in light of who God is. Therefore, that person not only longs for the cleansing and pardon found in Christ, but also for the holiness and righteousness found in Him. By Contrast, the unregenerate man regards God’s justice to be unjust.
The natural man argues that eternal damnation is a disproportional punishment for sin. That disposition is the great stumbling block to the free grace of God offers in Christ and His cross. For, the unbeliever, in his pride and love of darkness, prefers a standard of righteousness established by himself rather than God Almighty. He hears the Genesis narrative; that death was threatened for eating the forbidden fruit, and he quarrels with the degree of punishment. Apart from a work of God’s Spirit, a sinner will never exonerate God for requiring the sentence of eternal damnation. But, there can be no saving faith until the penitent takes God’s against his own sin. As Martin Luther said, no one can be saved unless he first damn himself. By that, Luther meant that the convicted sinner pronounces God’s sentence to be righteous and just. In modern vernacular, “I deserve to be eternally miserable.”
Because this is God’s world, it is an incredibly serious thing to bear His moral image and also to carry a sin nature at the same time. Therefore, the man who has been made alive, the true saint will carefully explain to his own soul everyday the beauty and fitness of Christ to save utterly (Heb 7:24-28). He will cherish the Savior knowing that in Christ’s own Person and work, our Lord answers the eternally weighty realities of us being the image of God and yet sinners. Are you finding all your hope in Christ being your Advocate, High Priest, and surety?
If we minimize sin’s consequences, we will minimize what sin does to deface the image of God. Do you understand that the devil is your personal enemy? Do know your enemy’s strategies, and do you know his goal for the sons of men? You have heard it said, ‘the devil hates you and has a horrible plan for your life’). He works tirelessly to deface the image of God which he vehemently hates. Do you know what instruments he uses to accomplish this work? The answer is idolatry which he employs to disintegrate (fragment) the soul. True believers know that in Christ we are complete—He has made us whole (‘full’ pleroma in N.T. Grk, Colossians 2:10). He heals us as the friend and Great Physician of the sin-sick. Much of this wholeness is tied to the blessing of great peace of soul. For, when you are loving God’s truth, your mind and affections are pursuing God’s truth (cherishing it, defending it, and living by it), and your will then is zealous to perform good deeds—you find joy and satisfaction in manifesting the fruit of the Spirit. There is great happiness in obedience. The conscience is then affirming and validating that you are loving God, pressing on to know God, and please Him. Thus, all ‘four cylinders’ of your soul’s faculties are working in synchrony (mind, affections, will, and conscience). This harmony, unity, and integration is only possible because in Christ we are complete, made whole and healed and indwelt by His enabling Spirit.
These four faculties of soul are made to be in orbit around Christ, then and only then is it possible to have joyful integration, for Christ at the center is the source of that integration, “Unite my heart to fear Thy Name” (Ps 86:11b). But, suppose sin and idolatry are at the center of one’s soul affections, what happens then? The mind like a security check point has failed to do its job; it has allowed sin to enter. It has winked at evil and welcomed disobedience to enter in the form of an idol. And, once the mind and affections are inclined toward idolatry, the will looks for ways to express sinful impulses, and thereby devote itself to the idol. But, let us remember, the conscience is the moral mark of God upon us—it is literally an annex of God’s courtroom—the repository of God’s Law in man. Thus, even to the idolater, his own conscience says (albeit in a muted voice), ‘hey, you’re not who you ought to be.’ ‘You’re shameful, selfish, defiled, a traitor under God, and disgusting.’
Since our faculties of soul are made for God, if you’re serving an idol, your faculties of soul will not be integrated, but will be fragmented (moving further toward disintegration—that’s what sin does to us—drives wedges between the parts of the inner man, that is the opposite of peace). Instead of these four elements of soul (mind, affections, will, and conscience) operating with unity, in cooperative integration, they are fragmented and disintegrated by serving sin. And, because the conscience is God’s inescapable moral witness, when sin is ruling, the faculties of the soul end of up fighting with, and opposing one another. They are at war with another, and this is how Satan mangles true humanity through idolatry (he seeks to deface the image of God by sin producing radical dis-integration, a radical disruption of the human unity we were created to possess).
Earthly fathers desire to see their own image reproduced in their children. The shocking flip side of this is that the devil longs to see his own image replicated in his spiritual offspring. Two of the ‘greatest offspring’ (replicants) of the devil in history are Judas and the Antichrist. The Antichrist is called ‘the man of lawlessness’ and ‘the son of destruction’ (2 Thess 2:3). Judas is referred to as ‘the son of perdition’ (Jn 17:12). This ought to alarm us and cause us to be diligent and earnest guardians of the soul, “watch over your heart with all diligence, for from it flow the springs of life” (Prov 4:23). Be sobered by this, the father of lies has spiritual offspring and labors assiduously to reproduce his character and his lies in his offspring. On this subject, Spurgeon notes that, ‘every sin in a human being calls out to Satan, my father my father.’ How true! The evil one is a twisted kind of optimist, we see that trait in his temptation of Job. For, the devil makes a wager with God that if all of the sources of Job’s earthly wellbeing are removed, Job will prove to be a hypocrite and not a true worshipper of God. Do you realize that the evil one salivates over the prospect of displaying your Christianity as nothing but the empty claim of a hypocrite?
