How is eternity in Hell a fair punishment for sin?

But there is another objection urged against the doctrine of eternal punishment. It is frequently said, "How can we suppose that God would inflict eternal punishment as a penalty for a few short years of sin?" We reply, It is beginning at the wrong end to argue in this way. It is not a question of time as viewed from man's standpoint, but of the gravity of sin itself as looked at from God's standpoint. And how is this question to be solved? Only by looking at the Cross. If you want to know what sin is in God's sight, you must look at what it cost Him to put it away. It is by the standard of Christ's infinite sacrifice, and by that alone, that you can rightly measure sin. Men may compare their few years with God's eternity; they may compare their short span of life with that boundless eternity that stretches beyond; they may seek to put a few years of sin into one scale, and an eternity of woe and torment into the other, and thus attempt to reach a just conclusion: but it will never do to argue thus. The question is, Did it require an infinite atonement to put away sin? If so, the punishment of sin must be eternal. If nothing short of an infinite sacrifice could deliver from the consequences of sin, those consequences must be eternal.

In a word, then, we must look at sin from God's point of view, and measure it by His standard, else we shall never have a just sense of what it is or what it deserves. It is the height of folly for men to attempt to lay down a rule as to the amount or duration of the punishment due to sin. God alone can settle this. And, after all, what was it that produced all the misery and wretchedness, the sickness and sorrow, the death and desolation, of well-nigh six thousand years? Just one act of disobedience — the eating of a forbidden fruit. Can man explain this? Can human reason explain how one act produced such an overwhelming amount of misery? It cannot. Well, then, if it cannot do this, how can it be trusted when it attempts to decide the question as to what is due to sin? Woe be to all those who commit themselves to its guidance on this most momentous point!

We are not, therefore, called upon to measure what is measureless, or to conceive of so many sins, or those of so many sinners, weighed out to be atoned for by a particular amount of suffering. Such a commercial idea (as it has been rightly called) of the Lord's wondrous work is an essential degradation of it, — not a high, but a low estimate of the requirements of absolute holiness which were to be met thereby. It is not that God must have so much suffering for so much sin, but that His holiness necessitates displeasure proportioned to the evil which awakes it. So even in the final judgment. The deeds done in the body become the manifestation of the person upon whom the judgment of God rests correspondingly, but forever rests; not because, as people have wrongly conceived, the sin itself is necessarily worthy of eternal punishment, but because the sinner remains eternally with the character which his life manifests.

And now, poor sinner, mark this: you may fancy that you are to judge God, and that you are competent to say that He ought to assign so much or so much punishment to so much sin; but know that He is to judge you. The notion of His love, which makes it an obligation incumbent on Him to act so and so in it without His being able to help it, and so that eternal punishment cannot be, is a false, unscriptural, and senseless notion. He is love; but He is God, and acts freely and holily in His love. God is love; but it is GOD that is so. Love is what He is. But the first question is, who He is; and He is God, and doeth what pleaseth Him. Now, mark this. If the Spirit of God has touched your conscience, you know that you deserve to be shut out of the presence of God for ever. You are conscious that you have deserved eternal wrath and punishment. If you are not, you do not know yet, by divine teaching, what sin is. And I pray you to remark that, in this question, it is not what may be, or what might be, which is in question. You are a sinner:-What, in your own conscience, does sin deserve? And further, if it is a question what sin deserves, it is a question of what Christ bore, what His atonement was; for He bore our sins and was made sin for us.

The answer we believe to be, that here we have the climax of all the preceding ages. Mankind started on its fallen and lawless career fascinated by the lie of the devil, "Ye shall be as gods" (Gen. 3:5). Under the same evil leadership and through the two beasts, mankind will make its supreme and last bid to reach the goal of its desire. At this point then human sin reaches its climax and rises to its highest expression. Is it not fitting that the most bitter judgment is to fall on the highest sin? Testimony to the eternity of punishment is quite uniform throughout the New Testament, but at the same time the Lord's own words — Luke 12:47-48, for instance — have indicated that with God, as with men, there are degrees in the severity of judgment. Here, then, we have eternal judgment of the utmost severity which will lie on those who will have carried sin to its most outrageous lengths; the very reading of which fills the soul with horror. Those who fall under it will have "no rest," and they will stand as an eternal witness to the severity of God's judgment against sin. The "smoke of their torment" will be something for every eye to see.

