Isaiah 3:9-11 - Homiletics

The law of retributive justice not mechanical, but moral.

The doctrine of future rewards and punishments is sometimes preached in a way that is, if not offensive, at any rate unsatisfactory. God is made to deal with men as not even judicious parents would deal with their children—viz, for so much obedience, so much bestowal of pleasure or indulgence; for so much disobedience, an equal award of pain and punishment. But this is certainly not the doctrine of Holy Scripture. Scripture represents the reward of well-doing as "eternal life," and this "eternal life" is the vigorous energy of all that is good in the man himself, sustained and strengthened by the Spirit of Christ in the soul, and accompanied by happy feelings of love and trust and thankfulness. "Eternal life" begins in this world, and is only carried out to perfection in the next. It is, in the main, a state of feeling-consciousness of being at one with God, consciousness of communion with him. It admits, no doubt, of exaltation from without, as here by the special shedding of Divine influences upon the soul, and hereafter by the transcendent blessing of the beatific vision; but it is principally in the man himself. It is a condition of mind, not a set of external circumstances. And so with ill-doing and its consequence, "eternal death." Men make their own misery by their deeds. They "receive within themselves the recompense of their errors." They mar their moral nature; they refuse to hold communion with God; and then, thrown back upon themselves, and having nothing within them pleasing to contemplate or to be conscious of, they find themselves wretched—they have created their own hell.