WHAT IS THE SCRIPTURE’S PERSPECTIVE ON THOSE WHO DO NOT KNOW GOD?

We all know people who seem to really have it all together.  They’re on top of their schedules – all the time?  Their jobs are going well, their children are well-mannered, and everyone in the neighborhood likes them.  But they don’t know God. They may be very moral people, but they don’t know God.  What does the Scripture say about such people?

In Psalm 1:1-3, the blessed man is described as one who avoids ungodly counsel, standing in sin’s way, or mocking God.  Rather, he delights in God’s word, and meditates on it constantly.  As a result, he becomes all God wants him to be.

Verse 4 stands in stark contrast to verses 1-3: “The wicked are not so, but they are like chaff that the wind drives away.”  The Hebrew word order puts the “not so” right up front – “Not so the wicked.”  The wicked are not at all like the righteous, and the psalmist couldn’t have stated it any more strongly.  The righteous resist sin; the wicked crave it.  The righteous meditate on God’s word.  The wicked have no time for it.

The psalmist compares the wicked to chaff.  In biblical times, and still in parts of the world today, a threshing floor was located on top of a hill so that as harvesters tossed their grain stalks into the air with pitchforks, the heavier grain would fall to the floor and the lighter rest of the stalk would blow away in the wind.  What blows away is the chaff, and this is what the wicked are compared to.

Most unbelievers do not understand that this is how God views their lives.  They may feel like they have their lives all together.  This is especially true if  they are making money and climbing the corporate ladder.  Perhaps they have a nice house and two nice cars, and they are doing well in the world.  Yet their lives have little lasting substance.

I am convinced that the psalmist didn’t write this psalm so the righteous could laugh at the wicked and say, “Ha, ha, ha!  God’s on our side and not on yours!”  Rather, he wrote this psalm to encourage the righteous that God does know His own children, and their eternal foundation is secure.  But he also wrote this psalm to remind us that those who are without God are living lives of little eternal weight.

Dr. Bryan Beyer
Dean of CIU's College of Arts and Sciences