Have you ever heard something about someone that you knew couldn’t be true? If someone told me that they saw my wife doing daredevil stunts in our car, I wouldn’t believe it. From all the years we’ve known each other, that wouldn’t make any sense.[i]
Likewise, the traditional view of hell presents a divine character problem for many. Hearing about God endlessly torturing people or even allowing them to perpetually harm themselves doesn’t make sense to many followers of Christ. In fact, as we have seen, it hasn’t made sense to people for almost two millennia.
God’s Character
John writes, “God is love” (1 Jn 4:8, 16) so God’s fundamental essence or “reigning attribute” is love.[ii] Thus, it is impossible for God to be unloving to anyone, including his adversaries.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus taught us to love our enemies even as our Father in heaven loves his enemies (Matt 5:43–48). And he explains that loving our enemies means doing good to those who hate us, blessing those who curse us, and praying for those who mistreat us (Lk 6:27–28). This is the kind of love God has shown to us in Christ. Paul writes, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Rom 5:8). Although we were God’s enemies, God still loved us. So the statement “God is love” remains true no matter who is in view—friends or enemies. And it remains true no matter the time being considered—this world or the world to come. God is not hate. God is love.
We see God’s love by looking at Christ because he is “the image of the invisible God” (Col 1:15) and “the exact representation of [God’s] being” (Heb 1:3). Jesus shows us God perfectly because he is God in a human body. What does this mean? It means that if we could go to a show featuring an appearance of God, we would see Jesus on center stage. I am not saying that Jesus and God the Father are one and the same. The point is that if we want to know what God is like, we must look directly at Jesus.
So what was Jesus like? He taught and practiced nonviolence and love for all. When he was crucified, he prayed that his attackers would be forgiven (Lk 23:34), and when he rose from the dead he didn’t seek revenge on those who killed him. Instead he told his disciples to preach “repentance for the forgiveness of sins . . . to all nations” (24:47). This is what God is like.
A Jesus-like God wouldn’t torment or punish people forever because that doesn’t correspond with his nature. How could the one who prayed for his enemies lock people away in an eternal dungeon? How could the one who taught us to love our enemies, allow his to be tormented forever?
God’s Desire
Furthermore, Scripture explicitly states that God desires the salvation of all.
This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth. (1 Tim 2:3–4)
he is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. (2 Pet 3:9)
God’s Work
God not only wants all to be saved, in Christ he has already set the wheels of universal salvation in motion.
The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and said, “Look, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” (Jn 1:29)
Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. (Rom 5:18)
For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all people. (1 Tim 2:5–6)
That is why we labor and strive, because we have put our hope in the living God, who is the Savior of all people, and especially of those who believe. (1 Tim 4:10)
He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 Jn 2:2)
Notice the universal nature of these statements linked with the essential role of Christ. Ultimate reconciliation can only occur through Christ because he is “the Savior of the world” (Jn 4:42).
The Final Word
Despite all this, certain passages seem to indicate that divine judgment will be the final word spoken to sinners. For instance, those who try to enter the kingdom of heaven without having done God’s will, hear these words, “I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers” (Matt 7:23). Following this statement there is not a hint of saving hope. Likewise, after listing the acts of the flesh, Paul writes, “I warn you, as I did before, that those who live like this will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Gal 5:21). Case closed.
Other verses, however, state that God’s anger is temporary.
The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever. (Ps 103:8–9)
Isaiah declares,
I will not accuse them forever,
nor will I always be angry,
for then they would faint away because of me—
the very people I have created. (57:16)
The book of Lamentations says,
For no one is cast off
by the Lord forever.
Though he brings grief, he will show compassion,
so great is his unfailing love.
For he does not willingly bring affliction
or grief to anyone. (3:31–33)
These references and others highlight a major idea: anger or wrath is not a “permanent quality” in God.[iii] He will not be angry forever.
Understanding Divine Judgment
If these assertions about God’s character are accurate, if “God is love,” divine judgment must have a loving purpose. And viewing this judgment as remedial corresponds with a compassionate objective.
