Why So Harsh?

In my Bible reading a couple days ago, I came across something that made my stomach turn. I had read these verses before in the past, but for whatever reason they hit me especially hard now.

“Therefore this is what the Sovereign Lord says: I myself am against you, Jerusalem, and I will inflict punishment on you in the sight of the nations. Because of all your detestable idols, I will do to you what I have never done before and will never do again. Therefore in your midst fathers will eat their children, and children will eat their fathers. I will inflict punishment on you and will scatter all your survivors to the winds.” (Ezekiel 5:8-10)

The situation described here is the siege of Jerusalem before the city finally fell to the Babylonians in 587 BC. The idea of someone so  desperate that they would become a cannibal and eat their own child or parent makes us sick. But even more amazing in these verses is that this was God’s punishment. He drove them to this.

And we think, “Why?” How could God be so harsh and so severe with his punishment? In some ways it just doesn’t seem fair.

God explains exactly why he was so harsh in the next verse: “Therefore, as I live, declares the Lord God, surely, because you have defiled my sanctuary with all your detestable things and with all your abominations, therefore I will withdraw. My eye will not spare, and I will have no pity.” (Ezekiel 5:11) The people had put up idols in God’s temple, repeatedly breaking his first commandment. That’s why he punished them.

But still, we think, “Why so harsh?”

The thing is, though, that God’s law is always harsh. Even when God doesn’t drive people to cannibalism because of their sinful situation, his law is unrelentingly harsh: “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) Every sin deserves death, and not just physical death, eternal death in hell. Nothing could be “harsher” than that.

But the Bible also gives us another teaching: the Gospel. The Gospel is the Good News that God did something about our sins by sending his Son (John 3:16). He sent Jesus to pay the punishment of hell our  sins deserved (2 Cor. 5:21). The faith that God gives us to trust in Jesus is how we get the eternal life that Jesus’ perfect life won. “The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Rom. 6:23)

This distinction of the teachings of “law” and “Gospel” is something the Lutheran church is especially known for. It also just happens to be the two main teachings of the Bible. Every time we squirm at how harsh God seems toward sin, we need to remember that as harsh as he is in his law, his love shines forth in his Gospel. In fact, it’s the law’s very harshness that helps us appreciate the Gospel’s sweet comfort.

The edition of Luther’s Catechism that I use to teach young people the basic truths of the Bible has a helpful diagram on these two main teachings:

(Luther’s Catechism,p. 38 Northwestern Publishing House, 1998)

The harshness of God’s law leads to the beauty of his Gospel in Christ. As you read the Bible, never forget this!