This message is a cousin to the one we shared last Sunday morning. Last week I tried to address “the Servant of Jehovah,” the Lord Jesus Christ. Christ Jesus was a servant by coming to do the will of God. He died on the cross to bear the sins of many.
I introduced that message by reiterating my belief in the triunity of the God-head, the Trinity. Christ, God’s Son is as much God as the Father or the Holy Spirit. They are three separate Persons, but one God – coequal with one another. The Father is God, Christ is God and the Holy Spirit is God, but they are not three Gods. Jesus was pointing to that unity when He said, “I and my Father are one” – speaking of one essence. I am not expecting anyone to fully understand or to skillfully explain it, because I don’t and can’t. I’m only asking you to believe it, because the Bible declares it. Christ, the servant of God – the Son of God – died on the cross, accomplishing His Father’s will. God the Father didn’t go to the cross, and neither did God the Spirit. It was the Second Person of the God-head.
This morning I would like you to understand that your salvation, your deliverance from sin, is dependent upon your faith in the divine Son of God, with emphasis on the Son. Yes, I urge you to trust in Christ Jesus, the Messiah. But please don’t stop with picturing the beaten and bloody man of Galilee. Mary, His mother, was at the crucifixion, but the one who was crucified was more than her son – more than just the “Son of Man,” as He sometimes called Himself. I would like to conclude this message by pointing you to “the Son of God” dying there upon the cross.
But before we get to that point with its own introductory question, I’d like to begin with another. I have two questions: First, How can a God of love send people to Hell? And second, How DOES the God of love take people to Heaven?
How can a loving God send people to Hell?
Was there ever a day when you tried to deflect someone’s efforts of evangelism by asking a question like that? Or, as a Christian has anyone tried to use that question as a picket fence around himself? Usually the person asking that question thinks he’s pretty shrewd. He thinks this is unanswerable. But it is not. How can and should a Christian answer? Perhaps by asking a question in return. “What do you mean by ‘loving God’?”
Many people define a God of love as a supreme being who is non-confrontational, accepting of everyone equally, no matter how evil they might be. None of US are like that, but these people expect God to be like that. A God of love receives the worship of the Hindus, Muslims, volcano worshippers and Christians equally. And therefore everyone is going to Heaven – or to whatever place they think is equivalent to Heaven. While that may be a somewhat common thought, it is not the Biblical definition of God or His love.
The Apostle John wrote a letter filled with love and references to love – both human and divine. It is John who makes the declaration, “God is love,” but it is in a context which those worldly-wise people refuse to consider. John didn’t say “God loves everyone equally, whether atheist, deist, agnostic, animist or Christian.” John didn’t say “God continually displays love through the wonderful things He does, and all the disasters and problems of this world are out of His control.” John never said that God loves everyone, and therefore He judges no one. What John said is our “God IS love” or “God is, by nature, love.”
The God of the Bible doesn’t love the way humans do. For example, He doesn’t see things in people that He likes, and based on that He chooses to love them. Rather, God is love just as fire is hot, or ice is cold. God is, by nature, love. All other kinds of love are defined by the nature of God. Consequently, by His very nature God cannot do anything that is unloving.
“How can a loving God send people to Hell?” There is a misconception embedded in that question. It is the idea that allowing people to go to hell is an unloving act. It implies that you and I are more loving than God, because we don’t want people to go to hell. People with that question judge God by their minds and their emotions. And when they do, they close the door to understanding the real question and its true answer.
The first step in answering this question is to agree with Scripture that “God IS love;” therefore, everything He does is an expression of that perfect love. Please don’t turn off your mind and ears to the rest of this message, because you disagree with me. Hang in there, because I’m going to try to explain. As difficult it is to understand: tornados, hurricanes, death and disease are reflections of God’s love. In same way as the first nine plagues upon Egypt were acts of love and warnings of something more terrible.
