Anonymous Asks (365)

“Does God punish us when we sin?”

Bad stuff happens when people sin. That’s no surprise to any of us. It started in the Garden of Eden and it continues today. So today’s question is not about whether sin has consequences. Of course it does. What we’re really trying to answer is whether God is always personally responsible for meting out those consequences to sinners, and if so, what he is seeking to accomplish.

The Original Punishment

Translators of the Bible use the English word “punish” or “punishment” as the functional equivalent for a variety of words in the original languages of scripture. Each of these has a slightly different meaning. You will not be surprised to find the first references to sin’s consequences as early as Genesis 3, but neither “punish” nor “punishment” appear there. The closest we come to the concept of moral cause and effect is the word “because”. “Because you have listened to the voice of your wife … cursed is the ground.”

Several consequences followed from the sins of Adam and Eve, and at least some of them involved God directly. “I will put enmity between you and the woman,” he said to the serpent. “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing,” he said to Eve. That’s God personally punishing sin. Other references to consequences are passive. “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread,” God says to Adam. He does not indicate whether that’s a divine punishment or simply the way it goes as a result of man’s rebellion and the loss of his ability to rule the world as God intended.

Punishment and Natural Consequences

The same complex relationship between sin and consequences is observable in our own lives. Gluttons get fat. Addicts go broke. Criminals sometimes get arrested. Gamblers impoverish their families. Sexually indiscriminate people catch diseases they would rather not. Such natural consequences are distinct from the direct punishment of God. They are simply a reflection of how the world works as currently constituted.

Superstitious people may attribute the natural consequences of sin to the wrath of God, but even they must see the difference between cancer that results from a lifetime of nicotine abuse and the instant deaths of Ananias and Sapphira in Acts 5. Both could be called punishments of a sort, if you want to stretch the definition, but the latter type of punishment is immediate, personal and intentional in a way that the former is not.

Iniquity and Discipline

When Cain killed Abel, he famously complained, “My punishment is greater than I can bear.” That’s the first time we find the word in our English Bibles. It translates the Hebrew ʿāôn, a word normally rendered “iniquity”, and may refer either to the spiritual debt men incur by sinning, or else to the penalty associated with that debt. Far more commonly, the word “punish” denotes constructive discipline, and means to chasten, instruct or even teach. Much of God’s dealings with Israel involved disciplinary punishment.

The New Testament does not use the words “punish” and “punishment” to describe God’s dealings with Christians, only unbelievers. This is the case in most major English translations. Far more often in the New Testament, the source of punishment is other men, for reasons good and not so good. The word more frequently used concerning Christians is “discipline”.

God’s discipline is corrective. The Father loves his children. He wants us to live usefully, joyfully and wisely. He wants us to be always in fellowship with him. He wants us to reflect his character. If we can accurately say God “punishes” believers at all, his intent is always to produce long-term good from short-term pain. Discipline is the mark of sonship, and its goal is the “peaceful fruit of righteousness” in the life of the believer. The object is always corrective, in order that the Lord never has to condemn those who bear his name along with the world that rejected him.

Other Kinds of Biblical Punishment

That said, not all punishment is strictly disciplinary. Sometimes God punishes professing Christians to set an example for the rest of us. Ananias and Sapphira experienced that sort of punishment. They had no opportunity to learn from their mistake in lying to the Holy Spirit; both died instantly. However, God’s purpose in punishing them was not to teach them but rather to teach his church. Luke writes, “Great fear came upon the whole church and upon all who heard of these things.” We might call this exemplary punishment, and most of us would prefer to avoid it.

Additionally, sometimes God’s punishment is preventive. One of its purposes is to stop people doing what they are doing to others. To the Thessalonians, Paul writes, “God considers it just to repay with affliction those who afflict you, and to grant relief to you who are afflicted as well as to us.” Often the very same act of God that punishes the guilty also relieves those they are oppressing. This is not a bug but rather a feature when God punishes sin.

Further, some punishment is simply the execution of justice. It is the price of unforgiven iniquity such as the guilt incurred by Cain. The Lord Jesus spoke of “eternal punishment”. That sort is neither disciplinary nor exemplary. It is simply and sadly inevitable when men refuse the gift of salvation and forgiveness of sins that God has made available through faith in Christ.

It is also not something believers experience.