Why did a loving God create people knowing they would go to hell?

This question seems to really be encompassing two things. First, why a loving God would send people to hell. Second, why God created people he knew would go to hell.

This raises another question, why did our loving God create man, knowing that his own son would have to come to earth and die for them? Why do we think we are owed an answer?

Sadly this question often gets asked by parents, who look at their children and struggle with the idea that God would let their children exist knowing they could go to hell. This is ironic though. Think about it, parents love their children, don’t they! If their child was planned, they chose to have their child out of love. Yet they knew their child would die one day, because everyone will. Did they question their own motives just because they knew their child would one day die and yet chose to have them anyway?

Despite this irony, the question warrants an answer. There are many reasons to give.

We might respond to the question by attacking it’s premise. God is good and love and can send people to hell. We can’t change that. Okay, now repent so you don’t end up there. But there are many good reasons to be given addressing the three issues:
(1) we misunderstand what love is;
(2) we misunderstand God’s character; and
(3) we misunderstand the purpose of hell and the choice of man.

Let’s start by better understanding the “love” that God is.

Love believes all things

When you ask how a “loving God” would do something, you must first ask what is “love”.

The Bible explains what love is very comprehensively and one explanation of love is that “love believes all things”. Love has a certain entrusting nature to it. That is not to say God had a false belief about where we would end up, but it does mean God rightly expected we would be loyal to him because of His love.

God loves people not robots

God knew every outcome possible but God clearly wanted children who would choose to love him. Love is a choice. If we were made without the choice of betraying him or being faithful to him, our love is without choice. Robots don’t love. They just do what they’re programmed to do. People have a choice. Robots don’t. God made people to love because robots can’t choose to love.

He knew everyone would betray him, but he had a plan to save and reconciled them to himself. This way they could love him all the more because “the one who is forgiven much will love much.”

God loves His Glory

We’re not the only ones God loves. He loves us people for sure, but he also loves his glory. In Romans 9:22-24, we learn that God is entitled to make vessels for destruction if it glorifies him. Thankfully, God has offered Heaven to all (Romans 10:13). God loves his glory, as well as people.

God’s character

Fundamental to this question is a misunderstanding of God. God is not only motivated by love, but also a God of perfect justice and perfect mercy. Justice means that God punishes the guilty and expects payment of debts. Mercy means he forgives the guilty and justifies the wrongdoer. God reconciles his justice and mercy through the payment of life made by Jesus on the cross.

When we think of why God created us, much more is going on than only love. God’s glory, justice, truth, mercy, supremacy and so on are all relevant to His creating us.

The Eternal Dignity of God

The gravity of the insult rises with the dignity of the one insulted. If I slapped my brother, I might get one back. If I slapped a policeman, I might end up in jail. If I slapped the prime minister I can expect a longer sentence. However, if I slapped the Queen, I might not be seen for a long time. The Queen’s dignity made my insult more grave. God is of eternal dignity. Our insult is eternally grave.

When we ask why God made people knowing they would go to hell, we are ignoring the plain fact that we deserve hell. In making man, God didn’t make man go to hell. We earned it by choice. God is glorified because in spite of our deserving hell, he has offered us heaven.

Hell was made for the Devil

Hell was made for the devil and his angels. When man joins the devil’s rebellion, he joins the devil’s destiny.

God offers life to everyone

God has offered life to everyone, even that tribe that has never heard the Gospel. In the middle of Africa, a traditional medicine man was seeking the one true God. This man had never seen a white man or heard about Jesus. Isolated in Africa, all he knew was pagan religion. One evening, he fell asleep and God revealed to him in a dream that he was sending him missionaries in a car. He didn’t even know what a car was. Years of faithful waiting later, God fulfilled his promise and the whole village received the Gospel. There are many stories like this. “God …commands all people everywhere to repent” (Acts 17:30).

People choose not to be saved

At the end of the day people refuse heaven because they “do not love the truth” and instead “suppress the truth in unrighteousness”. God created man entrusting him with a relationship, but he chose to betray God.

Humans Choose Hell

In choosing to betray God, man has chosen hell.

We shouldn’t question God

Finally, we have good reason to thank God for making us. Why do we question God? He owes us no explanation or account. Yet he lovingly explains so much in the scriptures.

God loves me just the way I am?

God loves sinners so much he gave his only son to die for them to reconcile them to Him (Romans 5:8; John 3:16). This is an undeniable truth.

Someone might ask, “So does this mean that God loves me just the way I am?” In response, let us make three points.

(1) While God loves you “the way you are”, or rather in spite of the way you are, you cannot love him the way you are, because your sin interferes with your relationship. You need to be born again.

(2) God’s love for you caused Jesus to come and die for you to change you. God doesn’t love “the way you are”, He loves you and wants to change the way you are so you can love Him. What we mean is that, God loves sinners and wants to remove their sinfulness to restore their relationship with Him.

(3) God’s love for us is because God is love, not because we deserve love. We humans tend to think worthiness = love.This is human thinking.  God’s love is perfect and stems from his own nature not our deserving of it. He calls us to love the undeserving by loving your enemies, because He loves His enemies.

