The Narrow Path Ministries

So does God love those folks who are in hell? If so, why do you believe that? If not, why do you believe not?

emilysmith

Posts: 11
Joined: Tue Jun 04, 2013 1:06 am








Yes because Jesus told us to love our enemies and be perfect as our Father in Heaven is, therefore by extension God loves his enemies.

"God so loved the world ..."

Is there any scriptural evidence that God stopped loving unregenerate people just because they died?

Really, as though it was a sin to die. Some of our more charismatic friends might think that - that it is a sin to die. God loved us as sinners before we met him, why not after? He shortened our years so we would die. . .

I'm on the fence as to whether or not God loves those who will be in hell (btw - there is no one in hell right now; the unsaved are sentenced to hell on the Day of Judgment). Although "God so loved the world...", hell will not be "the world". John 14:23-24a says, "Jesus replied, “Anyone who loves me will obey my teaching. My Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them. 24 Anyone who does not love me will not obey my teaching"; this seems to imply that those who obey will be loved and have a home with God and those who do not obey will not be loved and have no home with Him.

Plus, as a conditionalist, I believe that all how go to hell eventually cease to exist, so there will no one to love except those in heaven.

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Tigerpaw, you wrote:Although "God so loved the world...", hell will not be "the world".

It's not the physical globe that God loves, but the people in it. You say that He will love the people in heaven.... but heaven is not the world (in a physical sense) either.

dizerner wrote: I truly believe God wept for Satan but there is nothing redeemable in him now, he is pure evil.

I think it is much more reasonable to believe that 'pure evil' is a flawed phrase. Evil is not a thing in and of itself. It is always good gone wrong. Satan is surely the most twisted and wrong creature in existence. But to suggest that he is pure evil makes evil a thing and, to my mind, militates against the very idea that satan is a creature.

And God loves us in Christ, but not outside of Christ. We have to be in Christ to receive that love.

I don't think you are being careful enough about your language. The Bible clearly teaches that God loves sinners. Certainly those who are in Christ experience His love in some very different ways and have a heightened relationship to God, but that doesn't mean that God doesn't love those outside of Christ in many important ways! How would it even be possible for a God who IS LOVE to relate to people without love?

dizerner, you wrote:I truly believe God wept for Satan but there is nothing redeemable in him now, he is pure evil. As much as our sympathetic nature wants to feel sorry for anything in trouble, I believe were even the most compassionate of us to see the current nature of Satan we would no longer feel any sympathy. Yet God loves the unlovable, that is true, but not the unredeemable. I'm not entirely sure why humans are qualitatively different than angels such that they can be redeemed.

If there is ANYONE who is unredeemable, then God has not won the ultimate victory.

Origen believed that Satan was redeemable. Also that one of his names is "death" and that he is the last enemy. Origen wrote:

When it is said that "the last enemy" shall be destroyed, it is not to be understood as meaning that his substance, which is God's creation, perishes, but that his purpose and hostile will perishes; for this does not come from God but from himself. Therefore his destruction means not his ceasing to exist, but ceasing to be an enemy and ceasing to be death. Nothing is impossible to omnipotence; there is nothing that cannot be healed by its Maker.—De Principiis III. vi.5

Origen also believed in the eventual reconciliation of all people to God, when every individual will have repented and submitted to the authority of God. He called this "the restoration to unity."

The restoration to unity must not be imagined as a sudden happening. Rather it is to be thought of as gradually effected by stages during the passing of countless ages. Little by little and individually the correction and purification will be accomplished. Some will lead the way and climb to the heights with swifter progress, others following right behind them; yet others will be far behind. Thus multitudes of individuals and countless orders, who once were enemies, will advance and reconcile themselves to God; and so at length the last enemy will be reached... —De Principiis III.vi.6

Finally Origen taught that the purpose of hell was remedial:

...God acts in dealing with sinners as a physician...the fury of his anger is profitable for the purging of souls. Even that penalty which is said to be imposed by way of fire is understood as applied to assist a sinner to health... —De Principiis II.x.6

Do you really think anyone thinks it is a sin to die?

I believe the point Jepne was making was the following:

God (we all know) loves sinners, and desires them to be saved.

This is true even of those who ultimately reject Him in this life (unless we are Calvinists. If we are Calvinists, all bets are off as to whom God may or may not love!).

This being so, we must assume that those who die without repentance are people whom God loved, and whom He wished would have repented. This is stated unambiguously, in Ezek.33:11—

‘As I live,’ says the Lord GOD, ‘I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from his way and live. Turn, turn from your evil ways! For why should you die, O house of Israel?’

If God loved these people and would have welcomed their repentance before death, but does not love and wish their repentance after they have died, then is it something in God that has changed at the death of the sinner, or is it something in the sinner that changes at death? Surely, it cannot be a change in God, since God would then be undergoing character change thousands of times a day, as individual sinners succumbed.

If it is something in the sinner that causes God to stop loving him when he dies, then what has transpired in the sinner, between the moment before and the moment after death, to create this divine antipathy toward him ? What, that is, other than death itself?

If it is death itself that changes a sinner from an object of God's love to an object of God's hatred (or even God's apathy), then there must be some grievous fault imputed to the sinner for having died.

The sinner's succumbing to death, then, must be a very great sin! Greater, in fact, than the sum total of all the sinner's lifetime sins, since those sins were not able to extinguish God's love for the sinner. The involuntary act of dying, then, is treated as an offense greater than all voluntary sins of a lifetime, in that it, alone, can extinguish the love of God for the sinner.

The above would seem to be inescapable logic, if God does not love those in hell.