Many people believe that because God is good, He will forgive everyone, and let all sinners into Heaven. But they misunderstand His good­ness. When Moses once asked to see God’s glory, God told him that he couldn’t see Him and live. Moses would instantly die if he looked upon God. Consider this:

[God] said, I will make all my goodness pass before you...And it shall come to pass, while my glory passes by, that I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and will cov­er you with my hand while I pass by.

Notice that all of God’s glory was displayed in His “goodness.” The goodness of God would have killed Moses instantly because of his personal sinfulness. The fire of God’s goodness would have consumed him, like a cup of water dropped onto the surface of the sun. The only way any of us can stand in the presence of God is to be pure in heart. Jesus said, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.” But as we’ve seen by looking at the Law, not a single one of us is “pure in heart.”

These are extremely fearful thoughts, be­cause the God we are speaking about is nothing like the commonly accepted image. He is not a benevolent Father-figure, who is happily smiling upon sinful humanity.

In the midst of these frightening thoughts, remember to let fear work for you. The fear of God is the healthiest fear you can have. The Bible calls it “the beginning of wisdom.”

Again, your knowledge of God’s Law should help you to see that you have a life-threatening dilemma: a huge problem of God’s wrath (His justifiable anger) against your personal sins. The just penalty for sin—breaking even one Law—is death, and eternity in Hell. But you haven’t broken just one Law. Like the rest of us, you’ve no doubt broken all these laws, countless times each. What kind of anger do you think a judge is justified in having toward a criminal guilty of breaking the law thousands of times?

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