God's Love and Tolerance - of Mercy and Punishment

We are fallen, corrupted beings who wish to ascribe to God the same shallow, weak affection we call love. God's love is not love in the way we understand.

God does not love us, and therefore leaves us as we are. He loves us, and He sees the devastating consequences and end-results of our sin. He does not deflect from us the end-result of our wrong-doings and spare us from the bed we make for ourselves. That would make us weak, and being excused from the punishment of lesser sins, we would be emboldened to further destroy our souls with far greater trangressions and more rebellion. 

Rather, He turns us from our wicked ways. He "slaps" us with a dose of reality - the realization of the self-destruction, selfishness and corruption within us, in order that we may may turn from our wickedness to seek the way of righteousness.

God is never is an "easy way out of hell". He doesn't save us from the consequence of sin, He saves us from sin by removing sin from us.

If we have no realization of gravity of sin, if we have not suffered the harsh lessons of the law, our schoolmaster, we would have no gratitude towards God, and thus take salvation as a mere license, a covering for all future transgressions.

God is not One who saves us in order that we can continue to live in sin, to freely sin without consequence, to destroy and corrupt our souls -  He saves us to walk by liberty, the true liberty of freedom from sin.


Wherefore I say unto thee, Her sins, which are many, are forgiven; for she loved much: but to whom little is forgiven, the same loveth little. (Luke 7:47)
 
He shows us grace in the moment of utter desperation. He showers forgiveness on us after our eyes have to be opened - when we are completely without hope, absolutely crushed by the weight of our misdeeds and corruption, when we realize how impossible it is for us to be saved, when we realize we have no more options, in our despair, when we are overwhelmed, when we are faced with certain death.

That is ultimate grace.