It makes sense that God would command those who are righteous to go on being righteous, but here he plainly says that those who do wrong and are “filthy” should go ahead and keep on living it up. Why would he do this?
The
answer may be found in Matthew 13:24-30, 36-43, where Christ teaches the
Parable of the Wheat and the Tares.
In
the story, a farmer sows wheat in his field, and later an enemy comes and sows
tares in along with the wheat (tares are a kind of weed that closely resembles
wheat but produces nothing good). Eventually, the farmer’s servants tell him
that they have found tares among the wheat, and they ask if they should go
ahead and pull them up. The farmer tells them not to, “for while you are
gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them. Allow both to grow
together until the harvest; and in the time of the harvest I will say to the
reapers, ‘First gather up the tares and bind them in bundles to burn them up;
but gather the wheat into my barn.’”
Jesus
went on to explain this as follows:
And He said, “The one who sows the good seed is the Son of Man, and the field is the world; and as for the good seed, these are the sons of the kingdom; and the tares are the sons of the evil one; and the enemy who sowed them is the devil, and the harvest is the end of the age; and the reapers are angels. So just as the tares are gathered up and burned with fire, so shall it be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all stumbling blocks, and those who commit lawlessness, and will throw them into the furnace of fire...”
One
of the reasons why God tolerates evil in the world as he does if that he is
allowing the wheat and the tares to grow side by side until the harvest comes.
Why? Because he values the wheat so much that he does not want to lose any of
it, and so he tolerates the presence of the tares. God is constantly in the
process of refining his people as they cooperate with his Spirit, with the end
result being that they will come to resemble Christ in their character.
This
is a maturing process that goes on in a manner similar to how wheat grows. The
wheat is not useful for much until it is fully mature, so God waits patiently
during that maturing process. Until it reach full maturity, it can be difficult
to distinguish the wheat from the tares—difficult enough apparently that God
will not even permit angels to make this judgment call until the harvest time
has fully come. Meanwhile, the tares are also ripening, and in their final,
mature state they are fully distinguishable from the wheat.
In
effect, Revelation 22:1 is the farmer speaking to the crops growing in his
field: “Keep on ripening until the harvest. Let the wheat continue to mature and
distinguish itself from the tares. And let the tares also continue to mature
and distinguish themselves from the wheat.”
We
are living in one of the most permissive ages in human history. Many social
conventions that once held behavior in check are falling to the wayside. To a
degree, this is good. For example, a century ago anyone who clapped or laughed
in church would have been called down. Society has become less rigid and
Pharisaical, and there is more genuine equality and opportunity than there has
ever been. On the other hand, this permissiveness has also resulted in a
torrential flood of social and moral ills that are a truly awful and
frightening thing to behold. In a nutshell, people are more themselves than
they have ever before been in our culture, both for good and for evil. No
longer restrained by social conventions, we are outing ourselves for what we
truly are.
* All scripture references are taken from the NASB.
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