If there’s a hell, why would a loving God send people there?
While I was a missionary on the streets of New York City for over six years, occasionally people would lob verbal zingers in my direction. One of my fellow missionaries once shared a creative means of engaging in spiritual discussion by attempting to turn one particular zinger into a witnessing encounter. And it went something like this.
When someone walks by you and blurts out, “Go to hell!” One could retort, “So you believe in hell? Tell me more.”
Now that’s not an effective means of engaging in spiritual conversation, to be sure! But I share that scenario to highlight a concept germane to answering our final objection in this series on answering questions and objections. The concept is assumption. How so?
Well, uttering those disparaging words – “go to hell” – assumes the existence of hell. And I wonder – is it possible some people who utter such a statement don’t understand the associated assumption?
With that, we introduce a sobering question to be addressed in this final post on answering questions and objections to the Christian faith:
If there’s a hell, why would a loving God send people there?
With this question comes an assumption that it is God who sends people to hell against their will. Dealing with this assumption is central to answering the question.
First of all, the idea that God sends people to hell against their will is not the case. The fact is, God desires that all people be saved.
“The Lord is not slack concerning His promise, as some count slackness, but is longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
“For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:3-4).
In fact, the Lord doesn’t even delight in the death of the wicked!
“‘Do I have any pleasure at all that the wicked should die?’ says the Lord God, ‘and not that he should turn from his ways and live?’” (Ezekiel 18:23)
“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’” (Ezekiel 33:11).
But because He endowed man with free will, He also knows some people will receive while others will choose to reject His free offer of salvation found in Christ (John 3:16).
In his book The Abolition of Man (pg. 69), C.S. Lewis stated: “The door of hell is locked on the inside.” In other words, those who go there choose to do so. Lewis continues – “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’”
God desires for as many people as possible to accept Jesus’ death and resurrection as payment for their sins, so they can live eternally with him and go to heaven. The sad reality is many will make the decision not to be a part of God’s heaven.
Lewis adds in his book The Problem of Pain, “In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: What are you asking God to do? To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does.”
And because God is just, He must punish sin (Habakkuk 1:13; Revelation 20:11-15. But God is also love (1 John 4:16), and in His love He cannot force others to love him.
As Christian apologist Norm Geisler notes: “Love cannot work coercively, but only persuasively. Forced love is a contradiction in terms. Hence, God’s love demands that there be a hell where persons who do not wish to love him can experience the great divorce when God says to them, “Thy will be done.”
There is another question that is related to the issue we’re discussing, but not so much debated. And it is one I have used in my witness over the years – “How can a just, holy, and perfect God allow people into heaven?”
For God is holy, and we are not. God’s standard is perfect righteousness, and we not only fall short of His glory, the bible tells us our hearts are deceitful and wicked (Jeremiah 17:9).
In fact, God’s justice demands perfect and complete judgment upon our sin. And yet, we find the combination of God’s justice and His love at the cross. For it is on the cross that Jesus paid our sin debt in full, satisfying God’s wrath in all its fury. And it is on the cross that God reveals His love for mankind:
“In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins” (1 John 4:9-10).
God’s justice demands that sin be judged. That’s why Jesus died, “the just for the unjust” (1 Peter 3:19). And because of His death and resurrection, heaven is a reality.
So yes – hell is real, heaven is real – and every person has a choice!
We’ve only given a small answer to a big question, but it is a start. Here a few other resources you can access to broaden your thinking on this question in order to provide a word aptly spoken:
> An article with other resources on the topic from christiananswers.net
> A 45-minute video by Greg Koukl of Stand to Reason Ministries
I hope this series has been a benefit to you, even as we grappled only briefly with many important questions and objection to the Christian faith. As we’ve pondered this and other questions and objections to the Christian faith, may we praise God for bringing us out of darkness and into His marvelous light, that we may be His ambassadors of reconciliation. And for the sake of His glory, our witness and the salvation of others, may we strive to always be ready with an answer. Amen!
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts, and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you, with meekness and fear” (1 Peter 3:15).