Articles
Is Hell Fair?
“Even the question, ‘Is it fair?’ is hardly appropriate. Christians know that the Judge of all the earth will assuredly do what is right (Genesis 18:25; Hebrews 2:2; “Every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense”)” (Through No Fault of Their Own? p. 13). “That eternal punishment is neither unjust nor unworthy of God, is evidenced by the unexpected appropriateness of God’s permitting the righteous and the wicked to realize their last dream, that goal to which their whole moral life tended. Is it not evidence of God’s final mercy to all that each is granted the unchangeable privilege of loving or hating Him forever, of living with Him or apart from Him forever? The impenitent continue to insist until, at last, because they will not accept what God offers, the Judgment grants them what they desired. But to their endless chagrin, they discover too late that their desires were self-destructive and horribly mistaken” (Matthew, Fowler, p. 607). The point in all of this is that God is simply respecting the free will decisions of those who reject Him. If one wishes to live in this world without God, then he has the opportunity to live for all eternity without Him (remember the rich man from Luke 16:23-26)
What is more fair than God giving us the freewill decision over our eternal spiritual destination? “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done whether good or evil” (2 Corinthians 5:10).
Is Hell Even For You?
A concept which often goes unnoticed in the debate over Hell is that God did not even design Hell for us in the first place. “Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels” (Matthew 25:41). Interestingly, Hell is not Satan’s workshop or his headquarters, but it his place of eternal punishment. It was never prepared for our souls, but for the devil’s. There is something comforting there, friends: since God never intended for us to go to Hell, we can infer that his original intention was for us to go to Heaven. “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (Ephesians 2:8-10). Hell was prepared for the devil, good works and Heaven were prepared for us. If that is not a positive perspective, then what is?
