M60 Q & A
How can God, who is love, send anyone to hell to
suffer eternally? If He loves every human being, He should allow everyone to go
to heaven unconditionally.
God does not take pleasure in the death of the wicked (Ezek 18:23). Like
the prodigal son’s father, He wants everyone to turn from evil and live (Lk 15:11-24; Ezek 18:31, 32, 33:11). Out of His love, He
even gave His own son to us so that we may have eternal life (Jn 3:16, 17).
While God offers everyone love and forgiveness, He does not force His
love on those who do not want it. Because He loves us, He wants us to be free.
We are given free will to accept or deny God’s love. God does allow everyone to
go to heaven, but not everyone chooses heaven. If a person chooses to sin and
refuses to repent, he chooses to reject God’s love. By rejecting God’s love, he
chooses hell because hell in essence is the absence of God’s love. There is no
other choice, since the only place where God’s love does not exist is hell.
Is anyone really so evil as to deserve the eternal
punishment of hell? Can God not forgive those who don’t believe in Him?
God does not intend to send anyone to hell. Instead, He “desires all
men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim 2:4). We
should not think of hell as God’s vengeful punishment. Hell is a choice. People
choose hell by rejecting the grace of God. When we sin, we choose to be
separated from God, and this separation is exactly what hell is—eternal
separation from God, His love, and His joy. Our very action of sinning is its
own punishment.
When addressing the question of whether anyone deserves hell, Peter Kreeft and Ronald K. Tacelli
explain, “Hell’s punishment fits sin’s crime because sin is divorce from God.
The punishment fits the crime because the punishment is the crime. Saying no to
God means no God. The point is really very simple. Those who object to hell’s
over-severity do not see what sin really is. They probably look at sin
externally, sociologically, legalistically, as ‘behaving badly.’ They fail to
see the real horror of sin and the real greatness and goodness and joy of the
God who is refused in every sin. We all fail to appreciate this. Who of us
fully appreciates God’s beauty? The corollary immediately follows: who of us
fully appreciates sin’s ugly horror?”1
If God makes everyone go to heaven, including those who do not want or
to be forgiven by Him, then human beings have no free will. God does not force
anyone to be in heaven, although His grace of forgiveness is available to all.
We need to make the choice to accept this grace.
1.
Peter Kreeft and
Ronald K. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994) 300.
