Scripture Reference: Malachi 1:2-5

Where was God’s love for the little girl from yesterday’s story?

Shouldn’t His love have stopped this man from ravaging her family? Shouldn’t His love have stopped this man from becoming addicted to crack? Shouldn’t His love have stopped the drug pushers from selling drugs to this man?

But you see, that’s the rub. When we analyze what we expect of God’s love, have you noticed that it always goes back to limiting man’s choice or to negating the consequences for choices? Because of man’s free will, the man had a choice to kill or not to kill, to buy drugs or not buy drugs, to use drugs or not use drugs. Is it God’s fault that he chose to sin? Is it God’s fault that the man’s sin carried consequences?

Can a just God negate the consequences for man’s choices? Do you think God is obligated by love to give you the answers at a test that you didn’t study for? Is God constrained by His love to keep a person healthy and strong that never exercises? If God loves you, will He place an umbrella of protection over you and keep bad things from happening to you, but not everyone else? Does it word tell us that Jesus Himself said, “He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Matthew 5:45).

To describe God as a loving God and stop at that description is a great injustice to our understanding of who He is. Not only is He loving, but His love causes Him to also be just. He must punish sin and He must allow society to suffer the consequences of sin.

Your personal sin doesn’t just affect you, it affects the people all around you also. Robin Reid, the father of Richard Reid, the alleged “shoe bomber” admitted his personal culpability in his son’s crime in a 2002, Newsweek magazine article. He said:

“Look at the terrible childhood he had . . . Look at the father he had. I have spent 18 years in total behind bars. That can’t have helped him, can it? Every time he needed me I was nowhere to be found.”

Think of the domino effect of Robin Reid’s sin and the impact it could have had on the American psyche if his son had been successful in blowing up that plane.

Here is another question we need to consider: would God be a loving God if He didn’t allow us to exercise our free will? Wouldn’t that make Him a tyrant-controlling, overbearing God, in essence, a dictator, instead of a loving God?

Besides, it wasn’t God that got the man hooked on crack and it wasn’t God that stabbed the family members in the story above. Have you noticed how quick we are to blame God for things He has nothing to do with?

Some will blame God. Some will blame the knife maker, and others will blame society as a whole.

To Be Continued

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from the New King James Version®, NKJV © 1982 by Thomas Nelson.
Used by permission. All rights reserved.