God’s Scales of Justice Are Not Our Scales

If we were to lay before our eyes every thing we have done in life up to this very moment, what would we see? Almost certainly we would see a mixed bag of things we have thought, said, done, and failed to do. Some of these things we would be truly ashamed of while other things we would consider to be our crowning achievements. No matter who we are, however, there will be good acts and bad acts in that spectrum of things we have done in life. Many people measure themselves by the number and quality of their good actions versus the number and severity of their evil deeds. We might find solace if there are many more good things done than bad acts committed, we might think that all is well with me if the scales tip to the side of good instead of evil. Or if we have done fewer good things than bad, we might go into denial as we all are capable of doing.

But is this how God measures us? Is it a matter of our good acts outweighing our wicked acts? The teaching of the prophet Ezekiel tells us otherwise: “When someone virtuous turns away from virtue to commit iniquity, and dies, it is because of the iniquity he committed that he must die” (Ez 18:26). It does not say that when a virtuous man’s evil deeds outweigh his good ones, then he must die. Ezekiel’s teaching does not say that when a wicked man’s good deeds outweigh his evil acts, he will live. We are prone to say that this is not fair. How could it be fair for a man to have eighty years of virtuous living only to succumb to vice at the end of his life and have all of those years of virtue count for nothing? Or more significantly, if someone has lived eighty years of utter wickedness and then repents at the end of his life, this hardly seems fair.

But with God, it is not a matter of fairness. It is not a matter of the scales tipping one way or the other over a lifetime. It is a matter of the state of our soul, whether or not we are in God’s good graces. We have to understand that we do not earn God’s friendship, but it is an unmerited gift that we can accept or reject, that we can retain or throw away. Likewise, we have to understand the difference between doing good and doing evil. We are never ever justified in doing anything wrong. In the same way, we are always obliged to do good. It is our duty to do good, and we should never see doing good as something extra, something optional, something meritorious, something extraordinary, or something that is above and beyond the call of duty.

Thus we should never see our good acts somehow balancing or canceling out our bad acts as if they were put in opposite sides of a scale. God desires that we have all of our acts on the good side of the scale and none of our acts on the evil side. And yet it still strikes us as unfair when God judges the virtuous man falling into sin or the wicked man repenting. But imagine if it were a matter of balancing our good acts and bad acts so that the good outweighed the bad? How would it be possible for the man who has led a wicked life to ever balance the scales? He’d have to do a lifetime of good things to overcome the bad he has done, which would be impossible. Indeed, what good thing(s) could an adulterer or a murderer do to outweigh the enormous gravity of those sins?

More importantly, if we understand that we have a duty to do good, our good acts can’t balance or cancel out our bad acts. Thus, God’s way is not unfair at all, it is profoundly merciful because all the good that we do can’t possibly make up for the bad, and yet God gives us a way of making things right with Him. It is repentance that sets the forgiven man apart from those who rely upon their own justice. The question we must each ask ourselves is whether or not we rely upon God’s mercy through repentance or upon our own merits. Self-reliance is a fools errand given that we will never be righteous apart from God’s grace and mercy.

So let us not consider God’s ways unfair. Instead, we need to see that His way is most merciful and infinitely generous. If we have to see things in terms of a scale tipping one way or another, let us see that God puts His thumb on good side of the scale for those who repent, and without repentance, the scales will never tip to the side of good because our good deeds, no matter how numerous, have no way of outweighing our evil deeds.

—Fr Booth