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By Robin Schumacher
Let’s face it, there are some scary stories in the Bible about God bringing His hammer down on people who do wrong.
In the Old Testament, you have stories like the one about Korah (see Num. 16), a guy who rebelled against Moses. Things didn’t go as planned, though, and his end was something out of an IMAX horror movie: “As he [Moses] finished speaking all these words, the ground that was under them split open; and the earth opened its mouth and swallowed them up, and their households, and all the men who belonged to Korah with their possessions” (Num. 16:31–32).
When you look at the New Testament for an example, you’ve got the story of Ananias and his wife Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11) who told just one lie about how much money they got for selling some real estate and then, “Ananias fell down and breathed his last” (vs. 5) followed by “she fell at his feet and breathed her last” (vs. 10).
These stories, and similar ones in Scripture, remind us, as C. S. Lewis said, that Aslan is not a tame lion.
That’s why we’re told “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23) with the cross showing how seriously God takes sin. The cross is the only vehicle allowing Him to destroy sin and evil without destroying us in the process.
That said, today you don’t see the ground opening and swallowing those who thumb their nose at God’s authority or people who misrepresent their good deeds dropping dead at church. But that doesn’t mean a clear and present danger doesn’t exist for anyone who consistently traffics in sin.
Those that do rarely get a lightning strike from above, but instead something much worse in the long run. The Bible tells us over and over what that is and says it so much that if I were to quote all the places it’s mentioned, we’d be here for hours going over it all.
The enemy within
When talking about his previous drug addiction, actor Robert Downey Jr. said: “It’s like I have a loaded gun in my mouth, and I like the taste of metal.”
That pretty much sums up how God punishes us for our continuous sins — He gives us over to something our old nature likes the taste of and lets it eat us alive.
Paul talks about this process in Romans where he writes three times that, when people turn away from God, He “[gives] them over to a depraved mind, to do those things which are not proper” (Rom. 1:28). What follows afterward is a train-wrecked life for the unrepentant individual and, sadly, oftentimes also for those around them.
Legion is the tragic story of the impenitent thief, adulterer, liar, abuser, and power-hungry who seem to have it all on the outside, but are rotting away on the inside, which sooner or later externally manifests. Isaiah describes God’s judgment on our sin like this: “You have hidden Your face from us and have delivered us into the power of our iniquities” (Is. 64:7).
The Hebrew word used for “delivered” here is very descriptive and literally means “melted”, which conveys the idea of our sins dissolving us (shudder). But we shouldn’t be surprised because we’re told, “Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap” (Gal. 6:7).
Writer Cynthia Heimel talks about this “reaping” and how “getting it all” can backfire on you fast:
“I think when God wants to play a really rotten practical joke on you he grants you your deepest wish and then laughs merrily when you realize you want to kill yourself. You see [celebrities] wanted fame. They worked, they pushed and the morning after each of them became famous they wanted to take an overdose. Because that giant thing they were striving for, that fame thing that was going to make everything OK, that was going to make their lives bearable, that was going to provide them with personal fulfillment and happiness had happened and they were still them. The disillusionment turned them howling and insufferable.”
The Old Testament character Job knew a little about ending up “howling and insufferable,” which is why he wrote: “According to what I have seen, those who plow iniquity and those who sow trouble harvest it” (Job 4:8), and added that continuous sin causes people to be “delivered … into the power of their transgression” (Job 8:4).
And that’s a pretty terrible place to be.
Even non-Christians realize this. In their song, King Nothing, which describes the emptiness that accompanies a reckless self-indulgent life, the rock group Metallica warns, “Careful what you wish, you may regret it; Careful what you wish, you just might get it”.
Indeed.
So, while God may not open up the earth for us or send a massive coronary on the spot when we sin today, that doesn’t mean consequences don’t exist in this life for believers who constantly traffic in wrong with a clear conscience. God has hardwired the grief and pain experienced from sin into the sin itself.
That being true, we should remember a quote that’s typically attributed to Charles Spurgeon and do our best to avoid such error: “Sin will take you farther than you ever wanted to go, keep you longer than you ever wanted to stay, and cost you more than you ever wanted to pay.”