And now back to the consequences of sin. Hell is an eternal object lesson to the rational universe, in that it manifests the horror of what sin does to the image of God. Our problem is we think of hell as punishments that God has invented rather than hell as the final destination of, and ultimate consequence of sin. What a horror it is that in hell the human unity is ceaselessly tearing itself apart in the second death— the wrath of God beating it to bits in the name of God’s holiness reacting to unholiness (see Packer in his book, I want to be a Christian, p. 91). The mind, affections, will, conscience, and body will be at such odds with each other that the reprobate will long for annihilation—he will look for a noose to end it all, but will not find it. People kill themselves today because they think it will grant relief and that their situation will somehow get better. But, the image of God will never go out of existence.
Consider that there is no greater contrast in time or eternity than between a vessel of mercy/grace, and a vessel of wrath (Rom 9:22;-24). W. G. T. Shedd in his Systematic Theology comments concerning the soul in hell that sin will be cumulative in hell, the soul experiencing further fragmentation as sin is accumulated in hell. The image of God will be so defaced and obliterated, that as the eons go by, there will only be a stream of gnashing madness. The first death is the separation of body and soul, and as Shedd observes, the second death is the further fragmentation of the elements of the soul in eternal hell (Rev 2:11; 20:6, 14; 21:8).
These truths concerning the ultimate consequences of sin constitute a tool to spur us on in the mortification of sin (these truths are of great practical value). And, these truths, disturbing as they are, actually give great assurance when properly applied. Again, it was Spurgeon who said, “I am so confident in Christ’s shed blood and redeeming work for me, I would swing out over the mouth of hell on a dry cornstalk.” What an infinite gift that grace in Christ is. Looking again to how Christ makes the believing sinner whole, consider the immense scope of that promise of wholeness in Christ found in Colossians 2:10 (‘in Him you are full, complete’—possessing everything needed for life and godliness—2 Peter 1:3). The idea is that Christ’s fitness to complete us makes us whole in every way.
The human condition, or dilemma can be summarized as a series of fractures, or separations. Sin produced the fracture between: 1) us and God, 2) between us and creation, 3) between us and others, and, 4) internally, a fracture, or separation from ourselves (within ourselves—no peace of conscience, only a roiling turmoil, and raging storms of self-recrimination). Ephesians 2:1-3 describes these terrible fractures or separations. Christ alone heals all four of these separations. He brings peace to our predicament. He is the substance, or incarnation of our peace (see Ephesians 2:4-10 answering the dilemma described in Ephesians 2:1-3). There is noteworthy irony in the fact that these four fractures are recognized to some degree by the secular humanist world.
In fact the unbelieving world has its own four pseudo-answers/solutions to these four fractures. One, they approach separation from God with forms of pantheism, ‘we’ll just make the creation and us part of the divine’. ‘We are all divine and thus part of God.’ Peter Jones notes that every religion with the exception of the gospel is pantheistic in one way or another. Two, they seek to solve the separation from nature/creation by means of deep ecology (the promise of restoring us back to nature—give us your tax dollars and we will save you from global warming). Three, they seek to solve our separation from one another, from other people, by means of inclusivism, pluralism, and collectivism (but, each of these ism’s is a set-up for totalitarianism, i.e. a mandatory belief system that is viewed as the means of human flourishing and ‘harmony’—Babylon redux, here we come). And finally, Four, in seeking to answer separation from ourselves (no peace), psychology has become the false ‘gospel’ of the 20ᵗʰ Century. It has become the unquestioned ‘science’ of healing our internal fracture and absence of peace of soul.
Our culture’s (four-part) false gospel is traceable to the powers of darkness. For it is the pride of life that allows men to think that they are able to answer these four basic separations by means of human ingenuity and philosophy. The devil’s false solution to the separations is precisely how he blinds the minds of the unbelieving that they may not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ who is the image of God (2 Cor 4:3). Notice how the apostle Paul designates the world’s four-part false solution to these four fractures or separations: “See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ” (Col 2:8). How utterly clear! The world’s philosophies, in offering a false solution to the four separations, actually enslave, these false solutions take unbelieving persons captive.
When the subject of the consequences of sin is viewed in light of these four separations, or fractures, it sheds much light on why sin contains its own punishments. For, the four fractures are the result of the fall, and due to original sin, we are born into these fractures, including the fracture that is in our own depraved being. The Lord’s compassion on sinners certainly addresses how helpless and hopeless we are apart from Him. For, consider that sinners due to their depravity attempt to minister to their fractures by sinning—think of it, they attempt to get their deepest needs met by sinning. That’s like a homeless, hungry, unbathed man attempting to minister to his situation by drinking a pint of whisky. It will only deepen his predicament. But that is precisely what sinners do—they ‘pour’ sin into their wounds, but it only deepens the gashes in the soul. Can we make this any more clear? Here is the human condition in Adam, it is a planet full of people who are actually widening and exacerbating the separations caused by sin by seeking to answer and treat them with sin (Jas 1:13-17). Only in Christ is the true and genuine solution found—a solution found in the Lord Himself that will ultimately make the world ‘one’, for that will be His eternal Kingdom.