Why does God send people to hell?

Sin must be punished; God is insulted by it; an affront to Him in the very nature of things spells defeat. Malevolence cannot be met by benevolence merely; active open enmity cannot be reconciled. Sin is never either forgiven nor condoned, it is condemned. Hence the Cross, and the lake of fire, with the complete triumph of God — Father, Son and Spirit, over sin, Satan, death, and hell, the public vindication of the character of God in righteousness and holiness of eternity. In the Cross a way has been made for salvation to the penitent, and millions have been saved and blest, to come eternally into all the good and joy of the heart of God, where all that He is, in love and glory, shall be known and enjoyed, while the lost will remain for ever a witness to His holy government and supreme majesty.

And further, be it remembered, that the Word of God speaks of degrees of punishment. It speaks of "few stripes" and "many stripes." It uses such words as "more tolerable" for one than another.

What mean such words, if there be not varied grounds of judgement, varied characters of responsibility, varied measures of guilt, varied degrees of punishment? Men may reason; but "the Judge of all the earth will do right." It is of no possible use for people to argue and discuss. Every man will be judged and punished according to his deeds. This is the teaching of Holy Scripture; and it would be much better and safer and wiser for men to submit to it than to reason against it, for they may rest fully assured of it that the judgement-seat of Christ will make very short work of their reasonings. Impenitent sinners will be judged and punished according to their works: and, although men may affect to believe that it is inconsistent with the idea of a God of love that any of His creatures should be condemned to endure eternal punishment in hell, still sin must be punished; and those who reason against its punishment have only a one-sided view of God's nature and character. They have invented a god of their own who will connive at sin. But it will not do. The God of the Bible, the God whom we see at the cross, the God of Christianity will beyond all question, execute judgement upon all who reject His Son; that judgement will be according to every man's works; and the result of that judgement will, inevitably, be "The lake that burns with fire and brimstone," forever and forever.

And this is the thing that God lays to their charge. Light is come into the world, and they have loved darkness because their works were evil. Could there be a more just subject of condemnation? It was no question of their not finding pardon, but of their preferring darkness to light that they might continue in sin.

There is not, within the covers of the volume of God, in the entire range of His dealings with His creatures, in the aspect of His character, or in the enactments of His moral government, the very faintest shadow of a foundation for such an objection. Every man is left without excuse. God can say to all who have rejected His gospel, "I would, but ye would not." There is absolutely no such thing as reprobation in the word of God, meaning, the consignment on God's part, of any number of His creatures to everlasting damnation. Everlasting fire is prepared for the devil and his angels. (Matt. 25.) Men will rush into it. "Vessels of wrath" are fitted, not by God, but by themselves, "to destruction." (Rom. 9.) Everyone who gets to heaven will have to thank God for it. Everyone who finds himself in hell will have to thank himself for it.

But there is a very solemn back-ground to the blessed entrance into the kingdom: "Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels" (ver. 41). Observe, He does not say, Cursed of My Father, answering to "Blessed of My Father." God hates putting away. So when the awful moment comes for the curse to be pronounced on these wicked Gentiles, it is "Depart from Me, ye cursed." I believe it is the deepest sorrow to God, and throws all the onus of destruction on those whose own sin it was, who rejected His love and holiness and glory in rejecting His Son. "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." In the other case the kingdom was said to be "prepared for you:" not so when speaking about the curse. Hell was not prepared for poor guilty man. He deserves it; but it was prepared for the devil and his angels. Where the souls rejected the testimony, he does pronounce them cursed. He is the King, the judge. But whether it be the great white throne, or this earthly throne, it is "everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." There was no hope of deliverance for these fallen angels — no redemption for them. They wilfully and without a tempter departed from God. Man was tempted by an enemy; and God feels for guilty man, drawn away by a mightier, if not more guilty, rebel than himself. How solemn to think that it was prepared for others, and that men share it with these rebellious spirits? It was not in the heart of God to make a hell for miserable man: it was prepared for the devil and his angels. But there were those who preferred the devil to God; and to such He says, "Depart from Me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels." The same test is applied to them as to the godly before — the treatment of the King and of His messengers, or rather of Him in them.

But does God send His gospel to people merely to place them under responsibility and increase their guilt? Far be the monstrous thought! He sends His gospel to the lost sinner in order that he may be saved, for God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. All, therefore, who perish shall have none but themselves to blame.

Christ dying for the world, the testimony of God's love to men at large, is no vain thing because in fact all are not saved by it. It demonstrates to us that infinite goodness from which men have to break away: that, of which He has sworn, "As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?" (Ezek. 33:11) Men die because of their own will, not of God's will; yet they die. And men crudely ask of God's omnipotence why He cannot convert them all. But omnipotence itself must needs be limited by His other attributes. What Infinite Wisdom can do I must be myself infinitely wise to know.

The eternity of the doom at last has been wrongly based by many. Judgment is eternal, not necessarily because sin as an infinite wrong must have an infinite punishment; that at least might be debated, and from Scripture could scarcely be established; but because the sinner remains a sinner, and the wrath upon him necessarily remains. There is not, and cannot be, any more open rebellion; all bow necessarily under the hand of God, and there are no more sins to suffer for; mercy has limited punishment to the reward of what was "done in the body" strictly, and punishment is in this way truly corrective — a restraint.

Thus "it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment," and these are the two things needed to be borne for men. Of these, death, though necessary, is the far smaller part. Judgment, the bearing of wrath, is seen in the "outer darkness," away from the presence of God who is "Light," and in the fire of the sin-offering or of the lake of fire. On the one hand, He who is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, turns away His face; on the other, He who is Light, and to whom nothing is hid, manifests Himself in wrath against the unrepentant. Yet there may be "many stripes" or "few," as the Lord has expressly said.

Ah, reader, you must see that God alone can estimate sin and its just deserts, and He alone can tell us all about it. And has He not done so? Yes, verily, He has measured sin in the cross of His Son; and there, too, He has set forth in the most impressive manner what it deserves. What, think you, must that be that caused the bitter cry, "My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?" If God forsook His only-begotten Son when He was made sin, must He not also forsake all who are found in their sins? But how can they ever get rid of them? We believe the conclusion is unavoidable. We consider that the infinite nature of the atonement proves unanswerably the doctrine of eternal punishment. That peerless and precious sacrifice is at once the foundation of our eternal life and of our deliverance from eternal death. It delivers from eternal wrath and introduces to eternal glory. It saves from the endless misery of hell and procures for us the endless bliss of Heaven. Thus, whatever side of the Cross we look at, or from whatever side we view it, we see eternity stamped upon it. If we view it from the gloomy depths of hell or from the sunny heights of Heaven, we see it to be the same infinite, eternal, divine reality. It is by the Cross we must measure both the blessedness of Heaven and the misery of hell. Those who put their trust in that blessed One who died on the cross obtain everlasting life and felicity. Those who reject Him must sink into endless perdition.

With every upright and rational person, the truth of the Word must be admitted, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” This is recorded by the Holy Spirit, and proved in our experience to be true. God, the righteous Judge of all, being holy, must necessarily condemn sin, and its righteous sentence must be borne. It was a great day, a most searching day, full of serious and eternal importance, when we were brought to face this fact, encouraged by the sense that God was merciful as well as just. The thought of banishment from His presence to the realms of eternal woe—the lake of fire—was indeed dreadful; but the thought of God’s grace and goodness sustained confidence that He would bless somehow.