Turn your back on Christ or watch your children die.
That’s the choice your brothers and sisters, if you’re a Christian, are being given in ISIS-controlled areas of Iraq and Syria, today. Children are dying because their families stay loyal to Christ. This is real. Right now.
And that is why God’s judgment is not just a truth we have to acknowledge because the Bible says it. It is not a truth that we must explain away, smooth over and get past as quickly as possible so we can talk about love and forgiveness.
Because “all this”, as Paul puts it to a church suffering serious persecution for your faith, “is evidence that God’s judgment is right” (2 Thessalonians 1 v 5). God’s judgment is not merely real, but right. It is good, and we should celebrate it.
Don't you want justice?
When we see what is happening in Iraq and Syria – or what happened to those 1400 abused girls in Rotherham, to bring it closer to home – we want justice. We cry out “God, why don’t you do something?” - or we should do, unless repeated exposure to atrocities that are happening to other people has hardened us into indifference.
And God says: I will do something. I will judge them. They may not face justice in the Hague, but they will face justice in the heavenly courtroom where there is no escape, no miscarriage of justice.
Turn your back on Christ or watch your children die. Never let anyone say that a loving God would never send people to hell. Never let it be said that God’s judgment is barbaric. Never let people suggest that a good God is a God who sees children killed and shrugs his shoulders and says: Ah well. Boys will be boys. Never let it be claimed that God’s love triumphs over God’s judgment, as though the two are in opposition. No, God’s love is what guarantees his judgment.
All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right. Only those who have never suffered injustice are able to have the luxury of thinking that God’s judgment is unfair. Those who know what it is to be unfairly treated and there to be no justice know that surely a loving God will say: There will be justice.
The Real Shock
It is not God’s judgment that should surprise us, and shock us. It is his salvation. It is the truth that a man such as Paul – a man who himself had sought to imprison Christians, who had approved of the judicial murders of Christians, who in this sense would have found a home in ISIS – can be writing this letter to the Thessalonians, writing as a Christian and not only that, a Christian leader. God’s judgment is coming, and God’s judgment has already fallen on his own Son so that those who deserve judgment can be saved. Judgment is coming and his eternal kingdom is coming, too.
Turn your back on Christ or watch your children die. We can do more than feel a guilty relief that this isn’t happening to our families. We can do better than be impotently angry. We can do more than weep, though we should probably weep more than we do. We can pray: we can pray for our brothers and sisters. We can pray that they would have grace to hang onto these two great truths: Judgment is coming. And the kingdom is coming, too. We can pray that they would have the courage to choose future eternal glory rather than present safety or even present life. We can pray that they would remember how Paul continues:
“All this is evidence that God’s judgment is right, and that you will be counted worth of the kingdom of God, for which you are suffering” (2 Thessalonians 1 v 5).
It may take us a while to meet these Christians in the heavenly kingdom, because they will be far closer to the throne than us. But meet them we will. And I want to be able to tell them that I was praying for them, because that was all I could do and the best thing I could do.
Turn your back on Christ or watch your children die. Judgment is coming, praise God; the kingdom is coming, praise God.
Carl is Editorial Director at The Good Book Company and is a member of Grace Church Worcester Park, London. He is the best-selling author of The Garden, the Curtain and the Cross and God's Big Promises Bible Storybook, and also serves as series editor of the God's Word for You series. Before joining TGBC, he worked as a journalist and then as a teacher, and pastored a congregation in Hull. Carl is married to Lizzie, and they have two children. He studied history at Oxford University.
