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V. The Punishment of Sin
Sin is a very serious matter, and is taken seriously by God, though men often make light of it. It
is not only a transgression of the law of God, but an attack on the great Lawgiver Himself, a
revolt against God. It is an infringement on the inviolable righteousness of God, which is the
very foundation of His throne (Ps. 97:2), and an affront to the spotless holiness of God, which
requires of us that we be holy in all manner of living (I Pet. 1:16). In view of this it is but natural
that God should visit sin with punishment. In a word of fundamental significance He says: “I the
Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the
third and fourth generation of them that hate me,” Ex. 20:5. The Bible abundantly testifies to
the fact that God punishes sin both in this life and in the life to come.
A. NATURAL AND POSITIVE PENALTIES.
A rather common distinction applied to the punishments for sin, is that between natural and
positive penalties. There are punishments which are the natural results of sin, and which men
cannot escape, because they are the natural and necessary consequences of sin. Man is not
saved from them by repentance and forgiveness. In some cases they may be mitigated and
even checked by the means which God has placed at our disposal, but in other cases they
remain and serve as a constant reminder of past transgressions. The slothful man comes to
poverty, the drunkard brings ruin upon himself and his family, the fornicator contracts a
loathsome and incurable disease, and the criminal is burdened with shame and even when
leaving the prison walls finds it extremely hard to make a new start in life. The Bible speaks of
such punishments in Job 4:8; Ps. 9:15; 94:23; Prov. 5:22; 23:21; 24:14; 31:3. But there are also
positive punishments, and these are punishments in the more ordinary and legal sense of the
word. They presuppose not merely the natural laws of life, but a positive law of the great
Lawgiver with added sanctions. They are not penalties which naturally result from the nature of
the transgression, but penalties which are attached to the transgressions by divine enactments.
They are superimposed by the divine law, which is of absolute authority. It is to this type of
punishment that the Bible usually refers. This is particularly evident in the Old Testament. God
gave Israel a detailed code of laws for the regulation of its civil, moral, and religious life, and
clearly stipulated the punishment to be meted out in the case of each transgression, cf. Ex. 20-
23. And though many of the civil and religious regulations of this law were, in the form in which
they were couched, intended for Israel only, the fundamental principles which they embody
also apply in the New Testament dispensation. In a Biblical conception of the penalty of sin we
shall have to take into account both the natural and necessary outcome of wilful opposition to
God and the penalty legally affixed and adjusted to the offense by God. Now there are some
Unitarians, Universalists, and Modernists who deny the existence of any punishment of sin,