10.02 The justice of God

II. THE JUSTICE OF GOD In the first place we forget it often in presuming upon the forbearance of Divine justice. Consider seriously the course of our inward life the acts repeated over and over again of disobedience to what we know clearly to be God’s will, the manifold betrayals of trusts which He has committed to us, the failure of service, and losses of opportunity through our sloth and self-indulgence. Is there any earthly master or even father, with any ordinary sense of justice, who could pass by such conduct as if it mattered nothing? And will God, the All-holy and All-just, be less careful and exacting than an ordinary man? Yet do we not go on with these secret sins and surrenders and selfindulgences, as if somehow they involved no serious consequences? We ought rather to be convinced, and to act upon the conviction, that unless our penitence is constant and sincere and our efforts of amendment are increasingly strenuous, these apparently undisturbed acts or habits of disobedience must all the while be bringing upon us some real spiritual punishment which will be revealed if not here then hereafter. This would only be right if we were dealing with an earthly master, judge, or father. And “shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”

TAGS: [Parables]