There is a second misunderstanding in that question: “How can a loving God send people to Hell?” To my knowledge the Bible doesn’t ever say that God “sends” people to hell. Think about the word “send.” The other day Judy and I dropped some cards in the mail, sending them to Colorado and elsewhere. The cards didn’t send themselves. We stamped and posted them, sending them away. We did all the work. The cards did nothing.
I don’t care what your theology is on this point, when an unbeliever is cast into hell, it is not as if God packaged them up, dropped them into the system, and they went to hell as totally inert objects. No one has ever gone to hell without his own input in the process. Yes, God, the righteous judge, condemns that unrepenting soul to eternal judgment, but that soul has contributed to his judgment. And he has done nothing to prevent that judgment. Let’s read our text once again: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth NOT is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” Why is a person condemned? Because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
“How can a loving God send someone to hell?” That is a poorly worded question. A much better question would be, “SINCE God is love, WHY do some people go to hell?” This is not really the message I want to share with you this morning, so I’ll only lay the foundation of the answer. It is found in Romans 1:18-20 – “The wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness; Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath shewed it unto them. For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things. Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts…” And the end result of that uncleanness is the judgment of the God whom they rejected. The end result of sin is eternal death and the judgment of the Lake of Fire.
The person who believes the Bible should listen to Romans 1 and walk away satisfied with the answer. But most people are not satisfied, because they don’t believe what the Bible says. Since I’m not smart enough or argumentative enough, to convince that person otherwise, I’d like to move forward, leaving the convincing to the ministry of the Holy Spirit. But we still haven’t addressed the concept of a loving God judging those who have changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into images of themselves, things they create and things around them. For that I ask another question, coming around through the back door.
How does a loving, but holy, God take people to heaven?
Just as I John 4:9 tells us that God is love – that God by nature at His core is perfect love – there are other scriptures which tell us that God is absolutely holy. In fact there are many more scriptures which speak of God’s holiness than tell us of His love. “Who is like unto thee?” asked Moses of Jehovah? “Who is like thee, glorious in holiness, fearful in praises, doing wonders?” To the best of my knowledge Moses never – Never – spoke of God’s love. We read the 99th Psalm in our worship service. Its is replete – filled – with declarations of God’s holiness. The angels around God’s throne in Isaiah 6 “cried unto another and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts; the whole earth is full of His glory.” Those angels said nothing about God’s love. Among many other scriptures, perhaps the men of Bethshemesh got it right when they said, “Who is able to stand before this holy Lord God?” The answer to their question is: Absolutely no one by nature and personal righteousness is worthy or capable of standing before the holy God. “For all have sinned and come short of the glory (holiness and love) of God.” “All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way,” rather than to the Lord’s way. “There is none righteous, no not one.” “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
Under this single deadly fact, how can a righteous, and yet loving, God take anyone to heaven and to Himself? For those super-cleaver unbelievers, who question God’s love, listen again to this morning’s primary scriptures. John 3:16 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” I John 4:9 – “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.”
Let’s say that my son’s birthday is coming up soon. He’s nearly 50 years old; he has a great job making a good salary with lots of benefits. He is in good health, enjoying life with his wife and two boys. Let’s say that I send him a birthday card with two crisp $5.00 dollar bills inside. How well does that gift of $10.00 express my love to my son? You may disagree, but I don’t think it would be well expressed. Now, let’s say that he was very, very sick and in a desperate need for a heart transplant. If I sacrificed my life, donating my heart to my son, wouldn’t that be a better expression of my love? Isn’t a person’s love more clearly expressed through the greater sacrifice?
Going back to God, Jehovah created the universe and planted the first human couple in the perfect environment of the Garden of Eden. Then that couple deliberately chose to defy God, their Creator, sinning against Him. In love and grace, God authorized Adam and Eve, and all of their descendants, to give him their little $5.00 bills in the form of animal sacrifices. Figuratively speaking, some of us have been faithful throughout the centuries, giving to God those animals. We have been so impoverished by sin that the only gift we could have given to the Lord are those minuscule little sacrifices which He first gave to us.
