Sin and Punishment

One of the biggest misunderstandings about sin is that God punishes us for the wrong things we do. There certainly are many verses in the Bible that seem to suggest that at first glance, but the fact is that there is another way of understanding these verses than many of us have considered.

Nobody's interpretation of the Bible comes from a place of neutrality. Every one of us, despite all effort to avoid it, tend to understand what the Bible says based on preconceived ideas we already have. When a person says, "I just believe what the Bible plainly teaches," they are either showing a lack of understanding about the matter or else are putting their arrogance on display. To know what the Bible says is one thing, but to come to conclusions about what it means is another. One guy wrote me and said that he doesn't try to interpret the Bible but just accepts what it plainly says. That kind of perspective is so shallow it's hard to even know how to respond. We all interpret everything we hear or read everyday of our lives. Otherwise, the words would have no meaning to us but would only be nonsensical sounds.

Because many Christians have wrongly imagined the nature of God in a way that they see Him primarily as a Judge who is meticulously supervising their behavior to watch for moral infractions that need to be punished, they read the Bible from that starting point. To them, a "just" God equals one who is quick to drop retribution on wrongdoing and wrongdoers.

Others of us don't begin at that place. The starting point from which we understand the Bible is our view of God as Love. We see Him coming to Adam in love after his sin in the garden and believe that's how He approaches all of us all the time. After all, if the man whose choice brought sin upon all didn't experience God's anger, what makes us think we will? After Adam sinned, God came to him for his daily walk, not to obliterate Him with divine anger and judgment.

Is punishment associated with sin? Absolutely, but the punishment comes from the sin itself, not from God. The wages of sin is still death but it's the sin that brings the death and not our God. To the contrary, He is a life-giver.

I'm certainly not minimizing the seriousness of sin. Sin destroys! The point that is important though is that Jesus saves! He delivers us from sin and gives us life instead. God hates sin but it isn't because He has a hypersensitivity to evil that repels Him. He defeated sin! He hates sin because of what it does to those He loves.

"But doesn't God discipline His children?" somebody recently wrote me. The answer is, "Yes, He does but we need to make sure we know the difference between punishment and discipline." Punishment is retribution. It's payback. Punishment has no redemptive value for the one experiencing it. Discipline is another matter. The root of the word "discipline" is "disciple," a word that means "a learner."

So, our Father will lovingly allow us at times to experience the painful consequence of sinful choices in order to teach us. He wants us to learn that when we try to find fulfillment by doing our own thing, it is a dead-end road. Literally. He wants us to see that it is only "in His presence [that we find] fullness of joy" (Psalm 16:11). When discipline comes to us, it isn't payback and it isn't because our Father is angry with us. It is because He loves us and doesn't want to see us repeat the same actions that would cause us to eventually decline and wither into a wasted, destroyed life if He didn't discipline us so that we'd know better.

So is there punishment for sin? Yes, sin definitely carries a penalty but that punishment is inherent in sin - not in our Loving God. "The wages of sin is death BUT the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord" (Romans 6:23).