Of course Paul puts it this way to alarm us and to bring us to our senses. Who would treasure up to themselves something as terrible as the wrath of God? ‘Look what you are doing’, says the apostle. But we do know what we are doing, because our conscience is speaking to us about it. However, we choose to go on regardless, because we are determined to follow the path of sin, and we shut our eyes to the cost.
My memory goes back to school days in the days of corporal punishment and the different ways it was carried out. Boys will be boys nevertheless, and there were those who would do their utmost to provoke the master, teaching the class. In this particular school there was a system, and if a master wished to administer the cane, he would send the boy to the administration to get the punishment book, and the boy would bring it haplessly back to the classroom, and it would be on the teacher's desk. He would solemnly write the reason of the sentence that he was going to administer, and then he would cane the boy. Well, there was a classics master who was on the verge of retirement, a gentle old man, and he was very lenient, very kindly, very helpful when you didn't understand. But there was a boy there this day who was bent on baiting him with impudent questions which carryied a taunt of some kind, and he went on until others in the class were saying, ‘Give it up. Stop. You are going too far.’ But he persisted. This teacher had never sent for the punishment book. What would he do? Eventually, he stopped – a solemn moment, long pause. Surely, he can't be sending for the book; he never does. At the moment in which any other master would have exploded, and there would have been a torrent of furious words, and the book sent for, he just said, quietly, ‘Boy,’ – naming him – ‘go and get the punishment book.’ Well, it was gently said, and the boy thought, this is not the end. He began to backtrack and apologise. But the words came again, ‘Boy, go and get the punishment book.’ And looking rather foolish, he stumbled off out of the room to get the book. You had to do that. The greatest offence you could commit was not to get that book when commanded. Immediately he had gone, the master said to another boy, ‘Go and get Mr. So-and-so, and tell him I need his assistance.’ There must have been some arrangement between these two teachers, because with alacrity this other master appeared. He was one of the sports coaches, about seven feet tall!, not the wizened, small, gentle classics teacher, and he brought his cane with him. The boy came back and found himself confronted by quite a different person as his lictor to administer his six strokes while bent across a chair, and he would have remembered that for many, many years. Provocation, baiting, building it up, going too far. Is that what we do with Almighty God? And the too-far-moment will come, and your last breath will be your call to get the book, and it will be too late.