The Fear of God (6) Delayed Judgment and Perverted Grace

“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (2 Tm 3:1-5)

Review
We’ve been talking about the fear of God. We’ve focused on two important aspects of God that inspire awe and reverence in us—God’s glory and His judgment.
 
For the last two weeks, we’ve talked about God’s judgment through some examples from the Old Testament and the New Testament. In the Old Testament, we focused on the grave consequences Nadab and Abihu faced after offering unauthorized, profane fire in the tabernacle. And last Sunday, we discussed Ananias and Sapphira’s story from the New Testament.
 
When the church first began through the power of the Holy Spirit, many members sold their possessions and generously offered the proceeds so that there were no needy people among them. The Bible says that this was the work of the grace of God.
 
The early Christians were so filled with God’s grace that they willingly and joyfully offered their possessions to be used in accordance with God’s will. However, not everyone had the same motivation.
 
Those like Barnabas sold their land and put the proceeds at the apostles’ feet not to earn others’ respect but simply to express their thankfulness for God’s grace. People’s admiration was just what followed as a result of their generous sacrifice. It wasn’t the purpose, but a natural outcome.
 
But that wasn’t the case for all givers. Some of them were more interested in being admired by others than in serving God and other members of the church. Ananias and Sapphira were among those people.
 
They decided to sell a piece of their property and offer it to the church but kept back part of the money and brought the rest to the apostles. It wasn’t wrong to do this.
 
What was wrong, however, was that they still said that they had given all the money they had received. They lied to the apostles and thus to God, and their motivation was clear. They wanted admiration from people. That was their priority. They offered the proceeds, but their hearts were filled with Satan, not God’s grace.
 
As a result, the couple died on the same day and “Great fear seized the whole church and all who heard about these events” (Ac 5:11).
 
Ananias and Sapphira had lost their fear of God. If they had known how imminent and severe God’s judgment was, they would never have given such an irreverent and profane offering.
 
Delayed Judgment
But we also should know that that kind of immediate judgment doesn’t often appear in the Scriptures. God appears as the judge who is very patient with His people. Rather than rebuking and punishing us, God shows His long patience and love toward us and gives us chances to repent and return to Him. His love is unending and His forgiveness is limitless.
 
But we must still remember that there will be a time when our Lord Jesus Christ comes back as the mighty Judge who judges everyone in the world. On that day, there will be no chance to repent. As Paul said,
 
“For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each of us may receive what is due us for the things done while in the body, whether good or bad.” (2Co 5:10)
 
So, even though God appears more as the Father full of love and mercy who is patient with us, I think He still needed to show how serious His judgment is because that’s what reminds His people to be careful to keep His words with the fear of the Lord, without turning aside to the right or to the left. That’s what we see through Ananias and Sapphira.
 
What their story teaches us is that God indeed judges and punishes us in accordance with His righteousness. It’s easy to lose the fear of God when we see what’s happening in the world.
 
We don’t really directly see God’s judgment nowadays. We see many Christians, including Christian leaders, committing serious sins but seeming to live peacefully to the end of their lives without any judgment from God. That can make us forget or ignore God’s judgment, which leads us to stop fearing God and feel free to sin more.
 
When we first commit a specific sin, we might feel immensely guilty and be afraid of God’s judgment. But when nothing happens as a result of our sin, it becomes easier for us to commit the same sin, and eventually we get to the point where we don’t even notice that it’s sin. We’ll be like those “whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron” (1 Tm 4:2), and we’ll live apart from God’s will.
 
That’s what happens when we intentionally ignore God’s judgment. If we use God’s patience and love to excuse our sins instead of repenting of them, our hearts will become more hardened. And, we’ll ultimately lose the fear of the Lord.
 
Therefore, we must remember the fact that God’s judgment is only delayed because of His great mercy, love, and patience, not canceled. It is still coming closer day after day.
 
We must never use God’s forgiveness and patience as an excuse to sin as many Christians do nowadays because these were given to us to make us repent and return to the Lord. We should never make light of the Lord’s long patience for our sin.
 
In Romans 9:22, Paul said, “God…  bore with great patience the objects of his wrath - prepared for destruction” (Rom 9:22)
 
We should remember we’re by nature objects of God’s wrath prepared for destruction. The only reason we’re still alive is because God bears our sins with great patience, waiting for us to repent and return to Him.
 
But as I said before, He won’t be patient with our sins forever. When the set time comes, His patience will end and each person will be judged according to what they have done.
 
And God’s judgment will be serious. The severity of His judgment was already shown on the cross. Jesus was crucified to bear our sins so that God’s wrath would be poured out on Him instead of on us. He took our place on the cross.
 
If we don’t believe in Jesus and thus don’t receive His gracious forgiveness, the judgment we face will be like the suffering and death Jesus experienced on the cross. That’s what we should keep in mind as Christians. That recognition will inspire holy fear in our lives and make us careful in all that we do.
 
Let’s reread last week’s verse together. 
“Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time…in reverent fear.” (1Pt 1:17)
 
The Distortion of God’s Grace
Now, let’s read today’s passage again. 
“But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God - having a form of godliness but denying its power. Have nothing to do with such people. (2 Tm 3:1-5)
 
Here, Paul had some very sobering predictions about people in the last days. He saw these kinds of people in his time and said that they will appear in the last days. What’s more sobering is the fact that Paul isn’t talking about non-believers in this passage.
 
When I first read it, I thought that Paul was talking about people outside the church, but that isn’t the case because one of the characteristics he mentions is having “a form of godliness”. Paul is not talking about non-believers, but those who call themselves Christians without living out their faith.
 
They frequently attend church, worship God, hear God’s word, and give offerings. But at the same time, they love money. They are boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient, ungrateful, and unholy.
 
