THE WORST WORDS WE CAN IMAGINE (MARCH 8)

"And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness'" (Matthew 7:23).

HAVING BEEN MADE IN GOD’S IMAGE, OUR DEEPEST NEED IS FOR FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM. He created us as personal beings, and one of the characteristics of personal beings is their need for relationship with other persons, above all with their Creator. If it is hard for us to be alienated from other human beings, it is even harder to do without our Heavenly Father, although when we’re alienated from Him we often misdiagnose the problem and try to fill the void in our hearts with other things besides God.

As Adam and Eve found out, sin cuts us off from the God whose fellowship we need so deeply. Outside of Eden, it may have taken them a while to realize just how much they had lost, but they lived a very long time after their separation from God and we can only imagine the emptiness and sorrow of their experience.

But God had a plan ready by which He would bring His Son into the world to die for mankind’s sins and open up the door to forgiveness. Having been forgiven, those who accepted God’s plan would have a partial fellowship with God restored to them in this world, but that blessing would only be a “down payment” on the perfectly restored fellowship they would have with God in eternity. This, in a nutshell, is the message of the gospel of Christ, and it centers on the restored fellowship with God we can have when He has brought the history of this sin-damaged world to its end.

Only by God’s grace could such a thing be possible. Yet God has made receiving the benefits of His grace contingent on our accepting the terms or conditions which He has set. But what if we say no to God’s plan? What if we reject the good news of the gospel?

The answer is that the saddest thing in the whole creation will happen: we will have rejected the very thing we were created for. Fellowship with God — lost by our sin but offered back to us in the gospel — will be forever out of our reach when we hear Him say, “Depart from me.” But for the time being, that horror is still an “if.” We will hear those words if . . . we say no to our Savior.

"The pain of punishment will be without the fruit of penitence; weeping will be useless, and prayer ineffectual. Too late they will believe in eternal punishment who would not believe in eternal life" (Cyprian).