His Intolerance
His Intolerance
God is the only being in the universe who has a right to be intolerant. In fact, if He were tolerant He would not be God. Tolerance, in one of its shades, is the supine allowance of that which is evil. Crabb, in his great work on synonyms, says, "What is tolerated is bad in itself, and suffered only because it cannot be prevented; a parent frequently suffers in his children what he condemns in others; there are some evils in society which the magistrate finds it needful to tolerate."
We can well understand, therefore, why God must be intolerant. To admit any deviation from good order, to allow any wrong practices or thoughts, would be to permit that which the nature of God must reject. Therefore, if God were tolerant there would be chaos in the universe. Anything that is not in absolute accord with the will of God is necessarily wrong, and to permit it would be to abdicate the throne of the universe, suffering Satan to take control.
God is sovereign. Without a doubt, this is a doctrine that is even more important than the truth of redemption. In His sovereignty God will have no partner on His throne and He will not share His royal seat. We shall reign with Him only because our wills will have been brought absolutely into line with His will, and we must recognize at every step that all our power and our life is derived from Him and that we are utterly dependent upon Him forever. God will not give His glory to another (Isa. 42:8). You waste your time if you invite Him into a temple that is already fully occupied with self. God requires all of the room in our lives.
What would be your thoughts and actions if you were suddenly asked to surrender all of the world that you hold dear? God will never share the throne of life with some other claimant. The second Adam will never accept the first Adam as a partner.
When we read in the Scriptures, "The Lord thy God is a jealous God" (Exod. 20:5), we understand it only because of the noble intolerance of God. The Greek word for jealousy means, literally, to be filled with a burning desire. God, as a jealous God, is filled with a burning desire for our holiness, for our righteousness, for our goodness. Thus He is jealous for us, though He could never be jealous of anything or any being, for only good is found in Him.
The day shall come, after the testing time is over, that the intolerance of God will come to its final fruition, and all things that offend Him shall be plucked out of His kingdom (Matt. 13:41). While we wait for that day let us see to it that we do not have any divided allegiance. All that we have and are belongs to Him alone.
1. How would God’s intolerance then relate to some one who says “what true for you is true for you, and my truth is my truth”?
2. Do the words that we use and how we use them then matter if God is jealous for truth?
3. Does Matthew 12:33-37 help us understand the intolerance of God?
