19 If only you would slay the wicked, O God! Away from me, you bloodthirsty men! 20 They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. 21 Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord, and abhor those who rise up against you? 22 I have nothing but hatred for them; I count them my enemies.
The next thing that we will reflect on with this passage, is that there will be a day of judgment. There is coming a day when God will settle accounts. God promises it in his word.
Indeed, our hearts cry out for judgment. Righteousness and holiness demand it. There must be judgment, or God will have failed in His management of the universe. And deep down inside, all human beings know that this world is broken and fallen. If it were not so, would we miss justice? Would we cry out for it when it is absent? Of course not. We would only seek for power to overcome our enemies in response to their machinations.
That's not to say that people don't respond with evil for evil. We do. But we would not care about justice and its exercise if there was not some fundamental sense within us that says: "There is a right way for things to work, and what I see happening is not it."
The fact that we continue to live and breathe, despite our many violations of what is right (and we all do it, admit it) is really an act of mercy of God. Even when we have been violated in our sense of fairness and equity, we turn around and do the same things; like when we "cuss out" a driver for cutting us off in traffic, and then we turn around and do the same thing for someone else. That's just not right.
We decry someone for a theft, and then we steal from an employer by taking what belongs to him, or by "stealing time," by goofing around on the job rather than working. We decry someone for lying to us, despite our many false representations of self to others. We cry "justice" against someone who uses his power against us, but then we talk badly about someone behind their backs in order to get others to shun that one. We are all, everyone of us, regular and constant violators of justice, even as we cry out for justice.
So how will we fare on the day of judgment? Thankfully, God has already provided a court where our sin can be dealt with. Jesus Christ died on the cross, and in His courtroom, full pardon has been declared for all who will come and receive the free payment he has made.
If we don't accept the payment God has provided, there is only an expectation of judgment. We will have to pay for our own sins. And if we are honest with ourselves, we fail to keep our own rules well, much less God's. So how will it be that day?
If we refuse God's payment, then we will have to be punished. And punishment from God is forever. It is separation from him in a place called Hell forever and ever. And don't believe the lie that in Hell someday you will look up and see that God just wants to love you...and that you'll just be able to walk right out. When you get there, it is final. That's what punishment is. Punishment is the vindication of God's law, His righteousness, His holiness. And since those are forever things, its a forever violation when we sin against it.
That's not to say that those who receive God's payment are perfected when they do that. They still sin. But the difference is they are disciplined. I'll write about that in the next post.
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