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Consequences

 


Ezekiel 23:35
Now this is what the Sovereign Lord is saying: “Because you forgot me and turned your back on me, you will suffer for your lust and your prostitution.”

Thought for the day – Consequences
I don’t know about anyone else at the moment, but I’m finding Ezekiel rather heavy going at the moment. Imagine being Ezekiel and being the messenger of bad news upon worse news. But today’s chapter really is taking it to a new level. God describes Israel and Judah as sisters and prostitutes. In very graphic detail. And I found myself asking the question why? Not why is God describing them like this, but why were they unfaithful to God. I suppose that’s one of those eternal questions. The easy answer is they were sinful. Yes, but all have fallen short according to Paul in Romans. But that’s not necessarily it. There was something else scratching at my brain. The thing that was scratching at the back of my brain was how far do we have to push God for God to do what he did to Israel and Judah. 

As for us as the people of God, that’s a question we have been wrestling with since the early days of the Church. Can we lose our salvation? And the answer to that lies in two schools of thought. John Calvin and the Calvinists would say that as the elect of God, we cannot. Johan Arminius and the Arminians would say that because God gives us free will, we can lose our salvation. As a Wesleyan I tend to side with Arminius, though I recognise the sovereignty of God and his knowledge of who will and won’t choose to follow Jesus. But like Arminius, I believe that in the same way we respond to the prevenient grace of God, We can also choose to reject God. And our rejection of God doesn’t necessarily have to be a conscious deliberate decision, it could be a slow drifting away from the truth we have known. But I think that if having experienced God’s grace, love and mercy, we choose to turn on our back on him, then we have made our choice. Either way, we will all one stand before the searching gaze of God. And under that holy gaze, we will know for sure.

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