but it is God who executes judgment, putting down one and lifting up another.
For in the hand of the LORD there is a cup with foaming wine, well mixed, and he pours out from it, and all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs. -Psalm 75:6-8
"The contents of this cup have a different effect upon different characters. To the righteous it is a pleasant cup. Its blooming, sparkling mixture is delicious and inspiring. Not so to the wicked; what is delicious and sustaining to the good is distasteful and pernicious to the evil. Moral character changes subjectively the very nature of things."
Matthew Arnold has somewhere described God “as a stream of tendency that maketh for righteousness.” His meaning, I presume, is that the whole procedure of God in the moral world tends to put down the wrong and to raise and glorify the right. -Homilist.
I'm intrigued by this illustration and analogy---God has a mixed cup for us, some benefit from its contents, others are corrected. Behind it, there's the idea of rewards and punishments for righteousness and wickedness which makes it feel like a works-based response.
In what sense are we "rewarded" for righteous action? Although it's clear that Salvation is not a works-based thing, the Bible teaches the natural consequences of choice and character in other realms.
The LORD is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works. Psalm 145:9
When anarchy is abroad, and tyrants are in power, everything is unloosed, dissolution threatens all things, the solid mountains of government melt as wax; but even then the Lord upholds and sustains the right. “I bear up the pillars of it.” Hence, there is no real cause for fear. -Spurgeon
When the earth totters, and all its inhabitants, it is I who keep steady its pillars. Selah Psalm 75:3
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