God and hell and justice

There is a common misconception that many people have about God and his character and justice: that a loving God would not send people to hell.

This common false belief arises from mistaken conceptions about its three component parts: wrong understandings about (1) love, (2) God, and (3) hell or true justice.

There is a common misconception that love would never do anything that causes pain or hurt to another person. Such a view is naive, immature, and unrealistic. For there are times when the most loving thing that can be done does cause pain. But such pain is temporary and necessary to prevent worse pain in the future. That is what discipline is all about.

"No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it" ((Heb. 12:11).

C. S. Lewis gives the example of having to push a thorn farther into the flesh, thus causing more pain, in order to disengage the barb so that it can be pulled out altogether. Some lesser pain now must be endured to escape worse pain later. Many other such examples could be given. All good parents are familiar with this principle, for they see it in operation daily as they raise their children. This correspondence is stated thus in Scripture:

"We have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it" (Heb. 12:9).

So it is good and necessary, at times, that true love cause some lesser pain now in order to prevent much worse pain in the future. All cancer surgery is illustrative of this principle as well, for unless such painful surgery is tolerated now, death results. Yet no one criticizes the physician for causing this pain; in fact, he is looked to as the one who can prevent a much worse outcome if the surgery is not performed.

The same principle holds regarding the ultimate pain of hell. God, like a surgeon dedicated to saving people's lives, or like a father who deeply loves his child, has done everything possible to prevent his child from going there, yet he is criticized for allowing this to happen. Why do we applaud our earthly fathers in this, but not our heavenly father?

"How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!" (Heb. 12:9).

Those who say that a loving God, who is our heavenly Father and Father of our spirits, would not send anyone to hell refuse to submit to this Father and his ways and thus dishonor him. Therefore, to them God says:

"If I am a father, where is the honor due me?" (Mal. 1:6).

We dare not substitute our own ideas of what love is and what God should be like in the place of their true nature. For in so doing, we create a false god in our own image:

"Do men make their own gods? Yes, but they are not gods!" (Jer. 16:20).

No wonder that so many live empty lives, seeking fulfillment and love but not finding it, and not able to make any sense of the evil they see in the world and wrongly seeing God as unloving. Such frustration comes to them and fills their lives because of faulty perceptions and misconceptions about love and God and hell. They have created idols of false love and false gods for themselves, instead of submitting to the one true God who is love (1 Jn. 4:16).

Notice that the Scripture quoted previously that tells us to submit to God's discipline is the same Scripture that ends with the promise that if we do thus submit, we will live. It is so important to realize this that it is quoted again below:

"How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live!" (Heb. 12:9).

Not only is this a promise, it is also a warning, though not stated directly but implied. The warning is that to not do what it calls for--submitting to God's sometimes painful discipline--will result in the opposite of the promise. The promise is that submission to discipline brings life. Therefore, the opposite must be true as well: Refusal to submit to the discipline of God will result in the opposite of life, death.

This whole issue is quite literally a matter of life and death. These two always stand in opposition to each other, and we have a choice as to which we shall receive. It is up to us. This is the awesome nature of free will. God has given us this most precious gift.

"I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life" (Dt. 30:19,20).

Notice how all of the crucial things discussed so far regarding this issue are included in this one passage: choice, life, death, submission, love--and the consequences for our choice. Notice also that this passage from Deuteronomy, like the one quoted twice earlier, from Hebrews, places the onus on us, not God. In both instances, it is what we do--and the choice that we make--that decides the matter, that is, the consequences that follow as a natural result of the choice that we make.

Those who hold the mistaken belief that a loving God would not send people to hell completely fail to understand the key principle of cause and effect that operates in this area; they have not discerned correctly the true cause of the effect of a person going to hell: that the cause is his wrong choice, of choosing self or anything else other than God, and that the effect just follows naturally from that cause.

God is not a vindictive, cruel oppressor who gleefully tosses people into hell because they don't do what he says, but a loving Father who weeps when people willfully disobey him and choose death over life in his Son. That Son wept over such rejection of God's free offer of escape from hell:

"As he approached Jerusalem and saw the city, he wept over it, and said, 'If you, even you, had only known on this day what would bring you peace--but now it is hidden from your eyes . . . you did not recognize the time of God's coming to you'" (Lk. 19:41,42,44).

Jesus wept because a whole city made the wrong choice. His Father weeps for a whole world for the same reason, that it has chosen to go its own way. For God does not want anyone to go to hell:

"For I take no pleasure in the death of anyone, declares the Sovereign Lord. Repent and live!" (Ez. 18:32).

Because he is love, God has done everything possible to save all from hell.

"His divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires" (2 Ptr. 1:3,4).

