Wisdom's Call: 30 Days in the House of LifeSample

CONSEQUENCE, THE PROFESSOR

Blows that wound cleanse away evil; strokes make clean the innermost parts. (Proverbs 20:30)

We learn some of our wisdom lessons the hard way; the burn teaches us that fire is hot, cruel and hateful gossip spoken aloud can’t be taken back, spilled blood can’t be reinserted into the lifeless body. The sluggard goes hungry, the adulterer is left high and dry by his secret mistress, the cheater is exposed to lose his ill-gotten earnings; deeds done in the dark are exposed to the light for disinfection and consequences.

Suffering teaches us to hate sin, and Wisdom sends Consequence to deliver our most severe rebukes.

It would be all too easy to believe these reveal God to be cruel and punitive, but such is not in keeping with the character of the God of the Bible, which tells us He is both perfect justice and perfect mercy. True to our human nature, when wrongs are committed against us, we cry for “justice,” but when we are the wrongdoer, we cry out for mercy.

Our loving Father has given us a teacher to stand between Him and the pain, and that teacher is called the “natural consequences for our actions.” Throughout Scripture, God brings blessings on His people for obedience, and curses for defying the moral and physical grain of His universe. Sir Isaac Newton captured this aspect of God’s truth for all of humanity with his own pithy observation of God’s physical world: “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”

And so the consequences of our actions, whether those actions be true or false, stand as the greatest teacher. And when our actions are false or wicked, we suffer—and we learn. From the pain of a stubbed toe, to the justice meted out by local officials, to the burying of a body whose life we have taken—there are consequences to every action we make. This is a principle embedded in creation by Christ out of love, a desire to teach, discipline, and grow His own, a desire to maintain a just and civil world, and to display His glory for all to see.

And because He is both just and merciful, God doesn’t leave us in despair at the hands of our consequences. Once repented of, He uses our sins to stand as teaching aids to ourselves and others.

Like an exquisite piece of Japanese pottery that’s been dashed to the ground, He mercifully gathers the pieces of our sinful consequences, and joins them together with the precious gold of instructive redemption. As in kintsugi, the centuries-old Japanese art form poetically translated as “golden joinery,” Christ rejoins our broken pieces using His own precious metals of mercy—gold, silver, platinum—so that the beautiful seams of gold glint in the visible cracks of our brokenness. The repair becomes an ornament, a testimony to God’s faithfulness and His promise to redeem all things. The repairing of the breaches becomes a witness to His power, might, mercy, and glory, and as we grow wise, the smaller the cracks in our character become.

God’s kintsugi process does not stop at a mere newly repaired vessel. No, while a new testimonial work of art is revealed in the “already” of life, He is also preparing the moment when all things are made new in His presence in our much anticipated “not yet” of glory.

In glory there is no need for repairs, there are no cracks, and there’s no need for consequences. All things will be made holy and right in Christ, and in that place all will do right and be well forever.