IN ORDER TO JUDGE, GOD MUST BE FULLY HOLY AND RIGHTEOUS

For God to judge us, He must be entirely sinless. Otherwise, He would be unrighteous to punish those who couldn’t have acted otherwise. For us to be morally blameworthy, we must have the ability to act in a way other than we have acted. This means that we have to be more than robots, which also means that we must have some degree of freewill. I think that this is the essence of Paul’s teaching:

·       What if some were unfaithful? Does their faithlessness nullify the faithfulness of God? By no means! Let God be true though every one were a liar, as it is written, “That you may be justified in your words, and prevail when you are judged.” But if our unrighteousness serves to show the righteousness of God, what shall we say? That God is unrighteous to inflict wrath on us? (I speak in a human way.) By no means! For then how could God judge the world? (Romans 3:3-6)

If God is to judge, He must be righteous in His judgments, and this means that we have the ability to be faithful (and confess our sins) or to be unfaithful. We have to be deserving of punishment. This is only possible if we had had some degree of freewill. Paul concluded that, for God to “judge the world,” he would have to be righteous and the world unrighteous. Otherwise, God would violate His holy nature. Even our entire system of justice and punishment depends upon human culpability.

However, a number of verses claim that we cannot choose God on our own, and that,  first, we need to be regenerated. But this is only because we have hardened our hearts against the Truth, a matter of progressive hardening, until we are unable to come to Him:

·       Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen. For this reason God gave them up to dishonorable passions. For their women exchanged natural relations for those that are contrary to nature; and the men likewise gave up natural relations with women and were consumed with passion for one another, men committing shameless acts with men and receiving in themselves the due penalty for their error. And since they did not see fit to acknowledge God, God gave them up to a debased mind to do what ought not to be done.  They were filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless. Though they know God’s righteous decree that those who practice such things deserve to die, they not only do them but give approval to those who practice them. (Romans 1:24-32; 2:1-6)

Because of these truths, James warned us to not blame God (or the Fall, our parents, or even the devil) for our evil desires:

·       Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am being tempted [“enticed”] by God,” for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his OWN desire. (James 1:13-14)

We have to take responsibility for resisting this desire, and we can only do it if we still retain some measure of freewill.