"I will sing for the one I love a song about his vineyard: My loved one had a vineyard on a fertile hillside. He dug it up and cleared it of stones and planted it with the choicest vines. He built a watchtower in it and cut out a winepress as well. Then he looked for a crop of good grapes, but it yielded only bad fruit.

Now you dwellers in Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge between me and my vineyard. What more could have been done for my vineyard than I have done for it? When I looked for good grapes, why did it yield only bad?" (Is. 5:1-4).

What more could God have done to save anyone from hell? He gave his only begotten Son for that very purpose (Jn. 3:16). All one has to do to receive the benefits of the Son's crucifixion on the cross is to accept that sacrifice as being able to make him acceptable in God's eyes and thus escape being sent to hell. There is no pain at all in doing this, not even the pain of discipline or surgery or any other pain. It is only acceptance of a free gift. But some are unwilling to do even this. God gives everything, even his most precious, beloved Son, to die in our place. Yet some refuse to accept this free gift. No wonder Scripture cries out at the injustice of this ungrateful response:

"How much more severely do you think a man deserves to be punished who has trampled the Son of God under foot, who has treated as an unholy thing the blood of the covenant that sanctified him, and who has insulted the Spirit of grace? For we know him who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay," and again, "The Lord will judge his people." It is a dreadful thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (Heb. 10:29-31).

Some people will cry, "Aha! See! There the Bible itself describes God as a vengeful God, repaying people for their refusal to accept him as their God, or his Son's sacrifice for their sins." But in so saying, such critics fail to see the ironic justice that is described here. The irony is that the rebels themselves decide their fate and punishment. They do not want God or his ways, but want their own, separate status apart from him. Therefore, after having done all he can to persuade them otherwise, God simply gives them what they asked for and want. Those who thus try to trap God by misconstruing his words end up being trapped by their own words and desires. God does not need to judge them by the divine standards which they so despise; he simply points them to their own judgment of themselves:

"I will judge you by your own words, you wicked servant!" (Lk. 19:22).

Jesus' critics constantly tried to trap him, just as those who criticize God for putting people in hell try to trap God by his words, such as in the passage above. What they fail to see is how God dispenses perfect justice in committing them to hell. First of all, it has already been noted how they first reject the sacrifice of Jesus for their sins--a sacrifice that caused them no pain whatsoever. All they have to do is acknowledge that they deserve what he received for them in their place, punishment for their own sins. But even this little thing--admit the truth--they are unwilling to do. Therefore, God is completely just in pronouncing the verdict upon them based on their own rejection of the light of the truth.

"This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed" (Jn. 3:19,20).

It is extremely important to notice that this passage, once again, places the blame for the just punishment upon those who reject the light on them themselves. God issues the invitation to come into his light: "The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come!' And let him who hears say, 'Come!' Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life" (Rev. 22:17).

God says, "Come", but they refuse to come. God will not force them to come to him; rather, he says, "whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life." Some freely refuse to take the free gift. The consequences of their choice are traced back to their faulty choice, not to any fault of God.

Those who thus choose to want nothing to do with God, to exist apart from him are thus granted what they desire in their hearts; the deepest desire of their hearts is then realized in hell, for there they are in a place so far separated from God that even the most extreme words do not fully describe the terrifying nature of this state of existence. Scripture speaks of it in the most horrible and stark terms, describing it as a place of outer darkness and complete absence of light--except for the eternal fires that burn there and torment those condemned by their own rejection of the Light of God, Jesus Christ.

That is what they fail so miserably to see, that they have received only what they wanted: to be apart from God. They have gotten what they asked for. That is one of the horrible torments of hell. How can any rational mind complain about that? Yet they do complain.

"A man's own folly ruins his life, yet his heart rages against the Lord" (Prov. 19:3).

Below are quoted some more passages from Scripture that clearly reveal this same truth that so many refuse to accept, that it is a person's own choice that sends him or her to hell, not the capricious act of a cruel and vengeful God. Please note that even if the passage context is about an earthly situation calling for God's judgment and not the final judgment that sends to hell, the principle is still valid when applied to the end result of hell as a consequence of the people's choice in that situation. It is always the free choice to reject God and refuse his offer of forgiveness that results in the natural consequences that ruin a person or a nation. This same principle is valid from start (one's choice to reject God) to finish (God giving the one so choosing what he wants, to be apart from God):

"Your own conduct and actions have brought this upon you" (Jer. 4:18).

"Acts of the sinful nature . . ." (Gal. 5:19--the rest of the verse listing many examples of such) . . . "Those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God" (Gal 5:21).

"Through your own fault you will lose the inheritance I gave you" (Jer. 17:4).

"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" (Gal 6:7,8).

