I think Hell is a good idea and I’m tired of people knocking it.
Unrepented evil must be punished. The sheep (the righteous) and the goats (unrepentant sinners) come before the Judgment Seat of God, and the sheep go one way into Heaven, while the goats go the other into Hell. Doesn’t that make perfect sense? I’m all for it.
The one fly in the ointment is the idea of eternal punishment. Why does it have to be eternal? Why can’t the evil simply be destroyed? Or maybe punished for a little while until they come to their senses?
Here’s why: The suffering of the goats has to be eternal because God’s love for them is eternal. God never stops loving sinners. He can’t. It’s His nature to love and He can’t stop. Love is who He is.
Think about it: If someone in Hell were sincerely to repent, and God turned His back on them, what sort of monster would that God be? No, the only walls in Hell are those erected by the wills of its denizens. They are the monsters.
But like the father of the prodigal son, God the Father stands at the door of Heaven waiting and waiting with open arms, waiting for the lost children to come home. Because the truth is that anyone in Hell can repent at any time and be set free and go straight to Heaven.
But here’s the thing: They won’t. The goats will never repent, because inveterate unrepentance is the very nature of the Hell they are in. Hell is the prison for the absolute refusal of love. The goats never changed on earth and they’ll never change hereafter.
Nevertheless God, just because of who He is, has to give them every chance. Evil will never back down, but neither will the goodness of God. And so good and evil are locked in a neverending stalemate. God loves, the evil hate, and neither side will relent. That is just how it is, both now and forevermore.
Thus the existence of Hell, next to the Cross, is the ultimate demonstration of God’s everlasting love. As Psalm 136 declares over and over, “His love endures forever.”
But someone might say: What are we to make of a sad, grieving God who continues to bemoan lost souls through all eternity? Well, He grieves for them right now, just as He does for your sorrows and for mine. “He carried our griefs and bore our suffering” (Is 53:4), and the wounds He sustained at Calvary will remain with Him forever.
From this I take it that, while Heaven will have no tears or pain, there may well remain scars or memories of dark things from our time on earth. It would be unreasonable to presume that our celestial minds will be wiped clean of all bad experiences. On the contrary, such scars will be healed and will remain as trophies, drenched in glory. Even if we are aware of the suffering of souls in Hell, this suffering will not be ours to carry. Indeed, “in the end the righteous will look in triumph on their foes” (Ps 112:8).
To abolish Hell is pure madness. Without a strong doctrine of Hell, all other theology is weakened. A few years ago Rob Bell wrote a very popular book, called Love Wins, debunking Hell. But without Hell, love can never win.
If you find yourself going soft on Hell, just remember wars, famine, rape, torture, child pornography, sextortion, corporate crime, on and on. The same people who blame God for turning a blind eye to all the suffering in the world are the ones who want to empty Hell. Go figure.
Bottom line? Like all problems, the problem of an everlasting Hell is not too difficult for God. Let’s trust Him and stop soft-pedaling eternity. This world needs, and deserves, to hear the truth.
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