Can God Unconditionally Honor a Sinner?

[SlowerAndSlower]

My current best understanding for the answer is No, because the whole person would be
honored, and hence the sin would be honored. However, since God’s word is efficacious
(as God made the world), if God were to give even faint praise to sin, then it would no longer
be sin, which would mean that God is not true to himself (a contradiction).

 

[GLam8833]

God did not invent death(Wis. 1:13), so
not EVERYTHING in creation, as we
know it, is of God. It also says in Script-
ure that Christ is “holy, innocent, undefiled,
separated from sinners and exalted above
the heavens” Heb. 7:26 “Who may abide
in Your Tabernacle, who may dwell on Your
Holy Hill?” Ps. 15 gives a thorough list of
WHO God will unconditionally honor!!

 

[thementalwombat]

I’m not sure exactly what you mean by “honor.”

I will say that God loves all of us unconditionally, but he does not love the sinful “parts” of us, because strictly speaking evil and sin aren’t things per se but rather the lack of something, a defect. So just as you cannot love something that doesn’t exist, God cannot love anything sinful since something that is sinful or evil is so in that it lacks something good that should be there. By extension I would say “honor” a part of you that doesn’t exist since as Aquinas notes, evil is a lack of something not something in itself.

I’m not sure if that helps since I’ not sure what specifically you’re referring to. If you’re referring to something like John 12:26 where it says, “The Father will honor whoever serves me,” this is in the future tense and may refer to when the person is in heaven. When we are in heaven we will be without sin or defect, so there would be no difficulty with there would not longer be sin within us.