Yea, I agree with everything you said here. What you are probably not aware of is how this motive thing got started. Once you see that I think you'll see the sense in my line of argument.
I know the hearts of men are only evil continually.
But this is about God and WHY God cannot sin.
The ultimate answer is this: sin is doing something with an improper motive. God ultimately only ever has the highest of motives, his own Glory, for all that he does. Therefore he cannot sin.
This is not about the motives of men which you and I agree are ALWAYS evil.
This is about what makes a sin a sin.
This is the very reason that EVERYTHING that unregenerate men do is a sin. Even the PLOWING of the wicked is sin because sin is all about motive.
And what is God's motives to be judged by? God cannot sin because He is God. Against whom does He sin? Against what?
I was giving you the benefit of the doubt, but now I can't say I know what you were meaning to say.
When speaking of God, we are speaking of the One Who is His own reason for existence. For us, our existence is in Him,
in Him we live and move and have our being. But God lives and moves and has His being in Himself. He is His own beginning and end.
The Law is bigger than we are, and exists apart from us, but not so of God. The Law is not something that He lives by. He IS the Law—the Word. And He cannot deny Himself. It is impossible for God to lie.
For kicks and grins, let's say that God could change. That at one time (though time does not exist outside this physical universe) for uncounted eons bearing false witness against one's neighbor was wrong, and the next it wasn't. How would we know? Because God is eternal, the change is eternal as well, and it was never wrong.
This sounds foolish, and it is, but that is the foolishness of thinking that somehow morality is something that is bigger than God, and that He can be judged thereby. And that spawns the the comical supposition that God had to deliver Christ to murderers to escape culpability. :laugh: (Sounds lawyerly. No wonder Christ pronounced a woe on lawyers.)
God cannot sin because He is God. And we, by virtue of rebirth are partakers of the divine nature, and we cannot sin,
though it doth not yet appear. But that's a topic for another thread.
We need make no apology for God. Whatever He does is righteous. Even if He created sin. Who are we to judge Him for that? If it seems unrighteous, the problem isn't God, but our perception, because we know that it is impossible for God to sin.
But to the noncalvinist, God is brought down and made into an image of man, and man is elevated to godhood, and thinks himself a competent judge of God—a precarious position in which to be.
Motives? We can judge acts of men thereby, but not acts of God.
