DETERRENT!

There is an aged and wrinkled and water-damaged sign posted on one of the walls of the quadrangle in King’s College at the University of Aberdeen (King’s is the HQ of the Department of Divinity and Religious Studies at ye olde university). The notice spells out dire consequences for students caught violating the norms proper to the decorum of that venerable institution. And, yes, the sign belongs to those days of shillings and pence—thus making the sign potentially as old as 1066 (when the pound was divided into 20 shillings = 240 pence = 960 farthings), but more likely as recent as 1971 (when the pound was decimalized into 100 pence).

At any rate, the sign is intended to act as a deterrent. Those monies levied as fines upon unthinking miscreants would, one assumes (and hopes), prevent any future felonies of this sort.

Even God doesn’t hesitate to apply deterrents to keep His children upon the straight and narrow.

The Book of Hebrews talks extensively about God’s discipline.

“My son, do not regard lightly
the discipline of the Lord,
nor faint when you are
reproved by Him;
for those whom the Lord loves
He disciplines, and He scourges
every son whom He receives.”
It is for discipline that you endure;
God deals with you as with children;
for what child is there
whom his father does not discipline?
… He disciplines us for our good,
so that we may share His holiness.
All discipline for the moment
seems not to be joyful, but sorrowful;
yet to those who have been trained by it,
afterwards it yields
the peaceful fruit of righteousness.
Hebrews 12:5–7, 10–11

That pattern has been integral to biblical history, ever since the warning to Adam and Eve.

The LORD God
commanded the man, saying,
“From any tree of the garden
you may eat freely; but from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil
you shall not eat,
for in the day that you eat from it
you will surely die.”
Genesis 2:16–17

And such deterrents have persisted all the way to warnings of eternal death, away from the presence of God who alone is Life—serious warnings for those who don’t find salvation in Jesus Christ.

For God so loved the world,
that He gave His only begotten Son,
that whoever believes in Him
shall not perish, but have eternal life.
John 3:16

Nothing wrong with deterrents. They are quite efficient. Like those promulgated by civic governments to induce good behavior of their citizens.

[Governmental authority]
is a minister of God to you for good.
But if you do what is evil, be afraid;
for it does not
bear the sword for nothing;
for it is a minister of God,
an avenger who brings wrath
on the one who practices evil.
Romans 13:4

And like those deterrents imposed by parents upon their children to promote obedience.

Do not hold back discipline
from the child.
Proverbs 23:13

God, the ultimate authority, greater than any parent or any ruler, chooses to work the same way. He, too, announces discipline to correct wayward ones, to induce them to walk in His ways.

For the commandment is a lamp
and the teaching is light;
And reproofs for discipline
are the way of life.
Proverbs 6:23

And so we reproved ones accept discipline as a mark of our Father’s love and of His desire that we be godly and wise. For our own good

… accept discipline,
That you may be wise
the rest of your days.
Proverbs 19:20

Let God’s deterrents deter us.