They’re not really interested in loving God and loving others. They are quick to get angry, but slow to forgive. They lack self-control and neglect to do good. They love worldly pleasure more than God.
 
Even though they seem good and godly on the outside, they reject the power that can truly make them godly. And that power is God’s grace.
 
God’s grace is given to us not only to justify us but also sanctify us. From the beginning to the end, our faith lives are filled with God’s grace. We were saved by God’s grace. We are being sanctified by God’s grace. And we’ll be made complete by God’s grace. So, true Christians cannot help but say, ‘Everything is by God’s grace.’
 
As Paul professed, 
“But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them - yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.” (1Co 15:10)
 
So, in believers’ lives, the need for God’s grace is absolute. But it seems that the meaning of God’s grace has been weakened and distorted in many churches. Grace is a word that Christians use a lot, but paradoxically, it seems that the more we use the word, the more we lose sight of its true meaning. Sometimes, we even say the word without really thinking about the meaning of it. God’s grace has become an idiomatic word.
 
I don’t think the grace that has been taught and believed in many churches today is real grace. God’s grace has been perverted, adapted, and reduced. Christians tend to only accept the aspects of grace that they like while ignoring its transforming and sanctifying power.
 
As a result, we only have a ‘form’ of godliness, while having lost the power of it. That’s the result of overemphasizing God’s patience and mercy and neglecting our fear of him.
 
As I said last Sunday, when the love of God is not balanced with the fear of God, our understanding of who God is is in error. That’s why we must “consider the kindness and sternness of God” (Rm 11:22) at the same time.
 
I’ve heard about believers and Christian leaders who excuse their disobedience and sin by marking everything off as covered by God’s grace. There were times that I also misused God’s grace in this way.
 
Most sins we commit are intentional, which means we know what we’re doing is sin when we are doing it, but we still sin because we want to do it. Sin is intentional. And, to rationalize this intentional sin, we use God’s grace. We think, “God’s grace will cover this. God will still love me no matter who I am or what I do.”
 
Even though we don’t really verbalize this thought process, it still exists in our minds. That’s the twisted, reduced, cheap version of God’s grace, which really isn’t grace at all.
 
Paul said in Romans 6:1-2, 
“Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer?” (Rm 6:1-2)
 
In the previous chapter, Paul had said, “where sin increased, grace increased all the more” (Rm 5:20)
 
So, some people might have asked Paul, “Should we keep sinning to receive more grace?” Paul was strict in this matter. “By no means!” He said that it didn’t make any sense because God’s grace not only covers our sins, but also makes us ‘die’ to sin.
 
When we’re truly filled with God’s grace, we no longer have a desire to sin. If we really know what Jesus sacrificed to give us this grace and to forgive our sins, and if we really experienced it, how can we think it’s okay to continue to sin?
 
If you intentionally use God’s grace as an excuse for your sin, it only reveals the fact that you’ve never truly experienced it and that what you know about grace is not true grace, but your own distorted ‘false’ version of it.
 
Even though it’s true that grace is unmerited by nature and covers all our sins, God’s grace can never be used as an excuse because what God’s grace really does is to empower us and make us overcome sin.
 
Although grace does cover our sins, that’s not all it does. It goes far beyond that. Grace enables and empowers us to live a life of holiness and obedience to God. Grace gives us the desire to live a life worthy of God’s calling. Grace transforms us to become Jesus’ disciples.
 
So, the definition of grace is not a mere ‘cover-up’ to hide everything under, but the power that enables us to love, serve, follow, and obey God with reverence and fear.
 
If we fail to recognize the enabling, transforming, and sanctifying power of grace, while reducing it to only a “cleanser” or “cover,” we greatly misunderstand the true meaning of grace.
 
And if we believe in this twisted, reduced version of grace, we won’t be afraid of committing sin because we have a ‘remedy’ and we will stop fearing God. So, recognizing God’s grace as it truly is according to God’s word is essential in restoring our fear of God.
 
In 2 Corinthians 6:1, Paul writes, 
“As God’s co-workers we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.” (2Co 6:1)
 
Paul said this because there were Christians who received God’s grace in vain. There were Christians who had a twisted, reduced view of grace. And to receive that kind of grace is to receive it in vain. It has no meaning. It has nothing to do with our faith, our sanctification, or our salvation.
 
So we must be careful when we say “God’s grace.” We shouldn’t twist or reduce its meaning however we like. Again, it’s very much like making a ‘golden calf’ and calling it ‘Yehovah’
 
Today, I want us to look back on our faith and think more deeply about the meaning of grace. And, I want us to throw away every false concept of God’s grace. Then, we will be truly able to experience the transforming, sanctifying power of God’s grace in holy fear of Him. Let’s pray.
 
<Closing prayer>
Heavenly Father, thank You for teaching us about Your judgment and grace. Let us know that Your judgment is only delayed because of Your long patience, not canceled, so that we can live in holy fear of You here on earth in our lifetimes.
 
Please remove every false, distorted, and reduced concept of grace from our minds and hearts and allow us to know the cleansing and enabling power of Your grace in our daily lives so that we can be transformed to be more like Jesus every single day, overcoming our sinful nature.
 
Let us not receive Your grace in vain. Let us not only have ‘a form of godliness’ but experience its transformative power in our lives.
 
We love You Lord.
In Jesus’ name we pray, Amen.
 
<Sharing>
Today, we talked about the result of delayed judgment and perverted gospel in our fear of God. Here are the questions I want us to think about today.
 
1) What do you think makes Christians desensitized to God’s judgment? What results do you see? How do you think recognizing God’s judgment is related to fearing Him?
 
2) What kinds of distorted and reduced versions of God’s grace do you see in Christians and churches today? What do you think God’s grace is? What effects or power of God’s grace have you experienced in your life?