The Justice of God … (March 2023 Update)
If there is no hell, then God is not just! Many Christians today shrink back from the doctrine of hell and from the justice of God. They often ask how a loving God could create a place like hell. Some atheists even use the doctrine of hell as an excuse for not believing in God.
But God’s love demands that there be a hell with eternal punishment. If God is truly loving, completely loving, then He must punish sin or He would not be just. A truly loving God would not allow injustice to go unpunished. So, God’s love and God’s justice go together. They are like two sides to the same coin. You can’t have one without the other.
However, the justice of God is almost completely ignored by many today. But this is not new to our age. At the beginning of the 20th Century, A. W. Pink wrote: “It is scarcely surprising that far less has been written upon the justice of God—than upon some of the other Divine perfections. We are accustomed to turn our thoughts unto those objects and subjects which afford us the most pleasure, and to avoid those which render us uneasy.” But God’s justice should not make us uneasy – it should give us confidence that, even though evil might reign for a season, it will ultimately be judged by God. But, if there is no hell, then evil will have escaped any just punishment. And God would not be just.
