ARTICLE XIII.
PROBATION, JUDGMENT, AND RETRIBUTION

§ 51. We often hear it said that this life is a state of probation; but we believe it to resemble rather a school, where we are to be educated for a better and higher life hereafter. The trials and sorrows of this life are a wholesome discipline, meant to unfold and strengthen the powers of the soul. We are to learn here the difference between right and wrong, between truth and error, learn to form habits of goodness, learn to love and trust God, learn to live with our fellow humans as family members. To do this, we must often examine and prove ourselves and thus find out our strength and our weakness. In this sense, life can be said to be a period of probation. God does not need to prove us to find out what we are. Indeed, “all things are naked and openly exposed to the eyes of him with whom we have an accounting” (Heb. 4:13). But God delights in seeing us better ourselves.

§ 52. We expect forgiveness of our sins only from God. However, God is a patient, loving Parent, who does not reject us because of our evil, but gives us time and the possibility to reform and improve ourselves. This is the forgiveness about which Jesus taught us (Mark 2:15-17; John 8:3-11). We can expect forgiveness of our sins by God if we sincerely repent, turn away from our sins, and daily strengthen ourselves in love and goodness (2 Pet. 3:9).

§ 53. Our conscience demands a Divine judgment on all human conduct and character, not so much that the good shall be rewarded and the wicked punished, but that goodness, which has been misunderstood, shall be justified, and that wickedness, which has passed for goodness, shall be exposed, that wrongs shall be righted, and that men shall see the justice of God. The judgments to come, like the judgments of this life, may be different for each individual person. The “Day of Judgment” arrives when anyone comes to know himself as he really is and is seen by others in his true character. It is necessary for a person's own moral progress that he shall be undeceived if he is deceiving himself. But the more a person is able to see his sin here and is ready to confess it and to repent of it, the less he makes the judgments of the future life necessary for him. Therefore it is said, “If we would judge ourselves we should not be judged” (1 Cor. 11:31), and “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). In John 5:22, it is said, “The Father judges no man, but has committed all judgment to the Son.” Elsewhere Christ says, “I judge no man” (John 8:15). These passages are clarified by the saying of Jesus, “The word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day” (John 12:48). The truth that Christ taught is to be our standard, and by it we shall be judged. The essential thing in the judgment to come is the manifestation of truth to every man's conscience in the sight of God, to see ourselves as we are, and God as God is.

§ 54. God’s justice is the justice of a good being, supremely benevolent. All punishment is intended to reform us and to do us good. This principle of the Divine government is expressed in Heb. 12:10, where it is said that the Father of spirits chastens us “for our profit, that we might be partakers of his holiness.” Unitarian Christians understand this to mean that the Divine system of justice is designed, not simply to give people what they deserve, but to incite them to be good and benevolent, as God is. God's justice has the happiness of the creation as its end, because it understands that virtue leads to happiness, and it punishes for this end alone. Unitarians believe that future retribution comes from the operation of the same laws that produce retribution here. By the everlasting principles of Divine Providence, right-doing tends to moral health, peace, and spiritual growth; wrong-doing to moral disease and suffering. These laws are beneficent in their operation in this world and in all worlds. God's mercy plays a role in these matters too, but it does not work at odds with justice. It is not a blind instinctive compassion, which forgives without regard to the interests of virtue. This would be incompatible with enlightened benevolence. In other words, God’s justice and mercy are intimate friends, always at peace, always in harmony, reflecting the same spirit, and working for the same end. God's mercy has a regard to character as much as his justice does. It strongly desires the happiness of the unrighteous, but only through their repentance. It defers punishment and suffers long that the sinner may return to his or her duty (2 Pet. 3:9).