Like it or not, hell is a revelation of the love, mercy, and grace of God, indeed all of his beneficent attributes. God does not suspend one attribute when exercising another. He always acts in perfect unity (cf. A.W. Tozer’s Knowledge of the Holy for further discussion of this truth). For example, when God saves a sinner, he does not suspend his righteousness to do so. Paul’s epistle to the Romans (3:24-26) reveals that God never forgave or saved anyone, in either testament, without a righteous basis, which we now know to be the cross of Christ. Old testament saints were saved “on credit,” if you will, until Christ came and actually paid for their sins in full (animal blood was only a temporary, typical expedient; cf. Heb. 10:4). So at Calvary, God not only shows love, mercy, and grace, but also righteousness and wrath. Sin angers God (Ps. 7:11) and requires punishment for this wrath to be pacified (cf. Esther 7:10).
As for hell, the element of love, mercy, and grace associated with it may not be obvious, but it’s there nonetheless. It must be, since, as stated above, God always acts in unity; so even where sinners suffer the pangs of hell, there is something of God’s beneficence present. “How?!” you may ask.
Think about this: what is God to do with his creatures who, after repeated attempts at reconciliation, refuse him and insist upon remaining his enemies? Welcome them into heaven? Save them against their will? Then they’d be robots and not men! Similarly, what is he to do with creatures like Satan, devils, and wicked men who go from wickedness to greater wickedness? Didn’t the world rejoice when Hitler died? What if God had let that terrible little man live 969 years, like he did the patriarch Methuselah (yes, 969 literal years of 360 days apiece)? The whole world would’ve been destroyed, most likely. FYI, large reserves of deadly instruments were found after the Third Reich fell, indicating that the 11-12 million killed in Nazi genocides (Russians, Serbs, Jews, Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, sodomites, et al.) was only the beginning.
In his beneficence, God created hell to contain Satan, his spiritual minions (Mt. 25:41), wicked men, and the impenitent (Rom. 2:4-5) from doing further damage to themselves and others. Dear reader, our hearts have the potential for desperate wickedness (Jer. 17:9), and without God’s beneficent restraints, we would all live like Hitler, Mao, Stalin, Amin (never repented), and Genghis Khan (enjoyed hearing his enemies suffer) and self-destruct after killing everyone around us, a la Littleton, Virginia Tech, etc. The tongue is set on fire of hell (James 3:6) because the heart of man is! Only a beneficent God stands in its way of absolute destruction (Rom. 3:15-17).
Thank you, wonderful Lord, for creating hell! You desire all to be saved (1 Tim. 2:4), but you’re far too righteous to justify the impenitent and go against their free will to reject you. You’re also kind to those who choose you by containing forever those who will not submit to you and would, if they could, harm you and those who love you forever. Beware the heart of man!
I’d like to close this essay with a poem from C.S. Lewis’ The Pilgrim’s Regress. I think that this poem captures both sides of hell as discussed above and was my partial inspiration for this essay (along Tozer, etc.):
‘God in His mercy made
The fixèd pains of Hell.
That misery might be stayed,
God in His mercy made
Eternal bounds and bade
Its waves no further swell.
God in His mercy made
The fixèd pains of Hell.’
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