The God Questions: #2

If God is just and fair, how can he send people that have lived their life right and followed their conscience but have never heard of him to Hell?

Thank you for asking this question. This is a question that many have and may be afraid to ask. We have to first understand what it means to say God is just and fair. Biblically, when we are speaking of the character of God, justice and fairness do not mean the same thing. Justice equated to fairness may be our definition of justice, but the Biblical definition of justice in relation to the character of God equates His justice with righteousness, which means “conformity to the appropriate norm or standard”. This means that God will be true to His nature and conform to His standard of perfection in every situation. This means His judgment will always be perfect.

The next thing we have to understand is the holiness of God. God is both ontologically holy (set apart or distinct from all created essence) and ethically holy, which means He is separate from everything sinful or morally evil.

The next thing to note is that if someone has truly lived their life right, and is free from sin they will not be sent to hell. The reality is that “all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23) If someone has sinned, which means breaking even one of the Ten Commandments, after the age of accountability, they are guilty before God.

This means that God has created human beings to comprehend that when they break a commandment they are sinning against God. Every person is born with inner morality, a sense of right and wrong, so no one is with excuse for sinning. A person’s conscience will naturally reveal their guilt, even if the person is willfully ignoring it. The only exceptions are people not yet of the age of accountability or of limited mental capacity or function.

God has set up two systems upon which it is possible to gain entry into heaven: the law system and the grace system. Under the law system a person must live a perfect life, never breaking any commandment, or pay the penalty, which is hell. Under the grace system a person can break the commands and escape the penalty by the substitutionary atonement of Jesus Christ, who lived a perfect life and paid the penalty for our sin.

One side of God’s moral nature is His wrath towards sin, in which Jesus was the propitiation (an offering that turns away wrath). Thankfully for us, the other side of God’s moral nature is love. Through His love He has given us a way to escape the penalty for our sin, which is only through salvation in Jesus Christ. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”

So while it seems that God is unfair, we are judging by our own imperfect standard of fairness. God actually proves to be more than fair in providing us a way to escape the penalty for our sin, even though we have broken His commandments and are fully deserving of His wrath.