Questions I’d Ask God If I Could – “How Could a Loving God Ever Send People to Hell?”
Video – “Hell”
Hell is always an uncomfortable subject to talk about. I think that this has led many to joke about it. There are a couple that I particularly like.
Then there is the one about four couples who arrived at the pearly gates about the same time. Peter looks at the first man and says, “I can’t let you in. You were a notorious drunk. All you ever thought about was the next drink. In fact your wife’s name is even Ginny.” He looked at the next guy and said, “You can’t come in either. You were so greedy that all you ever thought about was money, money, money. I see you even married a woman named Penny.” Peter looked at the third guy and says, “I know I can’t let you in. The record shows that all you valued were things that glitter. All you ever thought about was jewelry, jewelry, jewelry. You even married a woman named Ruby.” Before Peter could address the last man, he turned to his wife and said, “Let’s just leave now Fannie, they’ll never let us in.”
Sometimes
we tend to joke about things that really deeply trouble us. I think this is the case with hell. You would think in a modern and secular
society that more people would disbelieve that there even is a hell. But
I
know that some people stopped going to church altogether years ago because they
were tired of “hellfire and brimstone” preaching that was so prevalent in the
1950’s through the 1970’s. But the idea
of hell has not left their minds. Movies
like Ghost and What Dreams May Come just heighten our belief in
it. Mostly, Americans don’t want to be
coerced into a religious belief from a motivation of fear. I can understand that. It isn’t the best motive, nor is it usually
one that produces a lasting commitment.
But it’s important that we understand what Hell is, what it is like and
what it should motivate us to.
One
thing we need to do is to avoid thinking with our hearts on this issue. It’s an uncomfortable issue. It ought to be. But our discomfort should not determine our
belief or disbelief. Hell makes God
uncomfortable too. The Bible says in
Ezekiel 18:23, “‘Do you think,’ asks the Sovereign Lord, ‘that I like to see
wicked people die? Of course not! I only want them to turn from their wicked
ways and live.’” God takes no
pleasure in the death of the wicked. He
takes no delight when someone goes to hell.
Living Answer: Amy Sievers
This
much is clear in the Bible. God is the
most loving, wonderful and attractive Being that exists. He has made us for a clear purpose: to bring glory to Him and to relate to Him,
enjoy Him. We are not accidents or
modified monkeys. We looked at that the
last two weeks. God wants us to flourish
and live for the purpose for which He created us. But if we refuse to live in this purpose or
even desire to do so, He will give us what we asked for all along in our lives,
which is separation from Him – Hell.
It’s
important to understand that God is a loving being, but that is not all He
is. It is foolish to say that God is
only love. He is love, but He is also
holy and righteous and just. Our culture
likes to emphasize the sentimental part of God’s nature. But if we don’t recognize all of God’s nature
as He has revealed it to us in the Bible, we are heading for a crash. If God were only love, the cross would make
no sense, because at the cross we see God’s holiness, even His wrath being
satisfied against our sin. But we also
see His unfailing love as He took the penalty for us in His Son Jesus.
So
let’s look at a few questions that are critical to our understanding of hell. .
.
1.
What is hell?
A.
Hell is relational. Hell is not some cosmic torture chamber. It is at its very nature separation from
God. That’s why it is called the second
death in the Bible. Death is
separation. Physical death is separation
from the body. Hell is spiritual death
or separation spiritually and completely from God.
Matthew
25:41 – “Away with you” or “Depart from Me”
B.
Hell is punishment. A person’s refusal to seek God and to relate
to Him as He desires and provided for us will result in banishment from His
presence. Our sin separates us from God.
Romans
6:23 -“The wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life
through Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Hell
is therefore the final sentence for living a life of sin and never turning back
to God to accept His peace offering in Jesus Christ.
Isaiah
59:2 – “But there is a problem – your sins have cut you off from God.”
C.
Hell is a choice. It is the natural consequence of living a
life where one says “I want to live my own life, my own way, apart from God and
what He desires. God created us in His
image.
-
Genesis 1:27 – “So God created people in His own image; God patterned them
after Himself.”
Part
of that image was to be free moral creatures, choosing to love or to not care;
choosing to obey or disobey; choosing to make God the center of our lives or to
set ourselves up as our own center.
D.
Hell is God’s fall-back plan. It is something He was forced by His nature
to create when His people chose to rebel against Him.
Illustration:
When our founding fathers drafted the constitution, there was no
official plan for jail. But when people
chose not to obey the laws of this country, jail became a necessary fall back
plan. Hell is like that. God did not
desire for hell to be necessary, but it became necessary when sin entered the
picture.
If
God just determined that all people would go to heaven despite their choice not
to love Him, He would be violating human dignity, free will. God cannot force you to love Him. It would not be love.
2.
What is hell like?
A.
Hell is the worst possible place.
