According to Proverbs 3:32-35, there are only two ways with God: blessing and judgment.
The Lord detests a perverse man
but takes the upright into his confidence.
The Lord’s curse is on the house of the wicked,
but he blesses the home of the righteous.
He mocks proud mockers
but gives grace to the humble.
The wise inherit honor,
but fools he holds up to shame.
These two ways reflect God’s moral character. He is a black-and-white God, a God of moral absolutes. To him, a person is either perverse or upright, wicked or righteous, arrogant or humble, wise or foolish. We moderns are uncomfortable with such either/or absolutism. Whereas God see things in black and white, we see them in shades of gray. We are uncomfortable with the notion that he detests and mocks sinners, while he blesses and gives grace to saints. We would prefer that he treat all alike.
But would a person be good if he treated the perverse the same as the upright? If a parent punished a good child along with a bad one, or rewarded the bad child along with the good, would we think of that parent as a good parent? If the government jailed tax payers alongside tax avoiders, would we consider that government fair? Of course not! Justice means treating equals equally, and unequals unequally, as the philosopher Aristotle pointed out long ago. How people act should affect how we treat them in response. And this principle of equity should apply to how God treats us. He blesses the upright and judges the wicked. There’s nothing wrong—and everything right—with that. To say that God is a black-and-white God is simply to say that he is just.
And notice that this justice is quite fair. The punishment fits the crime. This is especially clear in the phrase, “He mocks proud mockers.” There is a one-to-one symmetry between sin and judgment. The one who disobeys God’s moral laws receives the exact punishment he or she deserves, no more and no less.
But notice one final thing: Grace is available. If God were just and only just, we all would be in big trouble, for we all have sinned, and sin deserves judgment. But “God gives grace to the humble.” The humble recognize the distance between themselves and God. They confess to how far short of God’s moral standard they have fallen. They are sincerely sorry for their actions. They are willing to beg God for forgiveness.
The humility of confession and repentance is a crucial component of wisdom. It leads to God’s confidence in us, his blessing of our homes, his giving us grace, and his bequeathing us honor. The failure to humbly confess and repent leads to shame.
Faced with such black-and-white outcomes, isn’t the choice before us obvious?
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