1 Then I heard a loud voice from the temple saying to the seven angels, “Go, pour out the seven bowls of God’s wrath on the earth.”
God is a merciful God. He does not want to give people what they deserve. His justice is always tempered by His mercy. This is especially true when you remember that all sins were already paid for in full. A full payment was made and accepted for every sin. God does not require double payments for sin. Jesus paid for them already. God does not want to have to extract payment from us as well. But of course we must accept that payment for ourselves. It is not a blanket payment that gets forced on our account. We choose to reject the payment God has made already. I think of Overdraft Protection on a checking account. If you accept that protection offered by the bank, then if you accidently write a check that does not have enough money in your account to pay the amount, the overdraft protection kicks in and covers the amount of the check. The check doesn’t bounce, and you don’t get charged a bounced check fee. The problem with our sin, of course, is that one bad check, one sin, goes over our overdraft credit limit. We immediately begin to rack up fees. It is impossible for us to compensate for each and every sin. We are living on bounced check fees. That is until we become a Jesus-follower. Then His account balance covers our fees. We are no longer bouncing checks. Of course you have to choose to accept Overdraft Protection on your checking account. The bank won’t automatically give you that privilege. And of course there is a cost to that privilege. The death of Jesus doesn’t automatically cover our sins. We must choose to accept that payment. And the associated fee is humility, knowing that we don’t deserve to be called children of God. At the end of this world as we know it, those that have rejected God’s repeated attempts at reconciliation will fully experience the full wrath of God. Nothing will be held back. They will pay for their sins themselves. And payback will be terrible!
The Arnold Journey 