The goodness and SEVERITY of God

iouae

iouae

Well-known member
Rom 11:22
Behold therefore the goodness and severity of God: on them which fell, severity; but toward thee, goodness, if thou continue in his goodness: otherwise thou also shalt be cut off.

We all love the goodness of God. We love it when God blesses us, and extends His grace towards us.

We are less excited about the severity of God, or when God does not extend His grace, or maybe even executes well deserved judgment on us.

I postulate that one could not have goodness without SEVERITY.

Let's look at a case in point.

Before Lucifer fell, God's will was being done in heaven. All were happy and blessed because, well, they lived in heaven.

Because of God's goodness, angels had free will, including freedom to think anything they wanted - just like us. And at some point in time, Lucifer executed that freedom, but started to think of how nice it would be to live independent of God, and to be a "god" himself. Lucifer, using his freedom, persuaded other angels (also blessed with freedom of thought and choice) to follow Lucifer and to run away from God and heaven, to live in the sides of the North. Thus the angels left their first habitation (heaven), ran away, and tried to establish an independent kingdom of Luciferstan.

After all, the angels had only ever experienced the goodness of God in heaven. They had no way of knowing how God would react to this act of disobedience. They had only seen the smiling, friendly, good side of the Father.

Maybe they were surprised when the Father waged war against them, overcame them, and threw them down to earth to live where HE wanted them to live, not where they chose to live in disobedience and rebellion. Not that earth was all that bad. It had its own charms, like dinosaurs, and ferns.

The fallen angels tried to be independent, but they ended up under the watchful eye of God, with their powers severely limited and curtailed by God.

God had to do this, to show the remaining angels what life outside the authority of God is like. It rapidly degenerates. Anyone who has seen demon possessed folks knows that demons (fallen angels) are not happy folks. The demons degenerated into the unhappy souls they are today. God's severity on them is a lesson in goodness today. We need God to become and stay good. Without God there is only severity, dismay, frustration, hopelessness, violence, anger, hatred - as manifested by the fallen angels today.
 
T

Truster

New member
I am disagreeable to the way in which you wring the truth out of scriptures. You are a male version of GT.
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
Let's look at another instance of the goodness and SEVERITY of God.

God creates Adam and Eve placing them in Eden. Eden is the embodiment of goodness.

They get caught with their hands in the cookie jar. What is God going to do?

Remember, the Bible is God's book, since God wrote it. God is not trying to portray Himself in a bad light, unlike Truster who cannot help but portray himself in a bad light every time he opens his mouth.

God could have given Adam and Eve a severe telling off. He could have suspended their privileges for a month. God could have covered them with boils for a while.

Or, God could have chased them permanently from paradise and His immediate presence, and sent them Naked and Afraid into the big, thorny, wild world to eek out a living by the sweat of their brows, till they get old and expire. That turned out to be their sentence - and from God's own lips we learn of the SEVERITY of God.

Obviously, I have no problem with the SEVERITY of God, mostly because all my life, I have experienced the goodness of God.

Adam and Eve had only known the goodness of God, but the snake sold them on wanting to know good and evil. So, in choosing disobedience, they chose to experience goodness AND SEVERITY. Their choice, and they got exactly what they asked for.

I am not big on severity and suffering. That is why I could never be a Muslim, and have to fast for one whole month of daylight hours, and see no improvement in me at the end of the month, year after year. I would begin to ask "Why must man suffer?".

I personally believe and have written many times on this forum before, that Adam and Eve were already "fallen" even before they "fell". They were distant from God, already so alienated, that the thought of alienation from God did not bother them enough to prevent them sinning. I don't see them begging God to forgive them and begging Him to return them to a close relationship with Him.

I speculate they were so fallen even before "the fall" that a bit of suffering would be good for them, so that they could finally begin to recognise the goodness of God which they had taken for granted, before "the fall". If they had cared, they, like Abel could have sought a relationship with God by bringing him the fruit of their harvest, an offering, as Abel did.

Neither the goodness nor SEVERITY of God brought Adam and Eve back into relationship with Him. God tried both. Adam and Eve are toast. But we can learn from burning the toast, not to do so again. We can even learn from others toast.

Maybe Christianity today is all carrot and no stick. Maybe we think the God of the New Testament is not the SEVERE God of the Old. Or maybe, because sin goes unpunished today, we mistake the goodness and grace of God for licence to sin. I don't want to live in the end-times and experience the SEVERITY of God. I am in no hurry to be with the Lord, so I don't wish the end-times on myself or anyone. I am a respecter of the SEVERITY of God, knowing that God has not changed in a mere 6000 years to a God who has retired from severity - or become a mellow grandfatherly figure handing out candy. I love the God of the Bible, the God who hides nothing from us of His goodness and SEVERITY in dealing with both angels and man. I want to know only the goodness of God, like the pre-"fall" Adam and Eve - so I try to behave like the pre-"fall" Adam and Eve.
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
jamie said:
What's so great about heaven?

