What The Hell

 He who does not love does not know God, for God is love.

1 John 4: 8 NKJV 

It's a message which has caused a great deal of controversy in the mainstream church over the years.  Who is it that is damned to hell?  What mistakes are so outrageous that a loving God would turn His back on the one who made them?  Many times in scripture it is referred to as the "Lake of fire" where unbelievers end up after their lives here on earth are complete.  One thing is certain, only the Lord has the power to save or condemn anyone.  For most of my Christian life, hell was a place which I feared I would end up if I didn't do what the pastor told me to do.  That is, live my life in such a godly way that the Lord would be hard pressed to condemn me.  To live my life "Like Jesus," emulating His holy example.  Well, if you ask me, Jesus set the bar pretty high for someone like me to attain.  I mean, I was but a sinner right?  How can sinful flesh ever be seen as worthy of being loved in the eyes of God?  This was the question I asked myself many times as I struggled to align myself with who I thought God wanted me to be.  The trouble with this way of thinking is that when we engage in it, we're eliminating Christ from the conversation.  For it is Jesus who took our sins to Himself at the cross {2 Corinthians 5:21}.  It is also Christ who has declared sin to be dead once and for all {Romans 6:11}.  If I knew then what I know now, I would have understood that Jesus needed to eliminate my own sin for me to be reconciled to God.  After all, this is the desire of the Lord, that ALL might be saved {John 3:17}.  Over the years, I've had a difficult time grasping how a loving God could turn His back on one of His children and condemn them to hell.  This caused me to approach the Lord out of the fear of what punishment He would give me.  In the end I was faced with two choices, either God was a Lord to be feared...or what the church had been teaching me for so long was wrong.  

Knowing this, that our old man was crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves of sin.  For he who has died has been freed from sin.  Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him, knowing that Christ, having been raised from the dead, dies no more.  Death no longer has dominion over Him.  For the death that He died, He died to sin once for all; but the life that He lives, He lives to God.  Likewise you also, reckon yourselves to be dead indeed to sin, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 6: 6 - 11 NKJV 

Is it that far of a reach to say that believers have been taught something which just isn't true over the years?  Do you believe in a God of love...or a God of fear and punishment?  Because at the end of the day, this is the question that will determine how it is you view God.  This will be the filter which you see Him through.  As a young believer, I believed in the teachings that Gods anger could be roused to the point where He would condemn one of His own to a eternity of punishment.  That His love is conditional upon our behavior.  I wanted God to love me for me ALL of the time.  Well, it turns out that He does love me, and I am assured of this in scripture.  He loved me enough to create me in His own image {Genesis 1:27}.  He also loved me enough to allow His own Son to suffer on the cross that my own sins would be washed away.  I will never believe that a God who loved me this much would suddenly condemn me to a eternity of punishment.  What I will believe is that God is a God of love for His children.  That through Christ, we have now become one with Jesus and the Father {John 17:21}.  For Jesus did not come into this world to condemn...but to save.  As far as the question about hell goes, I believe if I was misled once by the teachings of the church...that it could certainly happen again.

There is no fear in love; but perfect love casts out fear, because fear involves torment.  But he who fears has not been made perfect in love.  We love Him because He first loved us.

1 John 4: 18 - 19 NKJV 

~Scott~