While the ultimate terror for sinners is the day of judgment itself, there are terrifying things which we can unleash on ourselves during our lives on this earth because of our sin. Sometimes these are the obvious consequences of sinful folly, like having to go short of essentials because we have blown the budget on trivialities. But sometimes indulging in a particular sin leads on to committing worse sin of the same kind, in a way which is its own punishment. For example, wilful ignorance of the truth can lead to someone eagerly embracing pernicious delusion, remaining impervious to any attempts to help them see sense. In an epistle to the Thessalonians Paul refers to this outcome as God’s punishment for that sin (2 Thess. 2:11; another example is in Rom. 1:23–24). We might recognise this as a kind of “poetic justice,” or proverbially, “what goes around comes around.” But the special terribleness of it comes from the fact that it is God’s righteous judgment meted out to individuals personally and for which they remain themselves entirely responsible. Thomas Manton discusses God’s part in the judgment in the following updated extract from his sermon on 2 Thessalonians 2:11. The only way to avoid this terrible, self-inflicted judgment is to heed the gospel call to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth (2 Thess. 2:13–14).

By God’s just judgment, those who follow and promote a distortion of the gospel become infatuated in such a way that they swallow the grossest errors, to their own destruction. “For this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie” (2 Thess. 2:11).

But here a difficulty arises, for God is not, and cannot be, the author of sin. He who is essentially good cannot be the cause of evil. He who is the avenger of sin cannot be the author of sin. If He were to cause someone to sin, how would His punishment of it be just?

The answer to this difficulty is that, as it is a sin, God has no hand in it; but as it is a punishment of sin, God does have something to do in it.

God judges us

He who is the supreme lord and governor of His creatures is also their judge, for legislation and judgment belong to the same authority. This is why God is sometimes called our king, and sometimes our judge (Gen. 18:25; Rom. 3:5–6).

God’s judgments are either external or internal

In this life, God’s way of judging is either external or internal.

Take, for instance, the two acts of judicature — reward and punishment.

Rewards

In rewarding, God’s external government is seen in dispensing outward blessings to His people, as the fruit of their obedience. ‘Do not my words do good to him that walketh uprightly?’ (Mic. 2:7). His promises yield protection, and maintenance, and such a measure of outward prosperity as supports and maintains them during their service.

Likewise, as to His internal government, He rewards His people’s obedience in giving them peace of conscience and joy in the Holy Ghost (Rom. 14:17). ‘Wisdom’s ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace’ (Prov. 3:17).

God also often rewards grace with grace. For example, ‘If thou call the sabbath a delight … then shalt thou delight thyself in the Lord’ (Isa. 58:13–4) Similarly, ‘Be of good courage, and he shall strengthen your heart’ (Psa. 31:24). Proficiency in a grace is a reward for the exercise of that same grace.

Punishments

It is the same in punishing. Sometimes God uses the way of external government, by the terrible judgments He brings down on people for the breach of His law (Rom. 1:18). Sometimes this is in the way of internal government, by terrors of conscience. Or by punishing sin committed with sin permitted.

For both the godly and the wicked

Both inward and external are seen in punishing both the godly and the wicked.

For instance, in the godly, in the way of external government, ‘when we are judged, we are chastened of the Lord, that we should not be condemned with the world’ (1 Cor. 11:32). In the way of internal government, the lesser withdrawings of the Spirit, which God’s people find in themselves after some sins and neglects of grace, are grievous.

But the judgments on the souls of the ungodly are most dreadful. The sinner is either terrified or stupefied — terrified by horrors of conscience (1 Cor. 15:56), or stupefied by being given up to their own hearts’ counsels (Psa. 81:12), left dull and senseless and past feeling (Eph. 4:18).

By horrors of conscience, they are made to feel God’s displeasure at the courses they walk in; but when that is long despised, and they sin on still, then the other and more terrible judgment comes — for, giving a sinner up to his own lusts, and for the sinner to lose all remorse, is the last and sorest judgment on this side of hell.

Internal judgments refer to mind and heart

As to God’s internal judgments, the Scripture chiefly identifies two parts — blindness of mind and hardness of heart. They usually go together.

Blindness of mind is spoken of in John 12:39–40: ‘… He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their hearts; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.’ All the routes by which the Word might enter and work conversion are obstructed, and it was God who laid this punishment of blindness on them.

Hardness of heart is referred to in that famous instance, Exodus 4:21, ‘I will harden Pharaoh’s heart.’

God does not make those who see, blind, nor does He make those who are soft, hard. Rather, He leaves them to their own prejudices, obstinacy, and unpersuadableness, and even then, He does so when highly provoked.

How God is not involved in the judgment

To understand God’s concurrence as a judge in “sending a strong delusion, that they should believe a lie,” we must not say too much of it, or too little.

