WHAT DOES HE OWE?

November 4 

…you shall not leave alive anything that breathes. Deuteronomy 20:16

Liberals often point to a stern passage like Deut. 20:16, in which God commanded the total annihilation of Canaan, as a demonstration that the OT God is “crude,” “barbaric,” and “unevolved” in His mindset. The softer NT ethic, however, supposedly demonstrates humanity’s “moral progress”—even as today’s secular mindset demonstrates further “evolutionary development.” But it isn’t simply the skeptics who are troubled by such a text: Christians are by nature a tender-hearted people, and thus struggle with such passages. Genocidal warfare—extending even to babies? Corporate guilt, with the sins of the parents visited upon their children?  

The problem posed here is not simply one for the long-haired armchair philosophers; every day, we wrestle with disturbances and enigmas that relate to the justice of God, and struggle with its seeming inequities. This struggle demands that we have a Biblical understanding of ultimate reality: i.e., who God is, and who we are. We must recognize, beloved, that the relationship that exists between God Almighty and ourselves is vertical, not horizontal. He is the holy and awesome God who transcends all things that are creaturely and sinful (Isaiah 6:1-5); we are but creatures—sinful sons of Adam (Romans 5:12)—guilty from the moment of conception (Psalm 51:5).  

With this Scriptural insight, we arrive at some solemn conclusions. First, there are no “innocents” in His sight. God “owes” no man a “long and happy life” or a “happily ever after.” He does, however, owe every man a death. And we shall die (Genesis 3:19, Hebrews 9:27). God is sovereign and free to demand men’s lives in the time and manner of His choosing—whether it be by cancer, or traffic accident—or the edge of Israel’s sword. 

Terry L. Reese