CAN GOD KILL?

 

God cannot lie. God cannot change. God is not partial or unjust. God is no respecter of men’s persons. God gives and takes. God exalts and demotes. God blesses and curses. God kills and makes alive. God is Sovereign. He does what pleases Him. Yet God is good not evil. Everything He does is good. 

The premise that God does not kill is based on the strange notion that God has no will or right to call back who He created, or on the fleshly understanding that God’s killing or taking life is done with wicked intent or evil coloration. 

Remember the parable of the rich fool when God said “today your soul is required of you”. God recalled his soul and thus took him from the Earth. 

God knows the number of our days. Our lives are in His hands. The hearts of kings are in His hands. He runs the affairs of the world. Ask King Nebuchadnezzar. 

Question: When God calls His people home, is it a good or bad thing? Is it killing, recalling or causing to sleep? Is this a matter of semantics and language barrier? 

What is spiritual death? Separation from God. Sin separated man from God. 

What is physical death? The departing of the soul from the body causing the body to lose biological life and thus begin to bio-degenerate or decay. It doesn’t mean the end of the (eternal) soul. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints, right? 

Physical demise of saints is us going to be with the Lord. 

So I think the context and meaning of the word “kill” in the question "Does God kill?" is about killing as a cruel judgment, unjust retaliation, spiteful punishment, carnal reaction, or punitive action (in the context of human revenge, retaliation and retribution namely the crime of murder or the unpleasant incident of manslaughter). That is, as an evil act. 

God cannot do evil. 

Yet God will avenge His people. Vengeance belongs to God. Judgment belongs to God. It is a righteous thing for God to do this.

No human has the right to take laws into their hands, to revenge or to take another human’s life. God is just and will most certainly avenge. 

Make no mistakes about it. God is just and will punish all evil that is not under the Blood of Christ. 

God in a sense killed Christ as our substitute so that we may live forever throughout Eternity. The Bible declares: “It pleased the LORD to bruise Him.” God sent His Son to die. He used or allowed Satan and wicked men to execute His own plan, which He had from the foundation of the world. He was and is always in charge. Nothing is out of His control. 

Furthermore, God corrects or chastises His children who continue recklessly in wrongdoing so they can live right. It is the Father pruning us for greater fruitfulness and Christlikeness. 

So can God punish? Yes. 

Now this is the critical question addressed in the post: Does God possess or lack the “ability” to take a life that He created? 

God doesn’t lack ability to recall any soul. No.

Through the laws or principles of life He put in place, He is sovereign over life and death. In other words, if anyone violates a physical law of life (like gravity), they can die because this physical body (and in fact all of physical creation) became subject to death, decay and corruption. 

Indeed man disobeyed God and death entered the human race, according to the word of God. Who did it? God. He said to man that if he eats from the forbidden tree: “you will surely die.” 

He created the possibility and phenomenon of death. By being separated from God, man died. 

By separating Himself from man because of sin (or sin separating man from Him since He is holy), God was directly or indirectly letting man die but true to His Nature of Love, He had a plan for man’s redemption, reconciliation and restoration. 

This is what the Glorious Gospel of Christ is all about. 

Finally, will God damn Satan and wicked people in the lake of fire as eternal punishment? Yes. Is it evil? No. It is just. 

To not punish evil is evil. God is not capable of evil. God is essentially and eternally good. 

God has punished evil for His people in Christ. He judged sin for believers in Christ. 

The wages of sin being death (according to the holy law of Holy God) was paid by Christ’s perfect work. 

It was Christ who paid the price of death and took God’s righteous wrath and punishment for sin on our behalf. 

To God be the glory.