How can you put together the concept of eternal punishment with the idea of God’s love?
First of all, let’s remember that there really are such things as logical impossibilities. I could make two simple statements 2+2=4 and 2+2=5, but only one of them could be correct. Both statements cannot be true. That is a logical impossibility.
What we have to think about is whether these two statements are logical impossibilities. 1) God loves all human beings enough to send his own Son to die for them. And 2) God will sentence some of his human creatures to eternal destruction in order to punish them for their sins. They certainly sound like they don’t fit together very well. How could God love his creatures enough to take pay for their sin Himself and at the very same time be prepared to send some of them to hell because of their unwillingness to keep his standards?
Yet I am convinced that it is not flawed logic which allows both of these statements to be true at the same time.
I believe most of the problem with this issue could be cleared up by rephrasing the second question to fit the facts a little better. Let me quickly remind you of a few things and then restate the questions. I think you’ll find they fit together perfectly.
1) Let’s keep in mind that actions have consequences. If you throw something up into the air, it will fall down. If you remove a fish from water for an extended period of time, it will die. If you expose silver to acid it will turn black. These are just facts. They are not life-changing truth, but they are truth, none-the less. They should not be confused with threats or warnings. For example, we might say to our kids, if you keep making noise with that toy, I’ll take it away from you. Or don’t play on the street you’ll get hit by a car. Or if you don’t clean up your room, I won’t play ball with you today.
Many people look at what God said to our first parents in the garden of Eden and don’t get what He was expressing. Look at it with me. In Genesis 2:16-17 we read: And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, "Of every tree of the garden you may freely eat; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely die." I suppose you could take this as a warning or a threat, but I don’t think it was meant that way. It was a statement of fact in the order of ‘if you through something up into the air, it will fall down.’ God was simply explaining the facts of life to Adam and Eve. “In the day that you eat of the fruit you shall surely die.” Not a threat, but a fact. Not a warning, just the truth.
God who is the source of life is perfectly holy. What he was saying was simply, if you sin, if you rebel against me, if you allow evil to enter your hearts and you act on it, you will die. You will be separated from Me, the source of life. The physical environment continued to sustain them physically, but the moment they sinned they were separated from God, the source of their spiritual life. They died.
2) Remember that in one sense, God doesn’t "send people to hell." Humanity was separated from God from the incident in the garden we just talked about. In John 3:18 we read that He who believes in Him is not condemned; but he who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. God isn’t standing by to condemn us to eternal separation from Him. That is already our fate. The fact is that God is on a rescue mission. In verse 17 of John 3 we read: For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. God’s purpose is to save that which was already lost – not to condemn that which was already safe.
3) Salvation comes through faith. For those who sense the danger and desire to get out of harm's way, God offers a way of escape. By confessing their sin and accepting the death of Jesus, the Son of God , as a substitute for their own, they can take advantage of God’s offer of spiritual life. At the same time, God does not force this spiritual life on anyone. Just as the sinful state in which we find ourselves came as the result of a choice, so accepting the offer of restored spiritual life must come as the result of a choice. Coercion is not love. And God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
Let’s take a moment and look at those supposedly mutually exclusive statements. Let’s rephrase them to fit the facts. 1) God loves all human beings enough to send his own Son to die for them. And 2) God allows some of his human creatures to chose to reject his offer of eternal life. The inevitable result of that is eternal separation from God which the Bible describes in the terms we looked at earlier. Sounds to me like all of this fits together without too much conflict.
