QUESTION: Dear Pastor,
Does God still love people in Hell? Timothy.
RESPONSE: Dear Timothy,
Thank you for asking this important question. Please not that there is both a short answer to that question and a longer one.
The shorter answer is that God loves those who will eventually be in Hell. This question makes three important claims that I would like to address in giving a detailed answer.
These claims are: “God”, “love” and “Hell”. I will start by investigating the first two claims, which are; ‘God’ and ‘love’.
God
God is the Eternal, All-Present, All-Knowing, and All-Powerful being from which everything good and right has its origin and being (Acts 17:28).
God is the source of only that which is good and right. He is the God of Heaven and order, not Hell and disorder (1 Corinthians 14:33).
The Jews, like Muslims, believed God was the god of darkness and light, life and death (Isaiah 45:7), but that was Baal and not God the Creator.
When the disciples of Jesus saw a blind man from birth, they asked who sinned against God for Him to punish this child, but Jesus put the record straight that this blind man was not suffering punishment from God but rather this was an opportunity for God to do His good works against the works of darkness (John 9:1-4).
God’s love
The Bible tells us how loving God is, it reminds all of us that God is love (1 John 4:16). That is why I normally tell people that while God is love, love is not God.
I say this because I see many people justifying sinners in the name of love.
We preach against homosexuality and other wrong tendencies, and in defense of the guilty, they play the love card.
They say God loves us as we are, and yes they are right; however, they are wrong if they assume a loving God wants them to stay who they are.
It is for that matter that I say, ‘while God is love, love is not God’. In other words, we should not assume that love trumps the just nature of God, nor is the love of God an irrational emotion.
It is within these lenses that we ought to understand God as love and loving as well. God loved and loves human beings not because of who they are, what they do, or where they are, but because that is who He is.
The Scripture says: “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only son” (John 3:16).
He loved the world, not a certain section of the world. God’s love causes the rain to fall on both the righteous and the unrighteous, and the sun to shine on the just and unjust. He is an indiscriminate lover (Matthew 5:43-48).
The second area in which we misunderstand God as both love and loving is the idea that His love is discriminative.
Since childhood, we have been taught that Jesus loves the behaving children and dislikes the disobedient.
That belief has evolved into righteousness by works in our adult lives, and most of us behave and perform moral rituals and sacrifices to ensure we deserve His love.
By this, we have come to a point of believing that God loves more and less, which according to the scriptures is wrong.
God’s love is unending. That is what it means for Him to be eternal and thus love eternally.
In Jeremiah 31:3, the Scripture says: “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore, with loving-kindness have I drawn thee.”
He said He has loved us with everlasting love.
Hell
There are many views about Hell, but briefly, in line with this question, let me address two of those views.
The first is whether Hell is a real place prepared by God for non-believers.
The answer to this is No, Hell is not a place God prepared for people, it was prepared for Satan and his demons (Matthew 25:41).
A loving God cannot create Heaven and Hell for His people.
The only place in the New Testament where Hell is mentioned as a place of torture is in Luke 16:19-31 and it was only in a parable.
Hell is about Eternal punishment to Satan and his demons, and it is anyone’s choice to suffer this punishment (Romans 1:18,21,25).
A God who died on the Cross for the salvation of sinners cannot burn them in Hell.
Eternal life is a choice we make through believing God and eternal damnation (Hell) is an alternative choice people make through disbelief.
God has confirmed to us that He has come that we may have life and have it abundantly (John 10:10).
He gives life against death and therefore He cannot be in charge of Hell and Heaven. This is not the Christian God.
Answered by
Pr Isaiah White.
whitemwine@gmail.com Contact: +256775 822 833
