This is a very subtle point that undergirds Alma’s extraordinary explanation of God’s justice and mercy that runs throughout Alma 42. Why is the granting of time to repent so essential? Let’s suppose that you commit a sin two minutes from now. If justice were the only virtue that God had, what would prevent God from punishing you for that sin, for allowing the full consequences of that transgression, to be felt in your life immediately? Indeed, if He is just, what justifies any delay in the imposition of that penalty? In our law, we have the concept of due process, and we give notice, and we give people time to gather their witnesses, to think about their arguments, and let them ponder over the consequences of the possible verdicts. Judges need time to hear all the arguments, read the law, and consider all the factors before issuing a judgment or verdict. But God does not need to gather any more evidence against us. He knows everything about our case already. And God does not need to study the law and wonder about the proper imposition of consequences in this particular case. He always judges rightly, and He does not need to delay, to double-check for mistakes or anything that has been overlooked. What is there, then, that stops Him from being perfectly just in acting right now? The answer is mercy. But He must also be merciful, since He perfectly embodies all virtues, and mercy is a virtue, and so He mercifully allows time for us to repent.
Of course, you cannot repent until you have committed sin, and if God were to immediately punish us the instant we sinned, there would be no chance at all to learn, no meaningful opportunity for choice and progression, let alone any need for or purpose to the law of repentance. Alma explicitly connected the granting of this probationary time with the concept of mercy (Alma 42:23). It is the mercy of God that stands in the way of the sword of justice falling upon us immediately.
Yet, mercy cannot rob justice. And so, eventually, in its appointed time, justice will be met because God must be just. Thus He is both merciful and just, and therefore a perfect God in every sense.
In the 2007 film The Bucket List, a survey asked, “Would you like to know how much more time you have before you die?” In the movie, ninety-nine percent of the people in the survey said, “No, I would rather not know.” This film is about two people who are dying of cancer. They know their death is imminent, and the question is, how are they going to respond to it? Perhaps we do not like to think about the fact that we will die. We would rather not know whether we have 32 years or 32 days left, because we just do not like to confront the inevitability of our mortality. But in reality, there is a time allotted. God through His mercy has given us some amount of time, and we need to be sure to use that time for repentance.