Every 'evil work' is already sentenced. 'He that believeth not,' said
Christ, 'is condemned already'; and that is one case of a general
truth. The text writes the sentence as passed, though the execution is
for a time suspended. What is the underlying fact expressed by this
metaphor? God's thorough knowledge of, and displeasure at, every evil.
When one sees vile things done on earth, and no bolt coming out of the
clear sky, it is not easy to believe that all the foulness is known to
God; but His eye reaches further than He wills to stretch His arm. He
sits a silent Onlooker and beholds; the silence does not argue
indifference. The sentence is pronounced, but the execution is
delayed. It is not wholly delayed, for there are consequences which
immediately dog our evil deeds, and are, as it were, premonitions of a
yet more complete penalty. But in the present order of things the
connection between a man's evil-doing and suffering is, on the whole,
slight, obscure, and partial. Evil triumphs; goodness not seldom
suffers. If one thinks for a moment of the manifold evils of the
world, which swathe it, as it were, in an atmosphere of woe--the wars,
the slavery, the oppressions, the private sorrows--and then thinks
that there is a God who lets all these go on from generation to
generation, we seem to be in the presence of a mystery of mysteries.
The Psalmist of old exclaimed in adoring wonder, 'Thy judgments are a
great deep'; but the absence of His judgments seems to open a
profounder abyss into which even the great mountains of His
righteousness appear in danger of falling.