I’d like to ask God why He puts it on my heart to write posts so late at night. Hello blogosphere, how are you? It’s been a while, but here we go!
Lately, there’s been a great hullaballoo around the topic of hell and God’s love and there have been multitudes of scholars bantering back and forth about the doctrine. I’m no scholar, but I think I’ll jump on the bandwagon with a few thoughts of my own on unconditional love, justice and hell.
As a quick disclaimer, the following thoughts are my own reflections conglomerated with inspirations from A.W. Tozer’s “The Knowledge of the Holy” as well as Dr. R.C. Sproul’s article on hell. I highly recommend reading both.
It’s interesting that we often hear of God’s love being unconditional but that there seems to be a disconnect with what we feel. We get the feeling that God’s love is conditional and it depends on whether we obey or not that He would continue to bless us. Take 1 Kings 9 for example: Solomon had just finished building the temple and asked God to have his blessing on it and through it bless the people. God indeed consecrates it and says He will maintain and establish the kingdom if they walk in His ways but if they don’t, He will cut them off and remove the blessing from the temple. That’s conditional love isn’t it?
I’d like to point out the first flaw in much of our thinking (mine included). We synonymously categorize God’s character with his blessing – they are not the same. When God allowed Job to receive curse after curse from Satan, was His character compromised? Or when in Ecclesiastes, Solomon recounts how even the wickedest of men still receive long life – does that defame His holy character? No. Blessings do not equal God’s love and they certainly do not equal God. Job questions God’s justice (another of His character traits) near the end of the book of Job only to have God rebuke him. God asks Job if he knows the intricacies of life, creation and the universe and when Job remains speechless, God simply asserts that if he couldn’t understand these things, he would definitely have no way to understand the way God works. Indeed, Job says, “Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.” (Job 42:3b – ESV) We cannot equate the way God works with His blessings with His love for us. They may coincide sometimes, but they are not identical.
With that premise, God’s love is unconditional – it does not depend on whether we obey him or not. If we obey Him and show Him out of love we want to honour and glorify Him, of course He would love us. And if we do not obey Him … well, Romans 5:8 says that “… God demonstrated His own love for us in this: that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” In both circumstances, God loved us, be us friends or enemies of the Most High.
See, it’s not that He’s set out conditions for us to merit His love; it is our own imperfection that created the idea of conditional love. To God, there is no such thing as a condition – He is who He is with all His characteristics unchanging in the milieu of changing scenarios and circumstances. We create the idea of conditions because we live in a graceless world where things are merit-based. Us imperfect beings cannot fathom the vastness of His love – that He would love His enemies unto death. As a result of our incomplete picture of love, we operate in the realms of conditions and we come to the conclusion that unconditional love doesn’t exist. Loving our enemies is a foreign thought. [On a side note, this is why Christianity is not a religion but rather a redemptive relationship with God. Other religions emphasize our role in doing or achieving something that would merit the attention of God or the cosmos. In Christianity, there is only undeserved love, grace and forgiveness bestowed to the thankful sinner.]
But the great paradox is this – that God’s love would manifest itself against evil in the form of judgement. In other words, we think His love is conditional because He punishes evil. How can justice and love coexist? To ask this question is to reveal yet another flaw in our thinking, that discipline shows a lack of love. However, it is quite the opposite – both Hebrews 12:6 and Proverbs 3:12 say that the Lord disciplines those He loves. What we need to understand is that the nature of love is an unrelenting desire to see beneficence follow the loved one.
Tozer explains it quite well by quoting 1 John 4:18 “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear.” He writes, “Love wills the good of all and never wills harm or evil to any … Fear is the painful emotion that arises at the thought that we may be harmed or made to suffer. This fear persists while we are subject to the will of someone who does not desire our well-being. The moment we come under the protection of one of good will, fear is cast out.” As 1 Corinthians 13, one of the most well-known passages on love says, “…It is not self-seeking .. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Love shows itself as good will.
When the Lord sees sin, He does not trade love for justice as if He could only act out one or the other. In love, He exacts justice that we would know that His love desires the best for us and that the sin being judged is not the best for us. As a loving Father, He disciplines the children He loves, so that we can live according to His will which is the best way we can live. God’s love is unconditional but the way it is expressed is not in ways we tend to understand it.
Seeing that it’s Easter Sunday, it can only be but appropriate and deserving to speak of Jesus’ sacrifice. On that cross mingled love and justice. God’s wrath was satisfied and He showed us what true love looked like. He exacted justice on His son (who, is the only one through which justice would result in saving grace) out of love for us. His love for us is unconditional and Jesus paid the price for us because of that very fact. Because God so loved the world despite its blatant rebellion against Him, Jesus had to die in order that we could come to a working knowledge of that love and respond in worship and reverence. If His love was conditional, there would have been no way for us to reach heaven’s pearly gates let alone stand in His presence blameless. If He only loved those who loved Him, there would be none found on this earth who could meet this criterion.
So why do people still go to hell even though God’s love is unconditional? The third flaw that we often have is that we think that unconditional love means nobody will be sent to eternal punishment. Hell is a very real place and we have no idea what it’s really like, but from all that Jesus says about it, it cannot be anything but utter despair and torment. Is it loving then to send people there? Well firstly I would surmise that the people in hell have understood the unconditional love of God (in the form of the gospel) but have still chosen to reject it. In other words – they have heard the gospel and have made a choice to believe in the lie that this love was too ludicrous and that their idea of merit-based love was better. By this, and I may be way off the mark, I mean that it’s not God who actively places them in hell but their rejection of His unconditional love that does so. Moreover, if we take the model of love expressing itself in justice towards the loved, then hell is a place where that is manifested to show the tormented their real brokenness. It is God’s love expressing its wrath against all that makes his loved ones unclean.
So am I suggesting that at some point, these people would have experienced enough of God’s love and justice that they realize their brokenness, repent and go from hell to heaven? No. As Dr. R.C. Sproul writes, “The ungodly want nothing more than to be separated from God. Their problem in hell will not be separation from God, it will be the presence of God that will torment them. In hell, God will be present in the fullness of His divine wrath. He will be there to exercise His just punishment of the damned. They will know Him as an all-consuming fire.” What I am suggesting is that these people who have chosen to reject the gospel will repeatedly reject the gospel in hell because they can only see the wrath of God’s love. They want to escape Him and their hate for Him will increase because the same pride that caused them to reject the gospel of love the first time continues to cause them to reject the love of God for eternity.
Whether my thoughts are as accurate as they should be, the truth remains that hell is real, eternal and where God’s wrath exists. Dr. Sproul’s final words on his article about hell are a good reminder: “Understanding this is crucial to our drive to appreciate the work of Christ and to preach His gospel.”
As we celebrate the resurrection of Christ this morn, may we move forward certain of the truth in the gospel. That by grace through faith, we can experience God’s unconditional love, justice fulfilled and hell dissolve away from our eternity.
