Written Down for Our Warning

I heard this from a certain elder, who had heard it from men who had seen the apostles and from men who had been their pupils. For the men of long ago, he said, the punishment recorded in Scripture was enough for what they did without the Spirit’s guidance. God shows no favoritism, and he brought a fitting punishment on the deeds that displeased him. Take David. While he was being hunted by Saul for doing what was right, and fled from King Saul, and would not take revenge on his enemy, he sang of Christ’s coming, taught the nations wisdom, did everything under the Spirit’s guidance, and pleased God. But when his craving drove him to take Bathsheba, Uriah’s wife, this is what Scripture said about him: “The thing David had done looked evil in the eyes of the Lord.” And Nathan the prophet is sent to him to point out his crime, so that by passing sentence on himself and condemning himself he might obtain mercy and forgiveness from Christ. Nathan said to him: “There were two men in one city, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a great many flocks and herds. The poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he owned and had raised. It grew up with him and with his children together; it ate his own bread and drank from his cup, and was like a daughter to him. A guest came to the rich man, and he would not take an animal from his own flocks of ewes or from his own herds of oxen to feed the guest. He took the poor man’s ewe lamb and set it before the man who had come to him.” David’s anger blazed against the man, and he said to Nathan: “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, and he must pay back the lamb four times over, because he did this thing and had no pity on the poor man.” And Nathan said to him: “You are the man who has done it.” [a]

Then the account goes on with the rest — reproaching him, listing what God had done for him, and showing him how much his conduct had displeased the Lord. Works of that kind were not pleasing to God, he declared, and a great anger hung over David’s house. But David was cut to the heart when he heard it, and cried out, “I have sinned against the Lord.” He sang a psalm of repentance, waiting for the coming of the Lord who washes and makes clean the man who had been tied fast by sin.

It was the same with Solomon. As long as he judged uprightly and declared the wisdom of God; as long as he built the temple as a figure of the truth, set out the glories of God, announced the peace that was coming to the nations, and sketched out the kingdom of Christ beforehand; as long as he spoke three thousand parables about the Lord’s coming and five thousand songs praising God, and laid out God’s wisdom in creation, going through the nature of every tree and every plant, and of all the birds and four-footed animals and fish; as long as he said, “Will God, whom the heavens cannot contain, really live with men on the earth?” — so long he pleased God, and everyone admired him. All the kings of the earth sought his face, wanting to hear the wisdom God had given him. The queen of the south came to him from the ends of the earth to find out the wisdom that was in him. The Lord spoke of her as well: she will rise up at the judgment together with the peoples of the men who hear his words and do not believe in him, and she will condemn them, since she gave herself to the wisdom announced by God’s servant, while these men despised the wisdom that comes straight from the Son of God. For Solomon was a servant; Christ is the Son of God, and Solomon’s Lord.

So while he served God blamelessly and served his arrangements, he was held in honor. But when he took wives from every nation and let them set up idols in Israel, this is what Scripture said about him: “And King Solomon loved women, and he took foreign women for himself; and when Solomon was old, his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God. And the foreign women turned his heart away after strange gods. And Solomon did evil in the sight of the Lord; he did not walk after the Lord as David his father did. And the Lord was angry with Solomon, because his heart was not perfect with the Lord, as the heart of David his father was.” Scripture has reproved him plainly enough, as the elder remarked, so that no one may boast in the Lord’s presence.

This is why the Lord went down into the regions under the earth as well, announcing his coming there too, and the forgiveness of sins for those who believe in him. And all those believed in him who had set their hope on him — the men who announced his coming beforehand and served his arrangements: the righteous men, the prophets and the patriarchs. He forgave their sins as he forgave ours; and we should not hold those sins against them, unless we are willing to despise the grace of God. For as those men did not charge us of the nations with the wrongs we did before Christ was shown to us, so it is not right for us to lay blame on men who sinned before Christ came. For “all fall short of the glory of God,” and no one is counted righteous by anything of his own, but by the coming of the Lord — those who fix their eyes steadily on his light.

