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FAQ # 72
QUESTION 72 : How
is it God said, “my spirit shall not always strive with man” (Gen 6:3)?
The text reads,
“My spirit shall not
always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall
be an hundred and twenty years. There were giants in the earth in those
days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters
of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which
were of old, men of renown. And GOD saw that the wickedness of man was
great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his
heart was only evil continually. And it repented the LORD that he had
made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart” (Gen 6:3-6).
The bible is so sacred
that it has to be rightly divided. Gen 6:3 was not for the righteous,
for Noah himself escaped being the only righteous man God saw (Gen 6:9)
during the time that it was said; and even his family was saved, because
“the promise is unto you, and to your children” (Acts 2:39).
When Adam sinned, God
indirectly made man a promise that he would be redeemed, “And I will put
enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed;
it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen 3:15).
However, at the start
of the interim he saw that man’s heart was getting most wicked, “only
evil continually.” His promise was now looking dim and he repented within
himself that he made man.
He could no long show
mercy or strive with his creation and let them live so wickedly, so he
had to kill them, being just:
“I will destroy man whom I have
created from the face of the earth” (Gen 6:7).
The word “strive” according to the dictionary means “to exert much effort.”
He must have had someone preaching to these people about repentance or
he himself must have gotten involved some how or simply exerted much tolerance
to their behavior.
He then caused it to
rain for the first time and every living creature died, except Noah the
righteous man; and of course his family.
This happens in extreme
cases of sins, like Sodom and Gomorrah and other such places.
Notice that God always avoid killing the righteous. As he said through
the prophet Ezekiel, “Son of man, when the land sinneth against me by
trespassing grievously, then will I stretch out mine hand upon it, and
will break the staff of the bread thereof, and will send famine upon it
and will cut off man and beast from it: though these three men, Noah,
Daniel and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by
their righteousness, saith the Lord God” (Eze 14:13-14). This is a lesson
to us that God will always strive with us and would never kill us, for
we are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. It also serves as a ‘type’
of the church and the rest of humanity: The church escaping judgment and
the rest of the world suffers eternal damnation (Rev 20:15).
Answer Notes: 1.
God cannot strive with man in and
of himself (Gen 3:15); that’s
the purpose for Jesus Christ. Through him, he can now be touched with
the feelings of our infirmities (Heb 4:15); and through the foreknowing
and promise of this he can begin to do so before Christ was born, “the
Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8). It’s through
the promise of Christ why the Israelites survived after Moses, “the LORD
thy God will circumcise thine heart, and the heart of thy seed, to love
the LORD thy God with all thine heart” (Due 30:6). That was the Jews,
but humans on a hold would be utterly consumed by a terrible God if not
from the first sin, from the first man, God promised Christ; and why he
hasn’t wiped us out since then, though there was a great purging through
Noah’s flood. However, now through Christ he can have mercy and expect
us to. He especially will have mercy after he told us to forgive our brother
149 times in one day (Matt 18:22). I personally would hold him to that
verse, because I know God is a being of his word.
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