CRAIG'S LIST #7 of 10. If God is love, why does he send some to hell?

We advertise on CL to share our Testimonies. An example:  “X JW 4 Jesus. Request our story." Someone from Sacrament, CA emailed back: "If God is love, why does he send some to hell?"

MY ANSWER. To answer this you need to know the Christian teaching on God and hell. According to the Bible, God's nature is both perfect justice and perfect love. Both of these are equally powerful, and neither can be compromised. First consider God's justice. I was talking to a non-believer once about his need of salvation, and he said to me, "I trust in God's justice. I don't think that there could be anyone who would be more fair or just than God. I have complete confidence in His decision." Now this is true. God is just. He is totally fair. He has no axe to grind. He is not out to get you. He is the most competent, intelligent, impartial, and fairest judge you will ever have. No one will get a bum decision at God's judgment seat. Every human being can be guaranteed absolute justice.

But this is precisely the problem! For God's justice exposes man's inadequacy. The Bible says that every person has failed to live up to God's moral law and so finds himself guilty before God. The Biblical word for this moral failure is sin. The Bible says that "All persons are under the power of sin. None is righteous; no, not one; all have turned aside, together they have gone wrong. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Rom. 3.10,12,23).

We thus find ourselves under the law of divine justice which is: "You reap what you sow." The Bible says, "Do not be deceived; God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction. The one who sows to please God's Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life" (Gal. 6.7-8). The prophet Ezekiel declared, "The soul that sins shall die" (Ez. 18.4), and the apostle Paul echoes, "The wages of sin is death" (Rom. 6.23). You reap what you sow. This is justice in its purest form. 

The only problem is, nobody measures up! So, if we rely on the justice of God, we're sunk! There is nobody who deserves to go to heaven. Nobody is good enough! So if we depend on God's justice, we've had it. It's all over but the weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Therefore, we must cast ourselves on God's mercy. Even though we are guilty and deserve to die, God still loves us. Sometimes people get the idea that God is a sort of cosmic tyrant up there, out to get us. But this isn't the Christian understanding of God. Listen to what the Bible says, "'Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked?,' says the Lord God, 'And not rather that he should turn from his way and live? For I have no pleasure in the death of anyone,' says the Lord God. 'So turn and live! Say to them, "As I live," says the Lord God, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn back, turn back from your evil ways. For why will you die?"'" (Ez. 18:23,32; 33:11).

Here God literally pleads with people to turn back from their self-destructive course of action and be saved. And in the New Testament it says, "The Lord is not willing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance" (2 Pet. 3.9). "He desires all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth" (1Tim. 2.4).

Thus God finds himself in a kind of dilemma. On the one hand are His justice and holiness, which demand punishment for sin, rightly deserved. On the other hand are God's love and mercy, which demand reconciliation and forgiveness. Both are essential to His nature; neither can be compromised. What is God to do in this dilemma?

The answer is Jesus Christ! He is the fulfillment of God's justice and love. They meet at the cross: the love and the wrath of God. At the cross we see God's love for people and His wrath upon sin.

On the one hand we see God's love. Jesus died in our place. He voluntarily took upon himself the death penalty of sin that we deserve. The Bible says, "In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins" (1Jn. 4.10).

But at the cross we also see God's wrath, as His just judgment is poured out upon sin. Jesus was our substitute. He tasted death for every human being and bore the punishment for every sin. None of us can imagine what he endured. As Olin Curtis has written, "There alone our Lord opens his mind, his heart, his personal consciousness to the whole inflow of the horror of sin, the endless history of it, from the first choice of selfishness on, on to the eternity of hell, the boundless ocean of desolation, he allows wave upon wave to overwhelm his soul." Jesus endured hell for us, so that none of us would have to endure it ourselves. That's why Jesus is the key, and life's supreme question becomes, "What will you do with Jesus the Christ?"

In order to receive forgiveness, we need to place our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior and the Lord of our lives. But if we reject Jesus Christ, then we reject God's mercy and fall back on His justice. And you know where you stand there. If we reject Jesus' offer of forgiveness, then there is simply  no one else to pay the penalty for your sin--except yourself.

Thus, in a sense, God doesn't send anybody to hell. His desire is that everyone be saved, and He pleads with people to come to Him. But if we reject Christ's sacrifice for our sin, then God has no choice but to give us what we deserve. God will not send us to hell--but we will send ourselves. Our eternal destiny thus lies in our own hands. It is a matter of our free choice where we shall spend eternity.

Thank you "Reasonable Faith, Can a loving God send people to hell?" found here.

Craig's List #8 is here.