This last passage, in particular, emphasizes the real essence of this truth that so many fail to understand when accusing God of not being loving because he sends people to hell. This verse, Galatians 6:8, describes the horrible, final fate of hate as a natural result of one's life and actions. Our choices decide the outcome. It is no more God's fault than it is that a person becomes fat and unhealthy when that person overeats. That is simply the natural outcome of that person's actions, just as HIV or aids or other terrible diseases can be the natural outcome of disregarding God's command not to use the body in ways he has forbidden. When this happens--when a person deliberately disregards God's warnings against wrong behavior, and then receive the natural consequences of that behavior in their body--the point will come when God no longer warns but simply gives such a person over to his own desires and lets the consequences of those desires and actions come to their natural, deadly fruition:

"Since they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought not to be done" (Rom.1:28).

This matter of God not warning forever but eventually giving a person what that person wants because it is clear that he is never going to stop rebelling against God--this final warning is repeated other times in this first chapter of Romans:

"Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts . . . " (Rom. 1:24).

" . . . God gave them over . . ." (Rom. 1:26).

Though God is patient and forgiving, he has set a time limit to that patience and forgiveness. He will not forever let man continue to go on sinning and rejecting him as God. The time in which a person can receive forgiveness and escape from hell is limited. Our time on this earth is the time when God allows evil actions from wrong choices to take place.

"In the past he let all nations go their own way" (Acts 14:16).

But now he has sent his Son to die on the cross to provide an escape from the sentence of hell for the nations' peoples committing these evil acts.

"In the past, God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent" (Acts 17:30).

"For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed" (Acts. 17:31).

That man is Jesus Christ.

"This will take place on the day when God will judge men's secrets through Jesus Christ" (Rom. 2:16).

There is a day when forgiveness is possible, and that day is now, while we are still alive on this earth (2 Cor. 6:2). But today does not last forever. When the day is done, comes the night, when forgiveness is no longer possible and the final meting out of the consequences for one's refusal to accept forgiveness in the day.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven" (Eccl. 3:1).

Perhaps no sadder example of this sobering truth is found in Scripture than that of Esau, who, to satisfy the hunger cravings of his stomach, threw away his precious birthright to Jacob (Gen. 25:29-34). This heartbreaking and sobering tragedy is used as a warning in Hebrews 12:16, which opens with these words of warning: "See to it that none of you . . . is godless like Esau. . . ."

In another situation where the people rejected God as Esau did and desired idols to be their gods, they told the prophet of God:

"We will not listen to the message you have spoken to us in the name of the Lord" (Jer. 44:16).

That was their clear and defiant stance before God. After repeated warnings from God, they still rejected him, not wanting him as their God. Therefore God gave them what they wanted and told them:

"Go ahead, then, do what you promised" (Jer. 44:25).

What they promised to do was to worship the false god they thought had prospered them (vs. 17, 18). It is absolutely tragic that so many people in this world still follow this same false god, the god of prosperity. For God has solemnly warned that all who do so are destroying themselves:

"With their silver and gold they make idols for themselves to their own destruction" (Hosea 8:4).

There it is again, the same warning that one's own actions and choices determine one's final destiny for destruction, not God. For God has voluntarily restricted himself never to force himself upon anyone, never to take away the precious gift of free will he has given to all human beings. He will not do this even if it means that they must forever be cut off from him by their misuse of that free will, choosing to reject him. That is how precious a gift it is that he has given us. So it is that, after doing all that could possibly be done to stop anyone from going to hell, God must allow those who do wish to dwell apart from him to do so. They will be "shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power" (2 Ths. 1:9).

They could have been forgiven, but they would have none of it. Therefore, they die in their sins, as Jesus proclaimed:

"I told you that you would die in your sins; if you do not believe that I am the one I claim to be, you will indeed die in your sins" (Jn. 8:24).

To die in one's sins means that that person must then go to hell, for only those washed clean of their sins in the blood of the Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, are deemed worthy to enter heaven. For God cannot abide with evil, nor can they who are evil abide with him; therefore, they must abide elsewhere, in a place far removed from heaven--separated by their sins from God.

"Your iniquities have separated you from your God" (Is. 59:2).

I do not apologize if I seem to have repeated this one key truth over and over again here, that it is one's own choice of rejecting life in Christ that sends one to hell, not an unjust action of God. For this entire piece of writing can be summed up in a single verse from Scripture, where God pleads:

"I long to redeem them but they speak lies against me" (Hosea 7:13).

God would have all people to be saved, but some, wishing to justify themselves and their own ideas of love and God and justice, speak lies against God, saying that a loving God would not send people to hell. He does not. They send themselves there. So quit saying this lie about God. You do not understand justice.

"Evil men do not understand justice, but those who seek the Lord understand it fully" (Prov. 28:5).