I love that “God’s ways are higher than our ways”…  as I was reading through an apologetic on this topic,  I was thinking of God’s perfect hatred for sin.  In Nineveh, he chose to send a prophet in the hopes of sparing the whole city, and pointed out all those who did not yet know their left from their right… the innocents that we wanted to protect.  Praise God that He is perfectly just, perfectly fair.

Somehow, in the most wondrous way, I finally have a peace on this topic after years of being unsettled by it.     The main key for me was understanding God’s absolutely perfect hatred of evil and his commitment to it’s complete destruction.

1 John 3:8
“He who sins is of the devil, for the devil has sinned from the beginning. For this purpose the Son of God was manifested, that He might destroy the works of the devil.”

Note how prominently sin is highlighted.   Romans 7 and 8 talks in depth about this struggle.  If I walk in rebellion against God’s Word and continually embrace this “sin in me” essentially becoming its accomplice, then the destruction that God has levelled at the sin, will consume me too.   Scripturlaly,  I will be the one who has brought this destruction on myself.

Ezekiel 11:20-22
“20 that they may walk in My statutes and keep My judgments and do them; and they shall be My people, and I will be their God. 21 But as for those whose hearts follow the desire for their detestable things and their abominations, I will recompense their deeds on their own heads,” says the Lord God.”

The Word actually says that anyone not believing onto Jesus is already judged (the wages of sin being death)….  Only in accepting that Jesus has paid these wages in full, am I delivered from death unto life. 

John 3:17-19
“17 God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.  18 “There is no judgment against anyone who believes in him. But anyone who does not believe in him has already been judged for not believing in God’s one and only Son. 19 And the judgment is based on this fact: God’s light came into the world, but people loved the darkness more than the light, for their actions were evil.”
as confirmed in Romans 6
Romans 6:23
“For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

So I kind of see it like God is saying, get out of the way, so I can bomb the “yucky puckys”, and if we refuse, than we have chosen our own lot and were duly warned by his Word.   If we start to look at the God this way, than I think we are just begininning to understand His goodness, forbearance, longsuffering towards us, mercy, compassion and grace.  I am awed, and amazed when I see what my life, choices and sin issues warranted and that My Lord Jesus took these on that I might live “more abundantly” and completely undeservedly.  We must be ever mindful that God’s wrath against evil and sin is very prominent throughout scripture(consider the flood, Sodom and Gomorrah, etc).

This lines up with the scriptures about what we bring into our physical homes.
Deuteronomy 7:26
” Nor shall you bring an abomination into your house, lest you be doomed to destruction like it. You shall utterly detest it and utterly abhor it, for it is an accursed thing.”

A friend explained it like this, in the middle East, it is quite common for terrorists etc to make a headquarters in a building where there are a lot of innocents.  It makes the threat of bombing and other forms of extermination trickier and less likely.   The good guys can’t bomb the bad guys unless the innocents get out of the way.   Jesus has given us a way out of the doomed building but we still have to take it.

It is no coincidence that our bodies are referred to as tents/temple to the Holy Spirit.  We are called simply to be vigilantly mindful.

Some might call this extreme but we are commanded to  take “every thought captive”

2 Corinthians 10:4-6
“4 For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, 5 casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, 6 and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.”

To mind every word we speak
Matthew 12:36
“But I say to you that for every idle word men may speak, they will give account of it in the day of judgment.”

Praise God that it is not so much about getting everything right and perfect but understanding what a truly wretched state we were in when we were called and that by the free gift that we receive when we believe, the penalty has been paid in full. 

So my sum up is, when we ally ourselves with sin, we bring the wrath of God against evil against ourselves.   And a perfectly Good God must be perfectly committed to eradicating evil.  Not sure if this will make sense to anyone else, but I praise God as it finally makes sense to me.

His Goodness and Kindness is so beyond our wildest imaginations….  I love that our Daddy loves us so.