And their deeds were written down to teach us. First, that our God and their God is one, and that sins do not please him even when men of great name commit them. Second, that we should keep away from wickedness. For if the men of old, who went ahead of us in the gifts they were given, and for whom the Son of God had not yet suffered, were brought to such disgrace when they sinned and served the cravings of the flesh, what will the men of today suffer, who have despised the Lord’s coming and become the slaves of their own cravings? For those men the Lord’s death became healing and forgiveness of sins. But Christ will not die a second time for people who sin now, since death no longer has any hold on him. The Son will come in the glory of the Father, demanding from his stewards and managers the money he had entrusted to them, and the interest on it; and from the men he gave the most to, he will demand the most. So, as that elder said, we ought not to be puffed up, and we ought not to be hard on the men of long ago. We ought rather to be afraid on our own account: that after coming to know Christ, if we do things that displease God, we may get no further forgiveness of sins but be shut out of his kingdom. That is why Paul said, “If God did not spare the natural branches, take care that he does not spare you either — you who were a wild olive, and were grafted into the richness of the olive tree, and came to share its richness.”

You will notice that the offenses of the ordinary people are described in the same way — not for the sake of the men who committed them then, but as a means of teaching us, and so that we would understand that it is one and the same God whom those men sinned against and whom certain people are offending against now, out of those who claim to have believed in him. Paul, as the elder points out, said this as plainly as it can be said, in his letter to the Corinthians: “Brothers, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, and all were baptized into Moses in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink — for they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ. But God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness. These things were a figure of us, so that we would not crave evil things as they craved them. Do not be idolaters, as some of them were; as it is written: ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and got up to play.’ Let us not commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. Let us not put Christ to the test, as some of them tested him, and were destroyed by snakes. Do not grumble, as some of them grumbled, and were destroyed by the destroyer. All these things happened to them as a figure, and were written down as a warning for us, on whom the ends of the ages have come. So let the man who thinks he is standing take care that he does not fall.”

So the apostle shows, beyond doubt or argument, that there is one and the same God who both entered into judgment over those older matters and inquires into the ones of the present; and he points out why they were written down. That leaves all these people convicted of ignorance and presumption, and of having no common sense at all. Because of the offenses of the men of old, and because so great a number of them disobeyed, they claim that those men did indeed have one God, the maker of the world, and that he was a defective being; but that another Father was announced by Christ, and that this is the one each of them has conceived in his own mind. They do not understand that as, in the earlier case, God showed himself displeased with many who sinned, so in the later case too, “many are called, but few are chosen.” As the unrighteous and the idolaters and the sexually immoral perished then, so it is now: the Lord declares that such people are sent into eternal fire, and the apostle says: “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who take the woman’s part with other men, nor men who lie with males, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor slanderers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God.”

He was not saying this to outsiders but to us, so that we would not be thrown out of the kingdom of God by doing anything of the kind; and he goes on: “And that is what you were. But you were washed, but you were made holy in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” And just as in those days the men who led corrupt lives and led others astray were condemned and cast out, so now too the eye that gives offense is torn out, and the foot and the hand, so that the rest of the body does not perish with them. And we have this instruction: “If anyone who is called a brother is sexually immoral, or greedy, or an idolater, or a slanderer, or a drunkard, or a robber, do not so much as eat with him.” And again the apostle says: “Let no one deceive you with empty words, for it is because of these things that the anger of God comes on the sons of mistrust. So do not be partners with them.” And as in those days the condemnation of sinners reached the others who approved of them and kept their company, so it is now: “a little yeast leavens the whole batch of dough.” And as the anger of God came down then on the unrighteous, so here too the apostle says: “For the anger of God will be revealed from heaven against all the ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth down in unrighteousness.” And as, in those days, vengeance came from God on the Egyptians, who were punishing Israel unjustly, so it is now — the Lord himself declaring, “And will God not avenge his own chosen ones, who cry out to him day and night? I tell you, he will avenge them quickly.” The apostle says the same thing in his letter to the Thessalonians: “Since it is a righteous thing with God to pay back trouble to those who trouble you, and to give rest to you who are troubled, along with us, when our Lord Jesus Christ is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels, in a flame of fire, taking vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the good news of our Lord Jesus Christ. They will be punished with everlasting destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, when he comes to be glorified in his holy ones and to be marveled at in all those who have believed in him.”

