Love, Forgiveness, Judgement

Almost four years ago Dylann Roof, a 21-year-old white supremacist, went into an African American Methodist church in Charleston South Carolina where a prayer service was being held, and he shot twelve people killing nine of them. Those people who had gathered to study God’s word and pray were terrorized and killed because this man hated blacks. Those who survived will never be the same. There was something that happened afterwards that did not make sense to the world. The families of those who were brutally murdered let it be known that they had forgiven this one who had committed such an evil act against them and their loved ones.

What these saints of God did was far greater than any magnificent feat that humans can achieve in their own power. The forgiveness they expressed goes all the way back over two thousand years ago when Jesus Christ, the One and only Lord, just moments before he died from the evil act by his executioners said, “Father, forgive them.” From that cross Jesus was demonstrating the reason he had come to this world—to forgive. He even expected his followers to forgive. One day as  he was teaching he made a statement that echoed within that African American congregation in Charleston two thousand years later, “But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven.” He taught that we must love those who hate us and do bad things to us, and then he demonstrated to us how to forgive when he died on the cross. It is hard to forgive sometimes, but if we belong to Jesus we must do it.

Our reasoning is those who hurt us need to get what they deserve. But we have to remember that if we got what we deserved we would never set foot on those golden streets of heaven. But there will be a day of reckoning. Jesus forgave those who killed him, but that forgiveness only went until the day his killers died. It continued only if they believed that he was the Son of God and became his disciples. Those today who hate Jesus, who hate Christians, who are even now devising their plans to prevent Christians from expressing their faith have until they die to turn to Jesus. Judgment will come upon them and all who refuse to accept Jesus as Savior.  

Judgment will bring a terrible eternal punishment on all who continue to hate Jesus and refuse to accept his love.

“...when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven with his mighty angels in flaming fire, inflicting vengeance on those who do not know God and on those who do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,” 2 Thessalonians 1:7-9