Knowing that there is a limit to God’s patience, we should ask: why is judgment ever delayed? If God hates evil and will not forget our crimes, why hasn’t he acted to stop it and bring this world to an end? The answer is that God wants to forgive. He cannot forget, but he wants to forgive. This is made clear in Amos 8:9–10.
These verses (Amos 8:9–10) look forward to a future day of judgment, the day on which Christ returns to punish evil and right all wrongs. However, being an old covenant prophet, Amos is given a vision of one day and he does not distinguish between smaller days of judgment and the final day of the Lord. So for example, this day of judgment was partially fulfilled when the Assyrian armies came in 722 BC. About forty years after Amos’s ministry, they literally flattened Israel so that the whole land trembled and people mourned their dead. That was one day of judgment.
Another day of judgment took place eight hundred years later when Jesus Christ was on earth. If you know the Gospel accounts of his life, you should remember that when he died on the cross, there was a supernatural darkness (Mark 15:33). For three hours from midday, the sun went down at noon; broad daylight turned into the black of night. His execution also took place during a time of feasting—the Passover celebrations were huge. There were lots of people in Jerusalem, it was crowded and meant to be a joyous occasion remembering deliverance from Egypt—yet it became a day of mourning. Luke 23:48 tells us that the crowd who saw Jesus dying on the cross beat their chests and left—a traditional Jewish sign of mourning.
And what exactly happened on that day? The Son of God was being judged. The Son who had done nothing wrong was paying the penalty for the sins of all God’s people. Our sin of greed, our sin of pride, our misuse of power, and our neglect of the poor—Jesus faced all the wrath that God had stored up against us (Romans 3:25). God the Son took the judgment so that we do not have to and in principle that means, if you trust in Jesus Christ, your day of judgment has already come. Your sins have not been forgotten, they have been paid by another.
Whenever we celebrate the Lord’s Supper that is what we remember. We are reminded that our life with God is secure even though wickedness and evil remains in our heart. Our life is secure not because we are perfectly obedient to God’s law, not because we are doing better than the people living around us, but because we are united to Christ through faith. Secure because his righteousness is imputed to us, secure because his blood has atoned for our sin and his body was broken on our behalf.
But this forgiveness from God is not automatically given to all people. We need to turn to God and ask him for it. As we saw in Amos 5:4, we must seek the Lord if we are to live. And that is what God is waiting for. He is waiting for his people to turn to him so that they can be forgiven. In the words of 2 Peter 3:9: the Lord is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
And this patience from God is no small thing. Remember, God hates evil and wickedness. Day by day he sees all the suffering caused by human sin. He sees the murders that take place on the street and in the womb, the scams used to steal from the poor and the vulnerable. Day by day he sees the wickedness of mankind, how the thoughts of his heart are only evil all the time (Genesis 6:4)—but instead of judgment, there is delay. Patience. Another chance for sinners to come to repentance. Another day for the Gospel to be proclaimed so that sinful people might be forgiven. God is patient but he will not wait forever. His patience will come to an end.
9 “And on that day,” declares the Lord GOD, “I will make the sun go down at noon and darken the earth in broad daylight.