(4.) Thus the punishment is not indiscriminate, because in each case eternal. "Few stripes," as compared with "many," may have (and will have) their counterpart in the wrath inflicted, and yet that wrath "abide" on each who has chosen it for his future portion. Mr. Greg urges strongly the objection indeed of any such "broad, bold line of demarcation," as this infers,

In the day of judgment men will be "judged according to their works." Every sin will receive its just recompense; there will be the infliction of "few stripes" or "many stripes." Penalty will be strictly commensurate with desert.

In the day of judgment, therefore, the award will be given, not according to the nature, (in which they are alike,) but to their works, in which they are not alike. God "will render to every man according to his deeds" (Rom. 2:6). And this, and this alone, will be the exact measure of guilt and responsibility.

We do not accept then the teaching that the punishment of hell is inflicted for the sins of hell. On the other hand we cannot concede that the measure of eternal judgment being the measure of the sins of this life, as it surely is, militates in the least against the doctrine that the eternity of punishment is based upon this eternity of a sinful state. Mr. Constable seems never to have considered indeed this view of it. He must distinguish between sin and a sinful state. The everlasting fire is correlative to the undying worm. And here, if we consider a little, there is no opposition between the eternity of the punishment being linked with the abiding of the sinful condition, and the measure of the suffering being apportioned to the actually committed sins.

But does this call in question the eternity of punishment? By no means. We will try to illustrate this again by an example. Two persons may by the same judgment be condemned to a punishment of equal duration; but whilst the one of these prisoners has nothing to lament but the loss of his liberty and still enjoys many little comforts, the other may have only bread and water with hard labour and corporal punishment. We see therefore different degrees of punishment even down here, but still the time of imprisonment is the same. And if in human government such cases can exist, how much more may God according as the evil deeds of men vary, multiply the punishment, while nevertheless it is an everlasting due for all!

We will take another example, and suppose the case of a person in debt, which he is not in a position to pay, and cast into prison till full payment is made. Every opportunity of getting money is naturally cut off from him; but the debt is there, and he is in prison till he pays it. Surely this punishment is on the principle of a never-ending one. Whether he owes five sovereigns or 500 sovereigns does not alter the case; he is, in the one case as in the other, imprisoned till he pays. Has not God a right to act in like manner? Has not man burdened himself with a heavy debt towards Him? And how will he pay it off? The judgment pronounced by God on Israel runs thus — "Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing." Are we going to contend with Him on account of such a sentence? Certainly no one will venture to say that a person might not commit so great a crime as would impose on every righteous tribunal the necessity of passing sentence of imprisonment for life. Would it not from all sides be demanded that such a delinquent should be deprived of all the privileges which he hitherto enjoyed as a member of human society? Why then is God blamed when He finds it necessary to banish the ungodly for ever from His kingdom?

But it is objected, "How can God who is righteous, pronounce an everlasting punishment, on sins, which committed during a short and limited period, were interrupted in their continuance?" Now where is the scale by which we can determine the amount of punishment for sin? It is quite evident that the duration of the punishment cannot be dependent on the length or brevity of the time in which the sin was committed. A person may commit a crime in five minutes, on which the best earthly government pronounces the punishment of imprisonment for life, or even of death. Even the action in itself does not determine the period of punishment. Two men for instance may be guilty of one and the same crime, and notwithstanding this, the court may sentence the one to two years, the other to twenty, because the one may be for the first time before the bar, whereas the other is known as a hardened and repeatedly punished criminal.