by Tim Kneezel

To be perfectly honest, I have a lot of trouble reading these doom and gloom passages in the Scriptures. On my first time through this section, it felt like God was going a little overboard in doling out the punishment. Wouldn't it have been enough to just punish Jeroboam and leave his family out of it? Why did his son deserve to die – he was just a sick kid? Why are the rest of Jeroboam's male relatives being punished?

It's highly unlikely that we'll ever get any more information on the daily lives of Jeroboam's family, so we'll never be able to directly answer questions like those with specific details. However, we can be utterly certain of one thing: sin was in each and every one of their lives, in large and small ways. That certainty has absolutely nothing to do with their relationships to Jeroboam. As Paul says in Romans 3:23, "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, "and he goes on to say in Romans 6:23 that "the wages of sin is death".

God is deadly serious when it comes to sin in our lives. This is a tough pill to swallow, and even more difficult to break down and begin to internalize. Regardless of what Jeroboam did, his family all deserved death because of their own sin.

However, beginning to understand the consequences of sin makes the rest of the verse even more powerful because Romans 6:23 doesn't end with sin and death, but rather in grace and life. "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." It is not a long and happy life here on Earth that we are promised, but the opportunity to spend the rest of eternity in the presence of the Almighty Creator. This is the promise that we live for. It is the hope that our faith resides on.

Your fellow traveler,
Tim