We must not say too much of it, lest we leave a stain and blemish on God’s glory. God infuses no sin, no blindness or hardness, into people’s hearts. All influences from heaven are good. He neither conveys deceit into people’s minds directly, nor does He command or persuade people to oppose the truth. Nor does He impel or incite their inward propensities so to do. All this belongs, not to God, but either to man or Satan.

Nor must we say too little. For instance, Scripture does not say that God blinds or hardens by bare prescience or foresight. God foresees other things, and yet they are not ascribed to God. For example, He foresees that people will kill, or steal, or do wrong, and yet God is not said to kill or steal, in the same way as He is said to blind and harden.

Nor does Scripture say that God blinds or hardens only by way of manifestation, as if it was only that in the course of His providence God manifests or declares how blind and hard they have turned out to be. When the saints pray, ‘Lord, harden not our hearts from thy fear’ (Isa. 63:17), they don’t mean, ‘Don’t show the world how hard and blind I am,’ but rather, ‘Cure my hardness of heart; keep back this judgment from me.’

Again, we must not say that all that God does is a bare, naked, and idle permission, as if it happened besides His will and intention, and He had no more to do in it than a man who stands on the shore and sees a ship ready to sink; he could have helped it, but he permitted it. No. There is not a bare permission only, but a permissive intention, and a judicial sentence, which is seconded by an active providence.

Many things concur to the blinding of the mind and hardening of the heart, all which God wills, but justly. The wicked take opportunities of their own accord to blind and harden themselves. Satan tempts out of his own malice. But all this could not be done with effect and success without the will of God. There is a supreme power over-ruling and ordering all that is done in the world.

How God is involved in the judgment

God’s concurrence may be stated by these things.

Taking away the light of the Spirit

God withdraws or takes away the light and direction of His Holy Spirit (Deut. 29:4). When God lets the ungodly loose to their own hearts’ counsels, then they fall into damnable errors. Like a greyhound sighting a hare, as soon as his collar is taken away, the restraint is gone, and his inbred disposition carries him. So those who are greedy for worldly things are powerfully drawn into the errors of the world, when God takes off the restraint of His grace, and gives them up to their own lusts.

In this, God is not to be blamed, for He is debtor to none, and the grace of His Spirit is forfeited by not receiving the love of the truth. Wilful blindness brings the penalty of blindness; and because people will not see, they shall not see. When they shut their eyes tight against the light of the gospel, it is just of God in this manner to smite them with blindness. Since they had no love to the truth, they are given up to errors and deceits. Because they despise the Holy Scriptures, and dote on vain fables, He permits them to weary themselves with various superstitions.

Giving them up to the power of Satan

God not only deserts them but hands them over. He delivers them up to the power of Satan (2 Cor. 4:4). Satan, as the executioner of God’s curse, works on people’s corrupt nature, and deceives them.

It says in 1 Chronicles 21:1, ‘Satan stood up against Israel, and provoked David to number Israel;’ but it says in 2 Samuel 24:1, ‘The anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David against them to say, Go, number Israel and Judah.’ How do we reconcile these two places? God gave David over to be tempted by Satan — by God as a judge, by Satan as an executioner. There is a similar incident in 1 Kings 22. Temptations to sin come immediately from the devil, but they are governed by God for holy and righteous ends. When they grieve His Spirit, God withdraws and leaves them to the evil spirit, who works by their fleshly and worldly lusts, and those who prefer worldly things before heavenly are easily seduced.

Providing instruments and objects

There is an active providence which raises the instruments and proposes the objects which, when they meet with a wicked heart, blind it.

The instruments. ‘The deceived and the deceiver are his’ (Job 12:16). Whether in worldly or religious matters, when someone deceives, or is deceived, it is of God. Both are His, not only as His creatures, but as they are subject to the government and disposal of providence as to how and whom they deceive, and how far. For people’s ingratitude, God raises up false prophets to seduce those who delight in lies rather than in the truths of God (Ezek. 14:9).

The objects. Wicked instruments varnish and dress a thing up with all the skill they can to make it a powerful deceit, and then it is befriended and countenanced by the powers of the world, and so it easily prevails with those who are motivated by worldly hopes or fears, and have debauched their conscience by worldly respects.

God says, ‘I will lay stumbling-blocks before this people’ (Jer. 6:21). If we will find the sin, God will find the occasion. If Judas has a mind to sell his Master, he shall not lack peddlers to bargain with him. The priests were consulting to destroy Christ at the same time as the devil put it into Judas’ heart (Matt. 26:3). Birds and fish are easily deceived with just the kind of baits that they greedily catch at. So God by His just vengeance orders such occurrences and occasions that meet with a ready response from a wicked and worldly heart.

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