Why doesn’t God stamp out man’s sinful actions immediately?

One of my lingering questions from Exodus 21:1-11 and other such difficult sections of the Bible is: Why doesn’t God just stamp out man’s sinful actions and cut off the consequences of breaking outside of the boundary of God’s created intent immediately?

Firs, Eric did a great job preaching such a hard text by being faithful to the content while also dealing with that content in the way necessary for historical narratives. Historical narratives are not to be preached like Paul’s letters because letters and narratives are to be read and understood differently. This discipline is called “hermeneutics”. Different genres of writing are to be read and interpreted differently. This is a hard task anytime one preaches from Old Testament historical narrative, but it is more difficult when the text’s content is challenging. Narratives must be set in the framework of the larger narrative and sub narratives related to it. Letters can stand alone while fitting inside of a larger set of letters. This dynamic is one among many that make’s the Bible the world’s first hyperlinked book as it fits multiple genres together in one cohesive metanarrative. It’s truly a divine book. Eric walked this line like a boss. Well done, Eric!

Next, Unpacking Exodus 21:1-11 afterward with Jennifer made the question I posed rise to my awareness.

Here is an answer that makes sense and serves as a warning to me, and hopefully to us as a fellowship and us as a larger group of Christians: God did not design humans or creation for sin. He designed us to flourish inside his divinely created boundaries and warned us that transgressing his ancient landmarks would result in death. Therefore, death reversed is not an instant work but a long-term work.

The wonderful news about God’s salvation is that he takes sinners and changes their status with him and eternity from guilty to not guilty, from orphan to son or daughter, from hell to Eden regained. God changes this status immediately. That’s amazing news.

But the introduction of death into humans and created order results in consequences that are not only immediate but are also long-term. The reversal of our status with God is instant, yet the genetic, neurological, sociological, and environmental implications of sin are so devastating that the Lord told us in commandment two that the downstream consequences of idolatry spans to the third and fourth generation. Those consequences are so deadly they infect everything from habits created in families to systems created among societies. These consequences are just not immediately fixed.

Why doesn’t he just stamp out the personal and societal sin and implications of slavery and divorce and poverty and abuse? Because there is no such thing as a fast fix to what sin does to humans and creation. There simply is no fast fix for sin. No. Fast. Fix. For. Sin. Exists. God didn’t design creation to instantly recover from sin. Therefore, God told us to not to transgress his statutes, his ancient landmarks or we would experience death. He never promised that death’s reversal would be instant.

In fact, what we see in the Bible is the truth God can and does redeem from sin, and yet God’s redemption from sin works itself out over long periods of time.

We sin this moste clearly in the fact that the Lord Jesus did not come on mission to die for sin immediately after the fall in Eden. He did not reverse the damage Adam and Eve’s distrust caused immediately. He would come in the “fullness of time” to repair that sin and it’s consequences and his advent would be thousands of years in the future with it’s working out in people’s lives, longer. God’s dealing with sin takes time. Why? We don’t know. We can only say with certainty that God’s repair of sin just takes time.

That answer makes me tremble at the thought of transgressing God’s boundaries. I don’t want to introduce something that will bring death on my great-grandchildren and even my great-great-grandchildren and perhaps the children and grandchildren of folks related to me by community. That’s overwhelming to think about.  

Perhaps this answer will cause us to pause before we partake of sin and consider the Bible’s admonition to not be enticed by the deceitfulness of sin. Sin promises gratification and only delivers death that can only be worked out over years and generations with no hope for reversing the course of the virus we let loose any time soon. We can all think of something we did or was done to us that is still dealing out poison. Dang.

Why is slavery still around? Slavery still exists because from the first time man enslaved another human, that death spread to other men virally until it engulfed untold millions because the Lord said that the wages of sin is death.

So, rather than wonder at why God doesn’t immediately undo the results of my sin, maybe I need to think on what the consequence of sin is and don’t give in to it, fight against it, call on the Lord for help because of a healthy fear of what that moment of sin will do to myself, my family, my church, my city, my state, and my world.

The fact that God takes generations to work us out of sin should cause us to shudder, avoid sin, and give thanks for a salvation that can change our status with the promise the Lord will eventually fix what I broke. Eventually.

Think on that and see if it helps us avoid sin.