XV  II.  SANCTIONS OF MORAL LAW, NATURAL AND GOVERNMENTAL 

 

A     What constitutes the sanctions of the law?  (Sanction: consequence; something that gives the binding force to the law)

1     The sanctions of the law are motives to encourage us to obey.  They are the natural and the governmental results of obeying or disobeying.  

2     Sanctions promise rewards for obedience. 

3     They also threaten the disobedient with punishment.

4     Sanctions are natural, that is, happiness is, to some extent, naturally connected with, and is the natural result of obeying moral law, and misery is naturally connected with, and naturally results from disobeying moral law, or from acting contrary to the nature and relationships of moral beings.

5     Sanctions are governmental.  By governmental sanctions I mean:   

a     The favor of the government because of obedience is a sanction. 

b     The government rewards the obedient because of his obedience.

c      The displeasure of government towards the disobedient is also a sanction.

d     The government directly punishes the lawbreaker because of his disobedience.  

B     We should regard all happiness and misery that results from obedience or disobedience, either natural, or from the favor or frown of government, as constituting the sanctions of law.  

1     In what light should we regard sanctions? 

a     We should regard sanctions as an expression of the loving regard of the lawgiver for his subjects.  Sanctions are motives that he presents to us to encourage us to pursue the course of conduct that will secure the highest good of all those who are under that government.

b     We should regard sanctions as an expression of the lawgiver’s estimate of the justice, need, and importance of the precept given to the subjects of his government.

c      We should regard sanctions as an expression of the amount or strength of the lawgiver’s desire to secure the happiness of his subjects. 

d     We should also regard sanctions as an expression of his opinion of disobedience.

C    We should regard natural sanctions as a demonstration of the justice, need, and perfection of the law.

D     By what rule should we measure sanctions?

1     We saw that our moral obligation is based on the importance of the good of God and of the universe, and conditioned on how we view its importance; and,

2     We must always measure guilt by how we view the importance of the end that moral beings are supposed to choose.

3     We should measure the sanctions of law by the intrinsic merit and demerit of holiness and sin.  

E     God’s law has sanctions.

1     We are clearly aware that sin, or disobedience to the moral law, accompanies, and results in, misery. 

2     We are also clearly aware that virtue or holiness accompanies, and results in happiness. 

3     Therefore, it is a matter of fact that God’s law has natural sanctions, both rewards and punishments.

4     The fact that governmental sanctions are added to natural sanctions must be true, or God’s government would only be a government of natural consequences.  

5     The Bible everywhere teaches that God will reward the righteous and punish the wicked.

F     The perfection and duration of the sanctions of God’s law.

1     The perfection of the natural reward is proportional to the perfection of virtue.  

2     The duration of the sanction must be equal to the duration of obedience.  This cannot possibly be otherwise.  

3     If the existence and virtue of the righteous are immortal, their happiness must be endless. 

4     The Bible proclaims that the righteous are immortal, and that their virtue will be eternal and their happiness will be endless.  

5     The very design and goal of government makes it necessary that governmental rewards should be as perfect and unending as virtue is perfect and unending.

G    Punishments under the government of God must also be endless.  Here the question is, “what kind of death is intended, where death is pronounced against the transgressor as the penalty of God’s law”? 

1     The penalty of the law is not merely natural death, because: 

a     This would really be no penalty at all, but it would really be offering a reward for sin.  If natural death is all that this penalty is, and if people, as soon as they are naturally dead, have suffered the penalty of the law, and their souls go immediately to heaven, the situation stands this way: if your obedience is perfect and perpetual, you will live in this world forever; but if you sin, you will die and go immediately to heaven.  This would be a reward for sin and not punishment. 

b     If natural death is the penalty of God’s law, the righteous, who are forgiven, should not die a natural death.

c      If natural death is the penalty of God’s law, there is no such thing as forgiveness because everybody must endure the penalty.

d     If natural death is the penalty of God’s law, then infants and animals suffer this penalty as well as the most violent criminals. 

e     If natural death is the penalty, and the only penalty of God’s law, it is in no way proportional whatever to the guilt of sin.

f        Natural death would not be an adequate expression of the importance of the precept of God’s law. 

