The most common objection I hear to Christianity is that, “A loving God would never send anyone to Hell”. It seems to be the general refrain in America, and it is certainly common here in a college town where the most universal “truth” is that we’re all good people. The Bible of course says quite the opposite - ” Everyone has turned away, they have together become corrupt; there is no one who does good, not even one.” (Psalm 53:3). No one is good. Not myself, (certainly) not Nate, and not even Ghandi.
Anyway, while there is certainly plenty that I would say to those who believe that “A loving God would never send anyone to Hell”, that’s not quite the point of this post. I recently started reading “Through the gates of Splendor”. It is the story of Jim Elliot and a number of other men who gave their lives trying to spread the gospel to a particularly violent tribe of native americans in Equador. The story was recently adapted into a movie titled “End of the Spear” which I would recommend to just about anyone. As the book details the life of these men before leading up to their successful missionary experience (they were in fact successful, even though they died for it), it includes a short exerpt from a radio message given by Ed McCully. It goes:
“The fate of the criminal is to fulfill the condemnation by being punished - for some this means serving a term of years, for others it means imprisonment for life, for others it means death. God’s condemnation upon all sinners is death. ‘The wages of sin is death…’ One sentence, and one punishment for those who do not believe.
But, you say, God is a God of love. He will not punish anyone eternally. It is true that He is a God of love. And His condemnation does not in any way alter the fact. God is not willing that you or I experience the punishment we justly deserve. Therefore He offers us an escape, if we choose to accept it. At the price of His only begotten Son, God provided pardon.
This is the simple, plain, and clear Word of God from his book, the Bible. ‘He that believeth on My Son,’ says God, ‘is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he has not believed on my only begotten Son.’”
In retrospect I suppose this isn’t surprsing, but I’m still fascinated by the fact that the question that is so common today “how can a loving God send anyone to Hell?” was clearly a common question when this was spoken over the radio (May 16th, 1951). I guess somethings never change. I think that Ed gives a short and good answer - of course God loves us, but that doesn’t excuse us from the punishment that is required by our sin.
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