For us to acquire any divine characteristics there must be choice, free will. Who can be rehabilitated that does not want to be? For the one who does not choose to cooperate in "rehabilitation" should you necessarily judge God to be enacting punishment -- perhaps the person who chooses to go against God's command is breaking themselves upon the commandments, so to speak. In a way it's like an ill person going and seeing a doctor (only a supernatural doctor that can diagnose the actual root causes of the problem, not like the doctors we have with us) and being given a prescription which will heal them; then they choose to reject that and suffer.
I think it's more a question of relationship. Does one want one with God or not? Does God want one with us? God shows His love and gives anyone who wishes to the opportunity to acknowledge and respond or to deny and reject. Absent the choice we become as robots, just behaving as we must according to our nature.
Any good (human) relationship that you have requires some faith concerning the future expected behavior of the individual whom you are in relationship with. Don't get me wrong -- I believe that love is never wasted, even if it is not reciprocated, but taking any mutually edifiying relationship that you have -- it is completely necessary for one or both of you to act on faith, to initiate love. God's Son is the greatest "initiator" there is. All His work makes for the oppty of a relationship. Our first "work", if I can be permitted to call it that, is to believe that has been accomplished in Jesus Christ. |
