Only so much time is left to become Right with God

Only so much time is left to become Right with God

God always forgives, so we are told.  But what does that mean if our stubbornness to seek forgiveness becomes like a train wreck when the warning signs are ignored?  When teaching anyone about the Lord’s tolerance to our insignificance in taking him for granted, we better make sure we warn them of mercy’s limitations.  Just what are these limits to the Lord’s limitless forgiveness?  

Adam and Eve were the first humans to find that God does have limits towards our rejection of his rules.  “When they heard the sound of the Lord God moving about in the garden at the breezy time of the day, the man and his wife hid themselves from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. The Lord God then called to the man and asked him, “Where are you?”  He answered, “I heard you in the garden, but I was afraid because I was naked, so I hid myself.”  
Who told you that you were naked?”  You have eaten from the tree of which I had forbidden you to eat.”  Herein, God did not give the man and his wife a carte-blanche and overlook the sin of man.  

Later in human history God chose David as his future king of Israel and from whose loins down through other characters Jesus would also become the Salvation for man’s rejection through sin.  However, even here David did not obey God and because of his weakness committed adultery with Bathsheba, had her husband killed in battle, and became an outcast for a period of time to his people.  God remained committed to David, but there was a price he had to pay for disobedience to God’s rules.  The offspring of their sin, would die as a result of taking God for granted.  

Again, when portraying the mercy of God to neophytes just learning about God’s forgiveness, we must add that when we disobey God, even though his mercy is everlasting, there will be a price to pay for the sin ‘s activity.  

From the incident in the garden of Eden and the result of sexual indiscretion with David and Bathsheba we see that God’s mercy is still in play, to use a modern expression, but a payment to complete a way of clearing the smudge of dross away from the final product to bring about complete purity.  Using the purifying of steel as an example, the steel is put in the furnace at an extremely high temperature to burn off the dross (the undesirable useless products that could corrupt the integrity of the final product) to make the steel structures of the world perfect.  The theology of Purgatory also completes the payment for the sins that are completely forgiven, but there may still be some dross left that must go through a purification for the soul to become perfect.  That’s purgatory, somewhere or somewhat either here before death or in Purgatory, as a heating of the substance we call our soul.  There are some who claim our purgatory is here through much suffering many go through.  That may be true.  But, it is necessary in the final stage of purification.  Like steel in its final stage is already perfect, so our sins forgiveness is placing our soul in the state of grace, waiting to be purified.  That purification will make us right with God.  

Ralph B. Hathaway