2     The penalty of God’s law is not spiritual death. 

a     Because spiritual death is a state of total sinfulness. 

b     To make a state of total sinfulness the penalty of the law of God would be to make the penalty of the law the same as the violation of the law. 

c      If the penalty of God’s law is spiritual death, you make God the author of sin, and you would represent Him as forcing the sinner to commit one sin as the punishment for another, thus forcing him into a state of total and perpet­ual rebellion as the punishment for his first transgression. 

3     But the punishment for breaking the law of God is endless death, or that state of endless suffering that is the natural and governmental result of sin or of spiritual death. 
     Before I prove this, I will address an objection that many use against the doctrine of endless punishment.  It is only one objection, but it is stated in three different ways.  This, and every other objection to the doctrine of endless punishment that I know about, is leveled against the justice of such a governmental infliction.

a     Some say that endless punishment is unjust because life is so short, that men do not live long enough in this world to commit enough sins to deserve endless punishment.  To this I answer that, this argument is based on ignorance of a universal principle of any government, which is that one breach of the law always incurs the penalty of the law, no matter what that penalty is.  The length of time that you take in committing that sin has nothing to do with its blameworthiness or guilt.  It is your purpose, which constitutes the moral character of the action, and not the length of time required for accomplishing your purpose.  This objection takes for granted, that it is the number of sins, and not the intrinsic guilt of sin that constitutes its blameworthiness, but it is the guilt of sin all by itself that makes it deserving of endless punishment. 

b     Another form of this objection is that a finite creature cannot commit an infinite sin.  That only infinite sin can deserve endless punishment: therefore, endless punishments are unjust. 
     This objection takes for granted that man is so inconsequential a creature, that he is so much less than his Creator is, that he cannot deserve God’s endless frown.  Which is the greater crime, for a child to insult his playfellow or his parent?  Which would involve the most guilt, for a man to stab his neighbor and his equal, or the president of the United States?  The higher the ruler is exalted above the subject in his nature, character, and rightful authority, the greater is the obligation of the subject to will his good, to render obedience to him, and the greater is the guilt of the transgression against that person.  Therefore, the fact that man is so infinitely below his Maker, only enhances the guilt of his rebellion, and renders him all the more worthy of God’s endless frown. 