But because God IS love, He chose, out of His own will, to give us something better to sacrifice. “When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth his Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons” – Galatians 4:4-5. God didn’t put into our hands or into our pastures, beautiful, perfect, expensive lambs or bullocks, telling us to sacrifice them to cover our sins. Rather, He sent His own, and together, Father and Son, they made the perfect sacrifice for our sins. Please don’t think that Jehovah isn’t a God of love, when He gave us the greatest gift possible.
With that we begin to come to the thought which the Spirit planted in my heart earlier this week.
In love God sacrificed His beloved Son.
You may not have noticed, but many of the scriptures I’ve quoted this morning have referred to God’s sacrifice of His own precious Son. We could talk about the “sacrifice of CHRIST on the Cross,” and what we might say would be true. In some churches today there are sermons about “the death of JESUS on the Cross,” and those messages would probably come close to the mark. But I want you to see that most of the scriptures I have quoted have referred to the sacrifice of “the Son of God” – God’s beloved Son – the only begotten Son of God. Mister Unbeliever, put that into the context of your question: “How can a loving God send anyone to hell?”
The Apostle John was the one Biblical writer to use the Greek word which is translated “only begotten.” In the introduction to the gospel bearing John’s name, he spoke of God the Son. “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world know him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” The words “only begotten” are not meant to suggest that there are other sons who have not been begotten. It refers to a relationship which is absolutely unique. It is an intimate relationship no one else can have.
That is the same word which John uses later in his introduction: John 1:18 – “No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.” That is the word John uses in I John 4:9 – “In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.” And it is the word of John 3:16 and 18 – “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” All of these scriptures tell us that people are condemned, they miss eternal life, because they refuse to believe in and trust “the only begotten Son of God.” And those who are eventually cast into Hell receive that judgment, not because God lacks love, but because they have rejected that love and refused to trust the sacrifice of the Son of God.
Let me share with you some other scriptures which don’t use that particular word, but which are very similar. Romans 5:6 – “For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” Romans 8:31 – “What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own son, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?” Sinners are not saved through the sacrifice of simply a “worthy” substitute. We have been saved by the blood of God’s own precious Son. I John 4:10 – “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (the satisfaction) for our sins.”
Do you question God’s love? Why do you do that? How can you doubt the love of God when He ripped His heart out and nailed it to the cross? “God commendeth his love toward us – God proved his love toward us – in that while we were yet sinners, Christ, God’s only begotten son, died for us.”
I’ll close with a familiar Old Testament illustration. Israel, the nation which God called “his son,” lay in bondage to Egypt. The Lord raised up Moses, the evangelist, to tell the king of Egypt to let God’s chose people go free. In Exodus 4:22-23 Moses was commissioned to put it this way: “And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my first born; and I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me; and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.” God graciously – you might even say “lovingly” sent nine horrible plagues upon Egypt, testifying that the Lord could, and would, keep His word. The first born sons of the Egyptians would die, if those sinners didn’t obey God’s command. At the appropriate time, each of the families of Israel slaughtered a Passover lamb, many of which were the first born lamb of that particular ewe sheep. In that sacrifice, the first born sons of Israel lived, because a substitute died and shed its blood. But for the Egyptians, who refused the substitute, their first born sons all died. It was first born for first born. The Egyptians could have been spared, but they chose not to be.
Similarly God sent His only begotten Son, His first born, His eternal Son, to die as a substitute for sinners. Don’t try to tell me that God has no love, or that sinners have more love than God. It isn’t true. “God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
Rather than spit in the face of God and to question His love, why don’t you admit that you hate the Lord and the Saviour. Admit to your sin and rebellion and repent of them; turn from your rebellion. And reach out by faith, trusting in the blood of God’s eternal Son and blessed sacrifice. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”