How do loving parents relate to a wayward child? Do they merely punish indefinitely? They discipline with the goal of helping their child to change. Their goal is remediation or restoration not retribution. If human parents correct in this way, would God do any less? The book of Proverbs even encourages us to link human correction with divine discipline:
My son, do not despise the Lord’s discipline,
and do not resent his rebuke,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
as a father the son he delights in. (3:11–12)
God’s discipline is like a father correcting his beloved son. Does a father punish his child indefinitely without a remedial purpose? What would we say about a father who even considered such a thing? As usual Hart doesn’t hold back,
the idea of a punishment that does not serve an ameliorative purpose—as, by definition, eternal punishment cannot—should be a scandal to any sane conscience. Endless torture, never eventuating in the reform or moral improvement of the soul that endures it, is in itself an infinite banality. A lesson that requires an eternity to impart is a lesson that can never be learned.[iv]
God’s discipline, then, cannot be merely vindictive or retributive because that’s not how an earthly father disciplines a beloved son. What about a child who does something so evil that his parents agree that he deserves a life sentence in prison? How is that remedial? In that case, what else can loving parents do but hope the life sentence helps their child come to his senses and have a change of heart? God, however, has unlimited resources to reach the hardest of hearts in the age(s) to come.
Old Testament Examples
Several biblical examples support the idea that divine judgment is restorative and not merely punitive. We have already seen how the Valley of Ben Hinnom was promised to be purified from a state of defilement to holiness. Jeremiah declares,
The whole valley where dead bodies and ashes are thrown, and all the terraces out to the Kidron Valley on the east as far as the corner of the Horse Gate, will be holy to the LORD. (31:40)
Second, God sent the rebellious people of Israel into exile in Babylon (2 Kgs 24–25). When King Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Israel’s temple and the king’s palace, and took the people as captives to a distant land, Israel appeared to be finished. But a few decades later another king made a decree allowing the captives to return to their homeland and rebuild the temple (Ezra 1). Israel’s captivity was temporary. The storyline of the Old Testament ends with restoration.
Third, Manasseh (709–643 BC) was one of the most wicked kings in Israel’s history. He promoted the worship of false gods, even to the point of placing an idol in Israel’s temple, and sacrificing his children in the Valley of Ben Hinnom. So God brought against him the army commanders of Assyria “who took Manasseh prisoner, put a hook in his nose, bound him with bronze shackles and took him to Babylon” (2 Chron 33:11). Then Manasseh humbled himself in prayer and repentance. And God accepted his prayer of contrition and restored him to his kingdom.
But aren’t these only instances of God’s people, the people of Israel, being restored after judgment? What about non-Israelites?
When God delivered Israel from slavery in Egypt, he struck the Egyptians with plagues. But Isaiah extends divine healing even to the Egyptians.
The LORD will strike Egypt with a plague; he will strike them and heal them. They will turn to the LORD, and he will respond to their pleas and heal them. (19:22)
Similarly, the Assyrians were the enemies of Israel who destroyed the northern kingdom in 722 BC. After Isaiah announces judgment against Assyria (10:1–19), he offers a divine blessing:
In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.” (19:24–25)
New Testament Examples
These are examples from the Old Testament but what about the New Testament? A prime example can be found in Romans 9–11. Paul begins by expressing deep sorrow for Israel because, for the most part, she has rejected her Messiah. His initial answer appeals to God’s sovereignty: “Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden” (9:18). He continues by calling those who reject Christ “objects [or vessels] of his wrath” (vv. 22). But this is not the end of the story.
Although the people of Israel were obstinate in rejecting the Messiah, Paul states,
Israel has experienced a hardening in part until the full number of the Gentiles has come in, and in this way all Israel will be saved. (11:25b–26a)
Israel’s hardening, then, is temporary and purposeful. In the end, “all Israel will be saved.”[v] A few verses later, Paul says, “For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all” (v. 32). Those who were hardened in Romans 9 receive mercy in Romans 11.