In both covenants, then, the same righteousness of God shows itself when God takes vengeance: in the one case in a figure, for a time, and more moderately; in the other really, lastingly, and more severely. For the fire is eternal, and the anger of God that will be revealed from heaven, from the face of our Lord, brings a heavier punishment on the men who fall under it — as David also says, “But the face of the Lord is against those who do evil, to cut off their memory from the earth.” And so the elders pointed out that men are out of their senses who take what happened to those who long ago did not obey God, and try on that basis to bring in another Father. They set against those punishments the great things the Lord did at his coming, when out of pity he saved the people who received him — and they say nothing about his judgment. Nothing about all that is coming on the people who heard his words and did not do them; nothing about its being better for them if they had never been born; nothing about its being more bearable at the judgment for Sodom and Gomorrah than for the town that would not receive the word of his disciples. [y]

In the new covenant the faith men are to put in God has been increased, since it has received the Son of God in addition, so that man too might have a share in God. And in the same way our walk in life is required to be more careful: we are directed to keep away not only from evil actions but from evil thoughts, from idle words and empty talk and coarse joking. And in the same way the punishment is increased for those who do not believe the Word of God, who despise his coming and turn their backs and walk away. It is no longer merely for a time; it has been made eternal as well. Whoever hears the Lord say, “Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire,” will be condemned forever; and whoever hears him say, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you for eternity,” receives the kingdom forever and keeps advancing in it. For there is one and the same God the Father, and his Word, who has always been present with the human race, by many different arrangements, and has done many things, and from the beginning has saved those who are saved — that is, the people who love God and follow the Word of God, each according to his own rank — and has judged those who are judged, that is, the people who forget God, and speak against him, and break his word.

These same heretics I have already spoken of have fallen away from their own position, since they bring a charge against the Lord they say they believe in. The points they press about the God who in those days handed out punishments that lasted only a time, who struck the Egyptians while he saved the people who obeyed him — those same points come back on the Lord all the same. He judges for eternity the men he judges, and lets go free for eternity the men he lets go free. So, by the way these men talk, he will turn out to have been the cause of the most terrible sin in the people who laid hands on him and pierced him. For if he had not come as he did, they could not have become the killers of their Lord; and if he had not sent the prophets to them, they certainly could not have killed the prophets, or the apostles either.

So to the people who attack us and say, “If the Egyptians had not been struck with plagues, and had not been choked in the sea while chasing after Israel, God could not have saved his people,” this answer can be given. Unless the Jews had become the killers of the Lord — which is exactly what took eternal life away from them — and unless, by killing the apostles and persecuting the church, they had fallen into an abyss of wrath, we could not have been saved. For as they were saved by the blindness of the Egyptians, so we too are saved by the blindness of the Jews; that is, if the Lord’s death is the condemnation of the men who fastened him to the cross and did not believe his coming, and the salvation of those who believe in him.

For the apostle also says in his second letter to the Corinthians: “For we are the sweet smell of Christ to God, among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing: to the one a smell of death that leads to death, to the other a smell of life that leads to life.” To whom, then, is there a smell of death that leads to death, if not to the people who do not believe and do not submit to the Word of God? And who were the men who handed themselves over to death even then? Plainly the ones who did not believe and did not submit to God. And again, who were the men who were saved and received the inheritance? Plainly the ones who did believe God and stayed in his love: Caleb son of Jephunneh, and Joshua son of Nun, and the innocent children, who had no experience of evil. And who are the ones being saved now and receiving eternal life? Is it not the people who love God, and who believe his promises, and who “in malice have become like little children”?