In this brief clip from his teaching series Justification By Faith Alone, R.C. Sproul explains why God doesn't unilaterally forgive everyone.
Transcript
The biggest problem that the human race has is this: God is holy, He's righteous, He's just, and we're not. And so the question of justification boils down to this: How can I as an unjust person have a right relationship with my Creator? A lot of people don't worry too much about that. They assume that God is kind of a celestial bellhop that's ready to answer every one of our requests, and that He has such an infinite mercy that He can just unilaterally forgive everybody of their sins, and He doesn't need any process to take place in order to justify the ungodly. He's God. He can do what He wants to do, so why can’t He just wave His hands and say you’re all redeemed, you’re all forgiven, you’re all saved?
Well, He can’t do that. Let me back up and say He won’t do that because He can’t do that, and He can’t do that because He’s God—because He’s righteous. And the only way He could redeem people away from some process of justification would be for Him to negotiate His own righteousness. And so, as Paul says in Romans, God provides a way of justification through Christ so that God may be both just and the justifier.