On an individual level, Peter comes to mind. While waiting in the high priest’s courtyard during Jesus’ trial, Peter denied that he knew Jesus three times. Then “the Lord turned and looked straight at Peter” (Lk 22:61). Peter responded by going outside and weeping bitterly (v. 62). At this point, based purely on Jesus’ words, it seems that Peter’s failure has led him into a hopeless situation. Jesus had taught, “Whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” (Lk 9:26). Peter was ashamed of Jesus, now Jesus will be ashamed of Peter, right?
Yet when Jesus rises from the dead, the angel tells the women, “go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you’” (Mk 16:7). Apparently, then, Peter had a personal encounter with the risen Christ not narrated in the Gospels. Paul says, “he appeared to Cephas [Peter], and then to the Twelve” (1 Cor 15:5). Finally, Jesus appeared to seven of his followers who had gone fishing, including Peter. After the meal, Jesus had a conversation with Peter. Instead of rebuking or condemning Peter, Jesus asked him the same question three times, “do you love me” (Jn 21:15–17) then he gave Peter two commands: “Feed my sheep” and “Follow me!” (vv. 17–19). This appears to be Jesus’ way of reinstating Peter in a public setting. Most importantly, for our purpose, this story shows the heart of Christ. He is not seeking to judge and condemn; he wants to save and restore.
Finally, the story of the prodigal son corresponds with the theme of restoration. The younger son wasted his father’s inheritance in wild living in a distant country then decided to return home and offer to be a hired servant.
But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him. (Lk 15:20)
The compassionate father is a picture of our heavenly Father.
Some patterns are hard to detect, but this pattern is obvious: judgment then restoration. Divine mercy is the final word not divine judgment. So that must mean God’s discipline is meant to purify or refine.
After Death?
What does this pattern mean for individuals after death? We should begin by acknowledging that we don’t have explicit biblical statements regarding afterlife correction. However, since the pattern we have seen is based on God’s character, ultimately revealed in Jesus, and God’s character doesn’t change, we have a basis for seeing this pattern extend beyond death. God is love before we die and God is love after we die. In fact, Paul even says that death cannot “separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:39). Hence, God cannot and will not hate, not even his enemies. It is reasonable to conclude, then, that divine discipline in the afterlife must be remedial in nature.
How long will it last? Paul mentions the “coming ages” (Eph 2:7). How long is an age? We have no idea. So the refining process could be long, and most likely, painful. How can it not be? Discipline or correction always hurts (Heb 12:11).
Gregory of Nyssa
Gregory of Nyssa writes the following through the voice of his sister:
Not in hatred or revenge for a wicked life, to my thinking does God bring upon sinners those painful dispensation; He is only claiming and drawing to Himself whatever, to please Him, came into existence. But while He for a noble end is attracting the soul to Himself, the Fountain of all Blessedness, it is the occasion necessarily to the being so attracted of a state of torture.[vi]
He continues by giving two analogies. First, refining gold from the dross:
Just as those who refine gold from the dross which it contains not only get this base alloy to melt in the fire, but are obliged to melt the pure gold along with the alloy, and then while this last is being consumed the gold remains, so, while evil is being consumed in the purgatorial fire, the soul that is welded to this evil must inevitably be in the fire too, until the spurious material alloy is consumed and annihilated by the fire.
Second, removing plastered clay from a rope:
If a clay of the more tenacious kind is deeply plastered round a rope, and then the end of the rope is put through a narrow hole, and then some one on the further side violently pulls it by that end, the result must be that, while the rope itself obeys the force exerted, the clay that has been plastered upon it is scraped off it with this violent pulling and is left outside the hole, and, moreover, is the cause why the rope does not run easily through the passage, but has to undergo a violent tension at the hands of the puller. In such manner, I think, we may figure to ourselves the agonized struggle of the soul which has wrapped itself up in earthly material passions, when God is drawing it, His own one, to Himself, and the foreign matter, which has somehow grown into its substance, has to be scraped from it by main force, and so occasions it that keen intolerable anguish.