Lord of both the dead and the living

“For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that he might be Lord both of the dead and living.” (Romans 14:9)

Hero

A house is on fire and several teens are trapped inside. It is a frightening ordeal for anyone to witness. A woman living nextdoor makes the difficult decision and breaks down their door putting herself at great personal danger to rescue the teenagers stricken inside.

“I was just thinking about them. I just wanted to get them out,” she said. “I just had to take a deep breath and put it in the back of my mind that nobody wanted to help them.” (CBC News, 3 September 2015).

What motivates people to save others at great risk or sacrifice to themselves?

What makes a hero?

A hero is someone who makes a great exploit of personal sacrifice for another person, group of people or simply a cause. Heroes by definition are those who give of themselves for worthy causes. Heroes are admired for their sacrificial love, exploits and commitment to others.

Crucial to understanding earthly heroes is knowing that they must first judge the cause or person worthy of their sacrifice. They find themselves compelled by the worthiness of the person for whom they sacrifice everything. This drives them to great endeavour.

Explorers like Marco Polo, Captain Cooke and Francis Drake all judged that discovery of new lands, peoples and kingdoms were a worthy cause. Parents have judged their children worthy of love and made great sacrifice for their children. Think of the many heroes who have given themselves for others – those they deemed worthy.

Does a hero ever die for an unworthy person?

Beyond Hero

There is One who went beyond the heroes we often hear of on earth. This sacrifice involved not merely the ultimate sacrifice, but also made it for the unworthy.

Who were the unworthy? Who made the sacrifice?

“For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die– but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life.” (Romans 5:6-10)

This is available to every enemy of God. “But”, you say, “I’m not an enemy of God!”. The Bible makes it clear that as sinners, we were all enemies of God (Romans 3:23). The good news is that God loved His enemies so much, Jesus died for you and me (John 3:16).

Put all your trust and faith in Jesus. Jesus died for all – for the unborn baby, it’s mum and the abortionist alike.

 

 

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Romans Road: Step 6

Know that if you call on the Name of Jesus, then you will be saved. Saved from death, sin, guilt, hell, and separation from God.

Those who seek will find. Knock and it will be opened to you. God resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.

This is a promise fulfilled in Christ. You can and must trust it. Act on it!

Romans Road: Step 5

Confession is a true and accurate statement about self. If we confess Jesus as Lord, then we are admitting that Jesus has authority and the right to rule over our life. It also means we should be willing to live with His will over ours.

Believing in your heart that God raise Jesus from the dead is essential. If you believe God raised Jesus from the dead, then you must first believe that Jesus died for your sins.

If we confess Jesus’ authority over our life and believe in his atonement and resurrection (victory over sin and death), then we will be saved.

Romans Road: Step 4

When someone dies for another, it means that they have judged the person for whom they died as worthy of the sacrifice. But what makes the sacrifice of Jesus so remarkable was that we are so unworthy.

Scarcely would we die for a good person, but Jesus died for bad people. We who were sinners, were undeserving. But God who is love demonstrated his love towards us because he is love, not because we were worthy of love.

Isn’t it wonderful knowing God loves us even though we didn’t deserve it!?

Romans Road: Step 3

God not only made us, but in the perfect creation He also sustains us. Something bad happened. Because we are separated from God by our sin, we begin to die the moment we sin. We are separated from our source and sustenance of life. ‘Wages’ implies a just and deserving outcome to our sin.

Because we are separated from God, we are separated from life, peace and joy.

But there is good news.

That separation that caused death was overcome when Christ took on human flesh and died for us, uniting us with God. ‘Gift’ means undeserved. We sinned and deserved to die, but God, at great cost, has given us THE free gift of eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Romans Road: Step 1

No one has right standing with God because we are separated from God by our iniquities (Isaiah 59:3). The good news is that Jesus came into the world to reconcile us to God.

Proof of God

What they look for through the telescope, they already see through the microscope. Out there in space, they reason, if there is intelligence, there will be some kind of code. And we will know it is a code if some sort of natural pattern occurs that carries information. Information carrying codes can only be designed by intelligence and therefore, they conclude, it will indicate an intelligent source. If it were seen, they think it would suggest aliens exist. Bright minds of science have rallied to this idea, yet funny enough they have missed the most beautiful hallmark of supernatural intelligence.

No need to look out to space. We have already an amazing code carrying complex designer information, the genetic blueprint of our bodies. Every single cell has it. This library of information found in each of our cells didn’t come about by chance. It demands intelligence to write a code.

You see the Bible tells us that (Heb 11:3) “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.”

But of course! Only a God who authored life could account for the amazing way that we are made by information written in a code in our cells.

Yet, they still keep looking for magic Martians out in space, hoping, wishing we’re not alone.

Who was this intelligence?

It’s simple. Everything that begins to exist requires a cause. The universe began to exist. Therefore, the universe requires a cause. This cause had to be timeless, spaceless and immaterial (because the universe is all that is time, space and matter). Moreover, since intelligence is required to author our DNA, a cause that is intelligent is required. So who fits this description perfectly? That’s right, God.

Since God is eternal (timeless), omnipresent (spaceless), Spirit (definitely not material), and intelligent the answer is obviously Him.

Not everything requires a cause, just all things with a beginning. So God Himself does not require a cause, because He had no beginning.

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