GOD as JUDGE part 2
What about people who never hear about Jesus, will God judge them? How could a good and loving God condemn to hell someone who’s never heard of Jesus?
In my last post, we established that God knows all things and that His judgment is without error everytime. But many would still doubt the fairness of His judgments. Those that do, use the question…
If an unreached native of the Amazon Basin dies without ever getting to know who Jesus Christ is, will he/she be doomed to Hell? Or how about a child?
Let us quickly talk about the child first.
In a nutshell, the Bible gives indications that upon death the Lord looks at a child differently than to an adult. It is in His character that a child (or someone that is mentally child-like) would not be made accountable because of his/her inability to know right from wrong.
However, can any adult really claim that they are without fault? According to the Lord…
“There is no one righteous, not even one… they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Romans 3:10-12)
Ouch! This is not easy to hear, but it is a painful and needed truth. I say ‘needed’ because it is meant to remind us of the great consequences of the SIN* that separates us from God. This same SIN causes us to continually err in our lives until we die. The Bible says, the wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). And dying with unresolved sin leads to judgment (Hebrews 9:27) and eternal damnation (Revelation 21:8). But we are getting ahead of ourselves. Judgment Day is still in the future. Let us get back to the fate of the unreached native of the Amazon Basin.
[* The original Sin of Adam]
Even if the native has not yet heard of Jesus Christ, he/she… at that matter, all human beings… were created in His image (Genesis 1:27). This means that He had built in all of us an inner sense or voice that acts as guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior. He gave us a conscience. When there is temptation, your conscience puts up red flags of warning. And when you don’t heed to your conscience, at the time of judgment, it will be your conscience that will bear witness against you.
Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law. They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them. (Romans 2:14,15).
So, no one can actually say that they are without fault. Thank the Lord for His grace… His undeserved favor… and His mercy without which those who believe would have been doomed.
Johann Quisumbing 