Isaac of Nineveh
Regarding this judgment of love, Isaac of Syria (c. 613–700), also known as Isaac of Nineveh, the seventh century Syriac bishop, says,
I also maintain that those who are punished in Gehenna are scourged by the scourge of love. For what is so bitter and vehement as the punishment of love? I mean that those who have become conscious that they have sinned against love suffer greater torment from this than from any fear of punishment. For the sorrow caused in the heart by sin against love is sharper than any torment that can be. It would be improper for a man to think that sinners in Gehenna are deprived of the love of God. Love is the offspring of knowledge of the truth which, as is commonly confessed, is given to all. The power of love works in two ways: it torments those who have played the fool, even as happens here when a friend suffers from a friend; but it becomes a source of joy for those who have observed its duties. Thus I say that this is the torment of Gehenna: bitter regret. But love inebriates the souls of the sons of Heaven by its delectability.[vii]
Pope Benedict
In Pope Benedict’s (1927–2022) Encyclical Letter, Spe Salvi, delivered in 2007, he gives a stunning description of Christ’s piercing and fiery judgment:
Some recent theologians are of the opinion that the fire which both burns and saves is Christ himself, the Judge and Saviour. The encounter with him is the decisive act of judgement. Before his gaze all falsehood melts away. This encounter with him, as it burns us, transforms and frees us, allowing us to become truly ourselves. All that we build during our lives can prove to be mere straw, pure bluster, and it collapses. Yet in the pain of this encounter, when the impurity and sickness of our lives become evident to us, there lies salvation. His gaze, the touch of his heart heals us through an undeniably painful transformation “as through fire”. But it is a blessed pain, in which the holy power of his love sears through us like a flame, enabling us to become totally ourselves and thus totally of God. In this way the inter-relation between justice and grace also becomes clear: the way we live our lives is not immaterial, but our defilement does not stain us for ever if we have at least continued to reach out towards Christ, towards truth and towards love. Indeed, it has already been burned away through Christ’s Passion. At the moment of judgement we experience and we absorb the overwhelming power of his love over all the evil in the world and in ourselves. The pain of love becomes our salvation and our joy. It is clear that we cannot calculate the “duration” of this transforming burning in terms of the chronological measurements of this world. The transforming “moment” of this encounter eludes earthly time-reckoning—it is the heart’s time, it is the time of “passage” to communion with God in the Body of Christ. The judgement of God is hope, both because it is justice and because it is grace.[viii]
Summary
In light of the whole Bible, it makes the most sense to see divine judgment as flowing from God’s love. Hence it must be restorative in nature. Let’s conclude this chapter by contemplating three biblical affirmations:
- God wants all to be saved.
- “God is love.”
- “Love never fails.”
———————-
[i] The idea for this illustration comes from Gregory Boyd who uses the story of seeing his wife slap a homeless person in his book Cross Vision: How the Crucifixion of Jesus Makes Sense of Old Testament Violence (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2017), chap. 1.
[ii] John Wesley (1703–1791) used the phrase “reigning attribute.” Cited in Bradley, 130.
[iii] Thiselton, 164.
[iv] Hart, That All Shall Be Saved, 168.
[v] It makes sense to view “all Israel” as a reference to ethnic Israel. See MacDonald, chap. 4 and Campbell, chap. 18. Does this mean “all Israel” alive at the end or “all Israel” who has ever lived? MacDonald says, “even if Paul were merely thinking synchronically, there are still good theological grounds for us to extend this into a diachronic interpretation. The reasoning is simple: Paul is showing how God is indeed faithful to his covenant with national Israel by saving them all. However, if this promise only applies to the final generation, then it remains the case that the vast majority of Jews who have lived are not saved, and the very problem Paul was seeking to solve remains with us.” (Kindle, 2798).
[vi] On the Soul and the Resurrection, public domain.
[vii] Quoted in Kimel, 192.
[viii] Paragraph 47. www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_ben-xvi_enc_20071130_spe-salvi.html. I’m grateful to the Grace Saves All podcast hosted by David Artman for drawing my attention to this quote.
After graduating from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, I served as a high school Bible teacher in Asia. I enjoy traveling, writing, and playing the drums. For a deep dive into church history and the character of God, see my book Surprised by Hell.