Is God fair?
When we were conducting the Leadership Training Course last Saturday,one question raised by the participants was about the fairness of God. Just because a person does not believe in Jesus, he cannot go to heaven no matter how good he lives his life. I myself struggle with the Calvinism teaching on the 'unconditional election' and 'limited atonement'. Did God predestine whom to be saved? Isnt this unfair when we take a first glance at it? And yet in 2 Chronicles 19:7 we read that "...with the Lord our God there is no injustice or partiality or bribery".
Now,lets talk about fairness in more detail. God created men and women after his own image, and gave them a freedom to choose. But they chose to rebel against God. We can blame Adam and Eve for the original sin, but are we any better? Would we also make the same mistake if we were the first person God creates? We were by nature objects of wrath (Eph 2:3). The heart is deceitful above all things, and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jer 17:9) We have all missed the mark of perfection.
The bible says that the wages of sin is death (Rom 6:23) So is it fair if God chooses to do nothing at all and leave us to the path of damnation? I think it is. He created us without blemish or defect but gave us the freedom to choose, and we chose to turn away from Him. And now we have to pay for the consequences of our sins, that is fair!
Here is when grace comes in. By definition, grace is an unmerited favour: God giving us what we dont deserve. If God chooses to save some and not the others, He is still fair because we have already established that God is fair even if He chooses to fold his arms and do nothing bout our salvation.
I know this is hard to digest on our human level. But if we were to question God's fairness, let me just say that it is COMPLETELY UNFAIR for Jesus to die for our sins, and yet he chose to do it.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me. I was once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see. Lets ponder over this amazing grace as Easter approaches.
7 Comments:
Good post!
Indeed, it is bad theology to think that we don't make the cut BECAUSE we do not believe in Jesus.
Our separation from God is essentially caused by our sins not by Jesus.
Read Dave's take on this:
To Hell and Back
It is also interesting to note that Adam and Eve did not have the sinful nature before the Fall. In the final analysis, sin is irrational and does not make sense.
It is Jesus, the second Adam, who restored our fallen humanity. He is the solution, never the problem... the way, the truth and the life.
Truly, amazing grace...
One of the questions that I've never gotten a satisfied answer is this. How did adam choose to sin in the first place? To be able to choose, one must have an inclination towards good or bad. If Adam had a good inclination, he wouldn't have chosen to sin and we would have no problem with that. But what if Adam had an evil inclination? Then, the sin would fall back on God, not Adam. But, again, Adam & Eve were created good and they fell because they chose to sin. So, where did the evil inclination come from? If it comes from the fall of Satan, the question is not answered, but instead now we have to ask how did Satan choose to sin? Well, let's say that Adam had a neutral moral disposition. That means he has no inclination towards good or evil. So, without inclination/desire, the will has no power to make a choice. Even if Adam could make a choice, the choice would be arbitrary. If would be like an accident with no moral responsibility attached. Adam cannot be blamed because he was ignorant of his sin. This question was in the book I read, written by R.C.Sproul, "The Reason To Believe."
Wow bro, you are asking very tough questions! But they are good questions!
Here, we must distinguish between free-will and human nature.
What you call the 'inclination towards good or bad' is what we can call the human nature.
Free-will is our ability to choose good and evil according to our human nature (or what you call our moral disposition).
RC Sproul would have argued that before the Fall, our human nature untainted with sin has:
1. the ability to sin
2. the ability not to sin
However, when the Fall took place, humanity lost ability (2) but still has ability (1). In other words, we have
1. the ability to sin
2. the non-ability not to sin
Before the Fall Adam has a "good inclination" (his human nature is not tainted with sin) but it didn't mean that he couldn't choose sin.
He could have chosen NOT to sin (option 2) but he did not. Why? The final analysis would be that he made an irrational choice.
But with the Fall, we lost the ability to choose NOT to sin. Yes, we have the "evil inclination" (our human nature is tainted with sin) but this "evil inclination" that caused us to make the choice to sin does not fall back on God because it is still OUR choice.
Our choice is still genuine but it is tainted by who we are and who we have become as a result of sin. It is still us making real choices, but a sinful us making sinful choices.
That is why we are still morally responsible for the choices we make and God still holds us accountable.
That is why when Jesus Christ came to restore fallen humanity, he came to give us a NEW nature to replace our sinful nature.
Of course the interesting question is that, when we are in union with Christ in His second coming, will we still have the ability to sin (1) or not? But that is out of the scope of our discussion for now.
Tell me what you think.
:) Interesting discussions! Gerstner, Sproul's sifu, once said tat "how can a good creature sin?" is one of two questions that he could never answer.
Maybe it's one of those 'mysteries' we always hear about...heeheh.. But I find this post quite helpful Augustine on the Problem of Evil
we do know tat Adam is created good, but not infallible. He is able to sin and able not to sin. But where did the first evil desire come from?
imho augustine observe that evil is not a 'thing' but a 'turning' of the will from wat the Supreme Good to a lesser good. i.e. loving one own self is not wrong but pride is sin as we give the love due to God who is supremely valuable to ourselves which is a lesser good (though not evil in itself).
But wat caused this turning? Augustine sez "one should not try to look for an efficient cause for a wrong choice. it is not a matter of eficiency but of DEFICIENCY, the evil will itself is not effective but defective... To try to discover the causes of such defection... is like trying to see darkness or to hear silence. Yet we are familiar w darkness and silence, and we can only be aware of them via eyes and ears but this is not by PERCEPTION but by absence of perception"... (more on that in City Of God Chapter7-8, Book 12)
uncle, why no updates?
hey bro....i'm consumed with work, very busy this sem....lack motivation to write, hehe.
I cannot believe that Clarence-sama shares the EXACT same question I had many years ago. I even actually posed the same question to my pastor a few years back, but had not gotten a satisfactory answer. I think it's just one of those questions which will only see the light of day at the End. Personally, I think we have blamed Adam and the snake for Man's Fall too much, maybe too much an influence of Augustinian thought (original sin). Sometimes, we get too caught up with it and it becomes "generation sin" which I totally disagree. Why did Adam, in all its created perfection (before the Fall, i.e. no sin in him), enjoying the ultimate freedom with God walking with him in the Garden of Eden, chose to disobey God? This is something which I simply cannot understand. If he in such a perfect world, can still chose to disobey God, what chance do we sinners who live in a sinful world have against all odds? If sin only truly entered into this world thru' Adam's first sin (as suggested in Romans), then may I ask where did Adam's first sin come from, since before Adam there was no sin? the snake? ;p
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