GOD’S RELUCTANCE TO PUNISH
Isaiah 1:9. Except the Lord of hosts had left us a very small remnant, we should have been as Sodom, and we should have been like unto Gomorrah.
God had humbled His people because of their transgressions, but He had not utterly destroyed them, as He might have done in strict justice. This reminds us—
1. That the punishments that befall wicked men in this world frequently fall short of their deserts.
2. That this disproportion between guilt and chastisement occurs because God is not so much concerned to punish sin as to reclaim sinners. God chastises, in the first instance, that He may correct, and it is with reluctance that He increases the severity of His strokes [234]
[234] See note (α), page 18.
These facts should lead us—
1. To adore the divine benignity. How worthy of our love and worship is this God who is no mere vindictive avenger of broken law, but a loving Father who chastens us, not for His pleasure, but for our profit!
2. To gratefully acknowledge the mercy that has mingled with the judgments which our sins have drawn down upon us (Lamentations 3:10) [237]
3. To shrink with abhorrence from any abuse of the divine long-suffering. The fact that God is so reluctant to punish, instead of encouraging us in rebellion, should incite us to prompt and loving obedience. Nothing can be more base than to “turn the grace of God into lasciviousness;” and nothing could be more dangerous [240] (Proverbs 29:1).
[237] If in an affliction we would pour forth to God such acceptable prayers as may obtain comfort in our crosses and deliverance from all our calamities, we must confess our sins, and humbly acknowledge that we deserve to be overwhelmed with much more heavy plagues and punishments. And so the Lord will excuse us when we accuse ourselves, remit our sins when we remember them, and absolve us from punishment when in all humility we acknowledge that we have justly deserved the fearfullest of His plagues. For if we, who have but a little of the milk of mercy, are moved with compassion when either our sons or our servants acknowledge their faults, and offer themselves of their own accord to Buffer that punishment which they have deserved, how can we doubt that God, whose love and mercy towards us are infinite and incomprehensible, will be pitiful and ready to forgive us when He sees us thus humbled?—Downame, 1644.
[240] Take heed of abusing this mercy of God. Suck not poison out of the sweet flower of God’s mercy: do not think that because God is merciful you may go on in sin; this is to make mercy your enemy. None might touch the Ark but the priests, who by their office were more holy: none may touch this ark of God’s mercy but such as are resolved to be holy. He that sins because of mercy shall have judgment without mercy. Mercy abused turns to fury (Deuteronomy 29:19-20). “The mercy of the Lord is upon them that fear Him.” Mercy is not for them that sin and fear not, but for them that fear and sin not God’s mercy is a holy mercy; where it pardons, it heals.—Watson, 1696.