The
common images of hell are:
-
-
Darkness, weeping
and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12,
Matthew 22:13)
-
-
No rest
(Revelation 14:11)
But
these are not meant to be a literal picture of hell. Jesus often used metaphors and other types of
symbolic language. These are symbolic
images of judgment and of a place worse than we can imagine.
The
images of fire and worms are from the place called Gehenna – a filthy dump on
the south side of
His
point is this: Hell is the worse than the worst situation we can imagine
because it will be away from God’s presence.
All that is good will be absent there.
Even those who reject God still experience His good provision and His
presence in our world. We can never
experience hell on earth because God is not absent. It is a fallen world – certainly not heaven,
but it is far from hell as well.
Some
say they want to be in hell instead of heaven, because all their friends will
be there, as if they will have one big eternal party. There will be no relationship in hell. There will be no happiness, no pleasure, for
these things are derived ultimately in God.
Even when we pervert them, they are perversions of good things God
created. Hell will be without anything
good.
B.
Hell is eternal.
The
greatest law, Jesus said, is to love the Lord your God with all of your heart,
soul, mind and strength. So, in
contrast, the worst thing we can do is to reject God and His love for us. The time fits the crime, because it is what
we are choosing. Hell is eternal
separation from God because we chose to be separated from God.
2
Thessalonians 1:8-10 – “He will come . . . bringing judgment on those who
don’t know God and on those who refuse to obey the Good News of our Lord
Jesus. They will be punished with
everlasting destruction, forever separated from the lord and from His glorious
power when He comes to receive glory and praise from His holy people.”
3.
Why not another way?
Couldn’t
God have created a better way? Some way
to preserve our freedom, to stay true to His nature, but also to prevent anyone
from going to hell
A.
Why not force everyone to go to heaven?
That
would be immoral. If you were to force
people to do something against their choice, it de-humanizes them. One of the risks of giving us free will is
that God could not guarantee that everyone would cooperate with Him. Love is a risk
B.
Why not just annihilate those who reject Him?
Again,
the issue is human dignity and freedom.
God will not override their choice to be away from Him. He created us to live forever with Him. The alternative is to spend eternity away
from Him. If God were to override that
choice, He would be acting against what is right.
C.
Why didn’t God just create those who He knew would follow Him?
The
argument is something like this: If God
knows the future, then why doesn’t He just choose to bring to life only those
who would choose to love Him?
Remember
the Back To The Future movies? It
was eerie to see how one life and the choices made could affect so many other
people, for the good and for the bad. The fact is that each of us impacts the
lives of others for all future generations to come in ways we can never
imagine. The choices we make are
influenced by what others have done in our lives. The choices we make influence the choices that
others will make as well. For God to
upset this reality of human choice would be to once again violate our dignity
and free will, which He created us with so that we could enjoy Him more than
any other creature He made. Sadly, to
preserve this possibility, He has to allow for some to choose not to love Him
and be with Him.
D. Why not give people a second chance after death?
Hebrews 9:27 – “it is destined that each person
dies only once and after that comes judgment.”
Why
not give people one last chance after they die and see what will happen to them
if they do not choose God’s offer of salvation in Christ? This question assumes that God has not done
everything He could before people died, and I believe He clearly did. Besides, this would make life before we die
irrelevant. The truth is, this time on
earth is our second chance. We have a
second chance in Christ to come back to God, be forgiven and choose eternal
life with Him.
If
God waited until people saw the judgment seat and what hell would be versus
being with Him, any decision they made would be coerced, not freely made. Any apology or repentance would simply be
avoidance, not sincere repentance.
God
maintains a delicate balance between keeping His existence and wooing of us
sufficiently evident so that people can know He’s there and that He wants to
relate to them and on the other hand hiding His presence enough so that people
who want to choose to ignore or reject Him can do just that. This way, their choice is really free. God has given us the best possible way to get
to the best possible world.
Conclusion:
As I said when I began, Hell is always an uncomfortable subject to talk about, but what is the proper and rational response to our discomfort? Is it to ignore or repress the whole thing or just deny it is true? No. The rational response is to do two things.
1. For those who don’t know Christ, it is to diligently seek Him and accept Him as Lord and Savior.
2. For those who know Christ already, it is to diligently extend the message of mercy in Jesus to those who need it.
The Bible says that God is delaying the return of Jesus to give people as long as possible to accept Him, to choose Him. God gets no joy from those who reject Him and get what they want. Let me show you what does give Him joy.
2 Peter 3:9 – “The Lord really isn’t being slow about His promise to return, as some people think. No, He is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to perish, so He is giving more time for everyone to repent.”
How God reacts to the lost. Luke 15:1-7 …He diligently seeks them and takes joy when one is found.
But if you do reject or ignore Him and His provision for your salvation in Jesus, He will give you what you choose – hell – to be away from Him. For some people, being in heaven would be miserable, for the very reason it would be more than wonderful for those of us who love Him. They would be forced, against their will to be in His presence forever. It’s a choice, because God gave us dignity and freedom to choose. What is your choice?