But the Day of the Lord will come like a thief.

On that day the heavens will disappear with a great roar, the elements will be destroyed by fervent fire, and the earth and everything done on it will be exposed (2 Peter 3:10). Then and now there are those who scoff that this has not happened since forever! Peter points out that a thousand years with the Lord is as a day, that is with Him it's been a mere couple of days. The reason for the delay is His not wanting any to perish, but rather that all should come to repentance (verses 3-9). His love suffers long and is kind, it bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. It is this goodness of God that leads men to repentance, or not (1 Corinthians 13:4, 6; Romans 2:4).

It's hard for us to hold together truths that seem to contradict. I'm thinking here of the goodness and the severity of God. His severity comes on those who fell, but toward us, goodness, if you continue in it. Otherwise we also will be cut off (Romans 11:22). Some stressing His goodness, presume on it, living unrepentant lives. They stress the Grace of God, but neglect the truth of God (John 1:14). Others stressing the severity of God live their lives out of fear, and in doing so, by their very lives, speak the unbalanced truth of severity without goodness, truth without Grace. The Scriptures teach both of course, but according to our tendency to imbalance, we stress one at the expense of the other, and either ignore the other truth, or rationalize away what we don't want to hear.

Imbalance is its own form of Scripture twisting, and whenever we twist Scripture, we do it to our own destruction, and of any others whom we lead astray (2 Peter 3:16). If we have eyes to see it, we can see evidence of this destruction in life. We see it in the wife of an alcoholic who “for love” covers for her husband by lying, or in the mother who makes excuses for her son, blaming others for not helping him enough. It's called enabling, and it robs the other of the need to take responsibility for their actions, and it softens the lessons from the school of hard knocks (Galatians 6:7). On the other side of the imbalance, we are likely judgemental like the Pharisees, falsely representing God as an unfeeling tyrant. In doing we cause many of His little ones to stumble (Mark 9:42). But on that day everything will be exposed, including the thoughts, intents and rationalizations of the heart. And we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, to be rewarded or not, according to whether we have done good or bad (2 Corinthians 5:10; 1 Corinthians 3:13, 14).

Lord Jesus, this free will, this gift of choice is scary, but without it love is meaningless. In the end it is we choose heaven or hell, and it's not in the here and now, it's after death (Hebrews 9:27). You don't send anyone to hell Lord, we go to hell “over Your dead body,” by refusing the forgiveness promised in repentance. And though I am fatally flawed, I am unconditionally loved, and when I am found in Christ I am fully accepted in the Beloved, and qualified to be an inheritor with the saints in light. For this and many other things I give You thanks and praise in Your precious Name Amen