Is hell real? How could a loving God send anyone there?
Hell is real, and it is not something a loving God enjoys. It is what it costs to let people have what they keep choosing — themselves, without God.
The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise as some understand slowness, but is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish but everyone to come to repentance.
2 Peter 3:9 · Berean Standard Bible
Then He will say to those on His left, 'Depart from Me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.'
Matthew 25:41 · Berean Standard Bible
From a pastor
I don't enjoy this doctrine. I don't know any honest pastor who does. The Bible is clear that hell is real, and Jesus himself taught about it more than anyone else in Scripture — which is part of why we can't quietly trim it out.
But notice: God doesn't send people to hell because he's angry that you didn't follow rules. He honours the choice of those who, when offered him, said no. C.S. Lewis put it this way: 'The doors of hell are locked on the inside.' If you want him, you have him. If you spend your whole life refusing him, he will not force you to spend eternity with him against your will.
Scholar's note
Three main views are debated among historically orthodox Christians: traditionalism (eternal conscious punishment, the historic majority view), annihilationism (the wicked finally cease to exist; held by John Stott, Edward Fudge), and conditional immortality. All three take Jesus's teaching seriously; all three reject universalism as foreign to Scripture.
The pastoral and biblical centre is not the mechanics — it's that God is just (Genesis 18:25), patient (2 Peter 3:9), and that the cross is the measure of what he is willing to do to save anyone who will turn to him.
Sources
- C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (1945)
- Timothy Keller, The Reason for God (2008), ch. 5
- Edward W. Fudge & Robert A. Peterson, Two Views of Hell (2000)
Sit with this
If God is real, what does it mean to keep saying no to him on purpose?
Talk this through