How Is It Fair?

Read Romans 2:12-16

Hearing and doing go together. If I tell my kids, "Please put away the dishes" and they say, "Ok, got it," then I expect to find the dishwasher started when I come back to the kitchen. But if the food is cementing itself on the plates, and my kids are outside playing together, then what good is it that they heard me? Throughout the Bible, God had this frustration with his people. He would deliver them from oppression, tell them how to live in freedom, and then watch them do the opposite of what he said. Moses delivered God's law to the Israelites only to find them worshipping a golden calf. It did no good for his people to say "We heard what you said" if they were not willing to put it into practice. Over and over and over again, they would hear God but not obey God. My question assumed that people who heard from God had an advantage. But God doesn't just save people because they were lucky enough to hear his voice. We have to respond to his voice. God isn't interested in hearing empty words. He wants us to have God-centered lives. But what about people who never heard? The church father Origen explained that a courtroom trial has accusers, defenders, and witnesses. Paul supplies all three. When we are in the divine courtroom, God is the judge. Who will accuse us? We might think it will be God, but Paul says that it will be our own thoughts. For now, we can keep secret what we really think. But one day, all of that will become public. These secrets will accuse us. Before God, our own thoughts will admit, "I am guilty." They will make a few excuses, "Look what I did right." But a conviction required two witnesses to the crime (Deuteronomy 19:15). Paul names two: our conscience and the law's work on our heart. Nearly everyone knows that it is wrong to murder, betray a friend, or steal. So no one can say, "I never heard what God wanted from me." We all had enough written on our hearts to be held accountable. God doesn't condemn anyone for not responding to a gospel they never heard. He is completely just. God judges each of us according to what we knew. All of us will testify we didn't live up to God's standards or our own. It's safer to ask about how God will judge someone in a remote village. I'd rather go to someone else's trial than contemplate my own. Paul says God judges us according to the good news of Jesus the Savior. So when we are in court, everyone who believes in Jesus can trust that "The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children" (Romans 8:16).