c      The third form of this objection is that sin is not an infinite evil; and therefore, does not deserve endless punishment. 
     This objection may mean either that sin will not produce infinite evil if unrestrained, or that sin does not involve infinite guilt.  It cannot mean the first, for everybody agrees that misery must continue as long as sin does, and therefore, unrestrained sin would produce endless evil.  The objection, therefore, must mean that sin does not involve infinite guilt.  The question is, what is the guilt that sin has all by itself.  What does all sin, in its own nature, deserve?  Those who deny the justice of endless punishment, obviously consider the guilt of sin as not being very great.  Those who maintain the justice of endless punishment, consider sin as an evil of immeasur­able magnitude, and, because of its own nature, sin deserves endless punishment. 
     Let me prove this to you.  Should a moral agent refuse to choose an ultimate end that is not important at all, he would feel no guilt because he had no obligation he could violate.  But should he refuse to will the good of God and of his neighbor, he would violate an important obligation, and of course, he would feel guilty.  This shows that guilt attaches to the violation of our obligation, and that is blameworthy because it is the violation of an obligation. 
     We have seen that sin is selfishness; that sin consists in preferring self‑gratification to the infinite interests of God and of the universe.  We have also seen that all our obligation is based on the importance of that good which moral agents should will to God and to the universe, and is equal to the importance of that good.  We have also seen that every moral agent, by a law of his own reason, naturally affirms that God is infinite, and that the endless happiness and good of God and of the universe is of infinite importance.  Hence, it follows, that refusing to will this good is a violation of an obligation that is infinitely important, and, as a result, it involves unlimited guilt.  It is just as certain that the guilt of any sin is unlimited, as it is certain that our obligation to will the good of God and of the universe is unlimited.  We must show those who consistently deny that the guilt of sin is unlimited, that our obligation to will good to God is unlimited.  To show that our obligation to will good to God is unlimited, we must show that God is infinite.  Indeed, to deny that the guilt of sin is, in any situation, less than infinite, is as absurd as to deny the guilt of sin altogether. 
     We showed that our moral obligation is based on the importance of the highest good of God and the universe.  We also showed that our moral obligation is always equal to our soul’s knowledge of the importance of those interests, and we also showed that every moral agent has the idea more or less clearly developed that the importance of those interests is infinite.  It now follows that the law is infinitely unjust if its penal sanctions are not endless.  Law must be just in two ways: the precept must conform to the law of nature, and the penalty must be equal to the importance of the precept.  Any law that does not possess these two facts is not just and cannot be law.  Therefore, either God has no laws, or its penal sanctions are endless.  That the penal sanctions of the law of God are endless is clear from the fact that a finite penalty would not restrain sin and promote virtue.  Natural justice demands that God should exhibit as high motives to secure obedience as the importance of the law demands and the nature of the situation allows. 
     The tendency of sin to perpetuate and aggravate itself, also suggests that the sinfulness and misery of the wicked will be eternal.  The fact, that punishment has no tendency to produce love in a selfish mind towards the one who inflicts the punishment, also suggests that future punishment will be eternal. 
     But let us examine this question in the light of revelation.  
     The Bible represents the future punishment of the wicked as eternal.  It expresses the duration of the future punishment of the wicked by the same terms that it expresses the duration of the future happiness of the righteous.  I will here introduce, without comment, some passages of scripture that confirms this last remark. 

1)        “The hope of the righteous will be gladness, but the expectation of the wicked will perish.”  (Prov. 10:28)

2)        “When a wicked man dies, his expectation will perish, and the hope of the unjust perishes.”  (Prov. 11:7)

3)         “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, some to shame and everlasting contempt.”  (Daniel 12:2)

4)        “Then He will also say to those on the left hand, `Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels: `for I was hungry and you gave Me no food; I was thirsty and you gave Me no drink; And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life” (Matt. 25:41-42, 46)

5)        “And if your hand makes you sin, cut it off.  It is better for you to enter into life maimed, than having two hands, to go to hell, into the fire that shall never be quenched where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”  (Mark 9:43-44)

6)        “His winnowing fan is in His hand, and He will thoroughly purge His threshing floor, and gather the wheat into His barn; but the chaff He will burn with unquenchable fire.”  (Luke 3:17)

7)        “And besides all this, between us and you, there is a great gulf fixed, so that those who want to pass from here to you cannot, nor can those from there pass to us.”  (Luke 16:26)

8)        “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”  (John 3:36)

9)        “And to give you who are troubled rest with us when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with His mighty angels, in flaming fire taking vengeance on those who do not know God, and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.  These shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power” (2 Thess. 1:7‑9)

10)   “And the angels who did not keep their proper domain, but left their own habitation, He has reserved in everlasting chains under darkness for the judgment of the great day; as Sodom and Gomorrah, and the cities around them in a similar manner to these, having given themselves over to sexual immorality and gone after strange flesh, are set forth as an example, suffering the vengeance of eternal fire.  ...raging waves of the sea, foaming up their own shame; wandering stars for whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever.”  (Jude: 6-7, 13)

11)    “Then a third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If anyone worships the beast and his image, and receives his mark on his forehead or on his hand, he himself shall also drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out full strength into the cup of His indignation.  And he shall be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.  And the smoke of their torment ascends forever and ever; and they have no rest day or night, who worship the beast and his image, and whoever receives the mark of his name.’”  (Rev. 14:9‑11)

12)    “And the devil, who deceived them, was cast into the lake of fire and brimstone where the beast and the false prophet are.  And they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.”  (Rev. 20:10)

d     There seems like there is no end to the passages that teach directly, or even indirectly, both the fact and the endlessness of the future punishment of the wicked.