Stephen
Terry, Director
The
Triumph of God's Love
Commentary
for the June 29, 2024, Sabbath School Lesson
"The sea gave up the dead that were
in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead that were in them, and each person
was judged according to what they had done. Then death and Hades were thrown
into the lake of fire. The lake of fire is the second death. Anyone whose name
was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire." Revelation 20:13-15
It seems ironic that the title
of this lesson is "The Triumph of God's Love." Most of us do not equate love
with burning people in a Lake of Fire. In fact, when most are feeling the bite
of justice in our lives, no matter how small the nibble or how well deserved it
is, we are often among the first to claim those charged with the responsibility
of meting out justice as being unchristian and unloving. But is that the case?
Suppose a bridge is out from a storm, and caring for others, we erect signs
along the road warning that the bridge is out. But someone wants to reach a
destination on the other side of the river and drives rapidly along the road,
ignoring the signs. In their haste, their car ends up in the river. After being
rescued and questioned why they went ahead despite the signs warning them, they
replied that it was not a very loving thing for the bridge to be out. Instead
of putting up signs, the bridge should never have been out in the first place
if people had cared about the motoring public.
Too many go through life thinking
like this, making poor choices and blaming the
consequences of those choices on others. Often the other being blamed is God.
For millennia we have been told that eventually the road is going to run out,
that the earth is destined for apocalyptic chaos. Even those who profess no
faith in God have been able to see the signs and warn humanity that we cannot continue
down this road or our mutual destruction is ensured. Rather than change course,
the response is to blame God and claim atheism as though that will somehow put
that "meany" God in his place. Rather than read the signs that are becoming
ever more frequent, we pretend there is no sign maker and therefore no signs.
Besides, even if God were to exist, how could a loving God let things get so
far out of hand?
But if we are looking for
someone to blame for the mess besetting us, we need look no further than the
nearest mirror. According to the early chapters of Genesis, and it does not
matter if you take the text literally or metaphorically, things did not start
out badly. It was so idyllic that Revelation depicts a restoration of what once
existed as a future ideal. God placed humanity in paradise as an act of love.
One day, he will do the same again with the earth made new. The Book of Life is
our deed that entitles us to paradise. If our names are found there, we will
once again return to that home. So how do we get our name added to that book?
We cannot. Our names are already written in the book from the creation of the
world.[i]
That is why the Bible does not mention adding anyone's name to that tome.
So, does that mean everyone is
predestined to be saved no matter what? Hardly. Think of it like this. We begin
a new term at school and the teacher tells us that he sees only a classroom of "A"
students before him, so we each begin with that grade. Over the coming term, it
will be our choice whether we finish the term with that same grade. The course
of our experience with his class will be determined by the choices we make
along the way. We may decide YouTube videos are a better source of knowledge
than the assigned texts. When our grade begins to slip as a result, the teacher
will remind us it is not too late to pull the grade back up. But our friends remind
us that the teacher is a kind person and that failing us would be out of
character for such a kind person. So, we continue to presume on the teacher's
character instead of heeding the lessons being taught during class. When the
term ends with our failing the course, we blame the teacher who never should
have allowed such a bad outcome. Despite some keeping the "A" the entire term, we
claim that he was no teacher, or we would not have failed. Failure to recognize
our own complicity through our bad choices may even lead us to leave school in which
case there will no longer be terms where we start out with an "A," only the
consequences of our choices as we stumble through life unable to accept
responsibility for where we end up.
While the Bible does not mention
anyone's name being added to the Book of Life, it does speak of the possibility
of being blotted out of its pages.[ii]
How does that happen? As we consistently ignore the consequences of our choices
and their corrective nature for our lives, we become inured to those
consequences, even believing that they are a normal part of life and therefore
no more meaningful than a piece of paper in a fortune cookie, something to
laugh about but never to take seriously. Besides, how could a loving God ever
delight in the eternal fiery torment of his creation? Who could ever love a God
like that?
In John's first epistle, he
tells us "God is love." (1 John 4:8) According to the opening verses of
Revelation, it was written by the same John who wrote those words. This means
that love must be the key to understanding those apocalyptic scenarios found
there. Much of the book is about justice. Does this mean that love cannot exist
in the absence of justice? If that is the case, then the overwhelming tide of
injustice in the world is an alarming portent of what is to come. For love to
reign as intended from creation, justice will need to have its due. We can run
up a tremendous debt with easy credit and low interest rates on unsecured revolving
debt, but eventually it will come to a screeching halt. We can blame everyone
but ourselves when our credit castle comes tumbling down, but until we address
our own bad choices, we will never find the path to true personal freedom. We were
not created to be enslaved either financially or spiritually. Nonetheless, like
Adam and Eve in Eden, we are too easily duped into seeing slavery as freedom
and vice versa. For example, there have been many who have been misled to believe
that easy credit is a good thing that will open doors to extremely low interest
rates and a booming financial future. In reality, people end up with their financial
future chained to a debt of twenty thousand, thirty thousand or more dollars
that will take years to unchain themselves from. Once enslaved, some may never
find their way to freedom this side of death. While love would never enslave
others like that, it would warn them of the danger and set before them the need
to choose aright between slavery and freedom.
God does the same. Through the
Bible, through the witness of others, through the guiding of the Holy Spirit,
we are warned many times over the course of our lives of the possible
consequences of proceeding down a road where the bridge is out. We cannot
safely travel that road through the apocalypse to come. Strangely, despite the troubling
signs of what awaits us if we continue as we have, voices still tell the unwary
that there is nothing to worry about. Everything will be OK, and tomorrow will
be much like yesterday and infinitely on into the future, or at the very least,
for the rest of our lives. We cannot see the looming precipice for the crush of
all the lemmings who are in front of us, but no matter how many others are on
the same path, and no matter how confident they are that it is the correct one,
we should never surrender our individual responsibility to the mob. They are
not invested in our future.
Above all, do not give in to the fears of the mob. Fear will
produce its own frightening reality devoid of love and hope. Move faithfully
forward, trusting in a God who is more than willing to sustain that perfect
grade, that listing in the Book of Life. Emulate his loving character and that
love will drive out fear, displacing despair. "Love is patient, love is kind.
It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor
others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of
wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always
protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres." (1 Corinthians
13:4-7)