“I will restore to you the years that the locust hath eaten, the canker
worm and the caterpillar and the palmer worm, my great army, which I sent
among you” (Joel ii. 25).
A friend said to me once: “I have got to reap what I sowed, for God has
said: ‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.’ Then why don’t
you apply this in the spiritual world, and compel the sinner to pay the
penalty of his sins?”
Christ has borne this penalty, and the same Christ has borne the natural
penalties, too, and delivered us out of condemnation in every sense.
Physical sufferings come to us, but not under the law of retribution, but
only as a Divine discipline. Every penalty has been fulfilled by Christ
and every law satisfied, and so far as we can have risen with Him into the
plane of spiritual and eternal life, we are lifted above the mere realm of
law, and we enter into the full effects of His complete satisfaction of
every claim against us. So it is true that even the wreck that sin has
brought upon our physical and temporal life is removed by His great
atonement, and the promise is made real to us, “I will restore to you the
years that the locust hath eaten.”