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Today's Little Lift
by Jim Bullington
Do you realize that each and every person on the face of this earth is an active participant in God’s Layaway Plan? It is a plan which we do not have to sign up for; enrollment is automatic when you join the human race! We will note what Paul had to say about this plan in the second chapter of Romans.
“But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who ‘will render to each one according to his deeds’: eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil, of the Jew first and also of the Greek; but glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. (Romans 2.5-10).
Because the sentence structure is complex, a second read of today’s text (above) may be required. Involved in this text is a day in which God in righteous judgment “will render to each one according to his deeds.” This fact is in harmony with and quoted from Proverbs 24.12. When God “render(s) to each one according to his deeds,” He will literally pay off or discharge that which is due. From the beginning of our accountable lives, God has stored up that which we have deposited; His layaway plan has been inexorably gathering that which we have sown!
Paul used the phrase “treasuring up” in a rather unusual way. Jesus used this same word in the Sermon on the Mount to encourage His disciples to “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven.” (Matthew 6.20). However in the case of Jesus’ admonition, the treasures were valuables to be reaped with gladness. In the case of Paul's statement, the “treasuring up” was of wrath, indignation, and punishment. Their deposits came from hard and impenitent hearts; they came from people who were self-seeking and who did not obey the truth; these depositors were further classified as those who obeyed unrighteousness and as evil doers. Perhaps they did not stop to think that they were making deposits in God’s layaway plan while they were performing their deeds in the flesh, but their contributions to their eternal condemnation continued just the same.
Do not miss the fact that God’s layaway plan also includes a reward of “glory, honor, and peace to everyone who works what is good, to the Jew first and also to the Greek.” The righteous judge renders to all (good and evil) according to their deeds. Paul’s major point just here is the fact that these rewards will be made to every man and that includes Jew and Gentile. Perhaps the Jews saw no possibility for the Gentiles to be saved, but Paul made it unmistakably clear that they were participants in the same plan as the Jews; He quickly followed this affirmation with his observation that “there is no partiality with God.” (Romans 2.11).
Consider your ways, dear friend and fellow-traveler of life’s pathways. Someday we shall all come to the same judgment bar where He will reward every person according to our deeds and that with absolutely no partiality. Events of the earth will determine our destiny and nothing else. God’s layaway plan will do nothing more than honor our wishes as evidenced by what we did while in the flesh.
Questions
1. How and when did we join God’s “layaway plan”?
2. What two tremendously different types of reward will be meted out on the day of which Paul speaks?
3. What difference will there be between the Jew and the Gentile on that day? What claim can anyone legitimately make to try to obtain special concessions from God on that day?
4. Will any man receive that which he did not layaway while here in the flesh? Does God cause any one to live unrighteously? Does God wish otherwise? Did He make efforts to persuade people to live righteously? These things being true, who will be “to blame” when a soul is sentenced to eternal punishment?
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