Four Reasons Hell Is Offensive - Soul Choice Ministries

Let’s look at why people find hell offensive.

Hell is incompatible with God’s unconditional love.
Hell’s eternal punishment is disproportionate to a human’s earthly lifetime of sin. Or an eternal hell violates basic fairness and justice.
Hell’s reality rejects subjective truth and relativism.
Hell is offensive to basically “good” people.

Let’s briefly look at the first reason it is offensive: Hell is incompatible with God’s unconditional love.

Many people pride themselves in being more compassionate and more merciful than God. They state they would never let someone experience eternal conscious torment. Hell is too severe and clashes with their modern values of tolerance and restorative justice. However, humans tolerate and commit sin on a regular basis.

Job 15:26 says, “Man drinks iniquity like water!”

However, sin is exceedingly sinful to God, and deserves death. God is not only loving and forgiving, He is also holy and just. Justice demands judgment. Heaven is perfect. If we were allowed into heaven the way we are, we would corrupt it just as we have the earth. We have to be given a new heart and nature, compatible with God’s. And remember, the God you are accusing of being mean for allowing a person to suffer in hell is the same God that suffered a horrible death for you on the cross in your place to keep you out of hell. His unconditional love for every person was demonstrated on the Cross! The Lord Jesus Christ made salvation available to everyone. He gives you free will to receive Him or reject Him.

God is not more love than He is righteous. He is equal in all His attributes. His love is righteous, His judgment is righteous, and His punishment is righteous. He is perfect in all His ways.

Deuteronomy 32:4, “He is the Rock, His work is perfect; For all His ways are justice, A God of truth and without injustice; Righteous and upright is He.”
Psalm 18:30, “As for God, His way is perfect.”
Psalm 19:7, “The law of the Lord is perfect.”
Whatever He says, thinks, and does is perfect. Therefore, eternal punishment is justifiable.

Second, many people believe that hell’s eternal punishment is disproportionate to a human’s earthly lifetime of sin, or they think hell violates basic fairness and justice. However, we must understand whom we have sinned against. If you lie to the Supreme Court, your lie would be worse than if you lied to your neighbor. The higher position of the person sinned against, the graver the sin. The higher position would deserve greater punishment. God is infinitely higher in position.

He is also infinitely greater in being. If you kill a dog or cat, that deserves some kind of punishment, especially if it were your pet. However, if you kill a human being, that would be deserving of a much greater punishment. We have sinned against the Almighty God, Creator of the Universe, who is of infinite greatness, perfect, and holy; therefore, we are all deserving of eternal punishment.

Bible teacher A. W. Pink said: “God is just. It is often said it would be unjust for God to sentence any of His erring creatures to eternal perdition. But who are we to pass judgment upon the justice of the decisions of the All-Wise? Who are we to say what is consistent or inconsistent with God’s righteousness? Who are we to determine what shall best vindicate the Divine benevolence or equity? Sin has so enfeebled our power of righteous judgment, so darkened our understanding, so dulled our conscience, so perverted our wills, so corrupted our hearts, that we are quite incompetent to decide. We are ourselves so infected and affected by sin that we are altogether incapable of estimating its due merits. Imagine a company of criminals passing judgment on the equity and goodness of the law which had condemned them!”

Some believe the reality of hell violates basic fairness and justice.

This is false. God is more than fair. He gives us Creation, which constantly declares a Designer or Creator exists. The evidence of design is overwhelming. He gives you a conscience to know right from wrong (Romans 2:15; John 8:9), He puts eternity in man’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11), He sends people around the world to share and teach about Jesus Christ and warn us of hell. God even warns people with dreams and visions to keep their soul back from the pit of hell, as Job 33 states. Regarding justice, His wrath was poured out on Jesus on the cross. This satisfied God’s righteous judgment against sin. The Bible says Christ became sin for us—He took our place. But you have a choice. You can either let Jesus take it, or you can take it in a place called hell.

Third, hell’s existence rejects relativism, which is the belief that truth and morality are subjective. Relativism says that truth can change based on people’s culture, beliefs, and opinions. People say you have your truth and I have my truth. This is ignorant and false. Truth has no variations to it.

Two plus two equals four. People vary on what is truth. Your truth may be that having ten wives is normal and acceptable. Your truth may be that it’s right to take my money because you don’t have any. Your truth may think it’s right to be hired to do a job you’re not qualified to do, just because of your skin color. This is the result of no standard, or straight line of truth, or knowing right from wrong. Man’s fallen nature is selfish. People are not fair, not just, and not unbiased all of the time. God’s Word is the plumb line of truth. He determined what is right and wrong, good and evil.

In John 14:6, Jesus said He is THE truth, THE Way and THE life, and no one comes to the Father except through Him.

There is only one truth. And it’s Jesus Christ. There is absolutely only one way to heaven and only one way to avoid hell—through believing and receiving Him.

Fourth, hell is offensive to basically “good” people. The majority of people are biblically ignorant. God says no one is good, and especially not good enough to earn their way to heaven. Isaiah 64:6 says, our good works are as filthy rags. But man-made religion teaches us that we can earn our way to heaven by doing good works or by living a so-called “pretty good” life. This is false.

Ephesians 2:8-9, “For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.”

We cannot earn our salvation. God is so gracious that He gives it to us freely. He paid the price for our sin. We could never pay for our sins, and time in hell is not valuable enough to pay the penalty. Only the shed blood of Jesus carries that value. We must turn from our sin, ask forgiveness, and sincerely ask Jesus Christ into our hearts and receive Him as our Lord and Savior.

People are not “good” according to God’s standard of good. His standard is perfection, and the Bible says in Romans 3:12, “There is none who does good, no, not one” and in Romans 3:23, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

Hell is not a mere concept invented by the early church or from the Italian poet, Dante. Hell’s existence did not come into being through fire-and-brimstone preachers. Hell is real because God tells us it is through the Holy Scriptures—the Bible.

Jesus warned about hell in 46 verses. It is described throughout the Old and New Testaments to warn us. There are 132 verses about hell and the pit. Hell is offensive, it’s terrifying, it was prepared for the devil and his angels, and it should scare any rational-thinking person.

Jesus said in Matthew 25:46, “And these will go away into everlasting punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Just as Heaven is everlasting, so is hell.