Is it the fishing, the swimming, the beaches, lying in the sun? What?
Click to expand...

No, the "sides of the North" has fishing and swimming, beaches and lying in the sun. That's what Lucifer promised his fellow conspirators. Heaven has God.

Psa 84:10
For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
Some folks get offended when say, Christ curses an innocent fig tree or makes a herd of swine run over a cliff and drown.

Let's look at the goodness and SEVERITY of God on the pre-flood world. God had given these folks almost immortality in that they lived almost 1000 years. And because so few generations had passed since creation, the creation story had been passed down through generations. And, I suppose, they could have gone and visited Eden, and seen the cherubs with flaming swords.

God gave them a warning through Noah, a warning which lasted 120 years, or the duration of the building of the ark. Yet, there was no fear of their end-time.

Think of God wiping out all those innocent animals in a mass extinction, not to mention the humans. This is quite a SEVERE event. For reasons known to God, the world needed a reset - a hard reset where only aquatic life would survive, but all air breathing, terrestrial creatures would die.

If one looks at the geologic column, there have been many such resets in the past, where whole biomes have been destroyed. Normally this is followed by a completely new set of organisms, such as when reptiles (dinosaurs) are replaced by mammals as the dominant class.

And if one looks at every single past biome, there have always been food chains with predators with big teeth. God has no problem with predation and one organism feeding off another. This idea that death entered the geologic column from the start, is anathema to some. They make a whole false doctrine out of Rom 5:12
Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned.

Animals don't need to have sinned to die. The above scripture is referring to man only. And death entered only through mankind being cut off from the Tree of Life, and thus being unable to eat and live forever.
 
jamie

jamie

New member
LIFETIME MEMBER
iouae said:
Jamie, Jamie, Jamie - Religion 101 - God lives in heaven.
Click to expand...

Your theology is different from Paul's. Why?

"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." (Romans 8:11)
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
jamie said:
Your theology is different from Paul's. Why?

"But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you." (Romans 8:11)
Click to expand...

Our Father who art in ....?

The Holy Spirit, is sent into us by Jesus to help us think like Jesus. That is how "Christ in us, the hope of glory" applies. But our Father is (where....) and Jesus sits at His right hand (where...)?
 
jamie

jamie

New member
LIFETIME MEMBER
iouae said:
Our Father who art in ....?
Click to expand...

Heaven is the biblical word for the spirit dimension.

According to David, God is omnipresent.

"Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there." (Psalm 139:7-8)
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
jamie said:
Heaven is the biblical word for the spirit dimension.

According to David, God is omnipresent.

"Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there." (Psalm 139:7-8)
Click to expand...

Where can I go from your SPIRIT. God's spirit is omnipresent. Although that word is not biblical. God's spirit departed from Saul, so it was no longer present in Saul. Omnipresent is meaningless because the Bible never uses or defines this term.
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
The greater God's goodness towards one, the greater God's severity if we disappoint God.

God performed many miracles to bring a no-good, no-prospects slave nation out of Egypt.

The slaves reject God and His goodness, and want to elect leaders to escape from God and return to their slave-masters back in Egypt.

I love God's goodness, and I note what God does next. Does God allow them to run away back to Egypt. Surely God could have just turned them loose to their own devices. But that is not how God rolls. God makes them wander for 40 years in the wilderness till they all die out. And here comes the real SEVERITY of God. God swears in His wrath that they will never enter His rest. This is NOT speaking of the rest in the promised land. There was no rest in the promised land. What do most folks casually reading Psa 95:11 get out of it?
Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

Likewise Heb 3:11,18 and Heb 4:3,5,11

Because I understand the SEVERITY of God, I know exactly what kind of rest God is denying this ungrateful slave people. God is swearing by Himself that they will never enter the rest of eternal life.

THAT is the rest they would not enter into. On the eternal life front, these ingrates were toast. Oh the goodness and SEVERITY of God.
 
iouae

iouae

Well-known member
Every time God says yes, we praise His goodness.
But sometimes God says "No" and we take this as severity.
Yet there is goodness in the severity of God.
As you know when you say "No" to your child, it is usually for their own good.

2Co 12:7
And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me, lest I should be exalted above measure.
For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.
And he said unto me, My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ's sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.
 
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