If God is loving, what about Hell? // John 3:16-21

Join us as we continue our 'Asking for a Friend' series tackling the question, "How could a loving God co-exist with the reality of Hell"?

Transcript

John 3 And God’s Love

The Cross As Proof Of Love

Condemned Already And Why It Matters

Light Versus Darkness And Free Will

The Cancer Diagnosis Analogy

What Hell Is And Who It’s For

Justice Requires Punishing Sin

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Well, a few years ago at Camp Cairo, I actually had a student come up to me and he was like, Hey Garrett, uh later tonight, do you think that we could talk? I invited a friend to camp. He came uh and he has a lot of questions. I was like, all right, cool. I would love to have that conversation. And so later that night we go into their room, and mind you, this is like the last full day of camp. Like I'm exhausted, I'm sick, like I look like somebody like gave me the plague and ran me over with a bus at this point in the week. Like I am dying actively. But I'm here, like I want to have this conversation, I want to answer these questions. Uh, and so this guy just like rattles off every question he could think of. We talk about Genesis, we somehow we got to aliens, we talk about revelation. Like, did Adam have a belly button? Like, we went the full gamut of questions that you could think of. Uh, and there was a lot about like sin and judgment and hell, and so I kind of cued in on that. But at the end, I I pretty much answered everything he could think to ask me. Obviously, some questions don't have an answer that I can give in that moment. Sometimes it's hey, I don't know, but let me tell you what I do know. But we get to the end. I was like, all right, man, look, I I've answered as much as I can and I've tried to give you all that I can about God, about the gospel. What are you gonna do with it? And well, he thought about it and he looked at me and he said, Hey, look, like parts of this sound great, but at the end of the day, I just can't believe that a loving God would send people to hell. And so we talked about it a little bit, but but unfortunately, that's more or less where the conversation ended. And he came for a little while after that camp, but eventually stopped coming, and I haven't seen him since. So why am I telling you that story? Well, tonight we're continuing our Asking for a Friend series. And in the series, we're tackling these big questions that come from you, questions you have about God, about the Bible, about your faith. And this is a question that many of you have probably wrestled with before. Or if you personally haven't wrestled with how can a loving God and hell coexist, you've probably had someone throw that in your face if you're a Christian. Oh, well, if your God's so loving, then why will he judge me for just not believing in him? Or how could he do this to people who and so my goal for you tonight is one, to understand that there is an answer. Uh, in fact, that that question in and of itself is framed wrong, and we'll unpack that. But two, I want you to feel prepared to answer that question. Because for some of these questions, you guys might wrestle with it, but for some of these questions, it might be your friends. And scripture calls us to be prepared to give an answer for our faith. And so my hope is that you come away with this, not just knowing it for yourself, but knowing it to share as you go out and share your faith with your friends. And so if you have your Bible, go ahead and flip open to John chapter 3, good old verse 16. We're gonna be John 3, 16 through 1. Uh this is one of the most well-known verses in the Bible. As you're flipping there some context, uh John is recording this gospel, right? He uh was one of Jesus' closest apostles, and he's recording a conversation that Jesus has with this religious leader named Nicodemus. And Nicodemus came to Jesus his night. Like you can tell that Nicodemus is curious, like all of the other Pharisees are very opposed to Jesus, but Nicodemus is like, hey, something's going on with this guy. And so he goes to ask him questions. Uh and scholars debate on at some point in this conversation, what Jesus says ends, and it flips to John kind of summarizing and sharing what Jesus was sharing in that moment, and that's a whole thing. But but this is Jesus' words to Nicodemus, uh, explaining the gospel, explaining how someone can be born again. And in that, we're actually gonna see questions. Uh we're gonna see God's heart, and then we're gonna see the state of the world, and those are gonna help answer our question. So let's flip open John 3, verse 16. I'm just gonna jump in. For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life. Again, we talked about this is one of the most familiar verses in the Bible. Stay on that because we're gonna walk through the text a little bit. Uh, it's probably the most well-known verse, but it's also, I would say, one that's fairly misunderstood. And I don't mean in like a terrible way, but I don't think people get the full depth of what's actually being said here. Like it's even more than you can imagine. We sometimes throw it on coffee cups and pictures and all the things, and it loses its power. But what I want you to see here tonight is that it's actually uh mind-blowing when you start to get into it. And so, one thing when we study scripture, if you're like, hey, how do I read my Bible? A great thing to do is start with the verbs, right? Verbs are action words, right? Run, go, do. So if you look at this verse, the first verb is love, right? So let's focus on that love. Who loved, right? So start to ask questions. Well, God loved. Who did God love? God so loved the world. And just right there, we we have a really important point because we read that and we think, of course, we've heard this so many times, God loves the whole wide world. But in this original audience, that would have been a mind-blowing, massive statement. Because Jewish people in that time clearly understood that God loved his chosen people. God loved Israel, uh, but like the Gentile nations were unclean. And to say that God loved the world meant something much bigger. Because in John's writing, the word world usually doesn't just mean like the physical planet, but it talks about the people who live in the world. And it's usually meant in like a negative sense. Humanity in rebellion against God. Uh, think about how we use the phrase like be in the world but not of it, or that's very worldly, or man, the world is just going off in the crazy land today. Like, like that's the sense that John's talking about here. So when John says that God loved the world, he isn't emphasizing the whole world like it's big, like, man, God loves so many people, like eight billion people. No, he's saying that God loved a really bad world. That God loved people who didn't love him back, that God loved people who did evil things, people who ran from him, people who rejected him, people who spat in his face. But John isn't just talking about God's love as like some feel-good emotion. The text actually points you to hey, God's love led to action. It says, God so loved the world that, so it connects these two pieces of the verse, he gave his one and only Son. God's love was so great that it was demonstrated in the fact that he sent Jesus. And what the Bible tells us about Jesus is that it was God in flesh, God the Son, came to earth, lived a perfect 33 years, never sinned, never did anything wrong, did everything he was supposed to do. But at the end of his life, he went into Jerusalem and they nailed him to a cross where he would die naked and beaten after being tortured, and he would die of asphyxiation, meaning he would literally suffocate because he could no longer pick himself up on the cross. But that death was not on accident, that death was for our sins. That he took our place on the cross, he died the death that we deserved so that we could have the gift of the life that he lived. Why? Well, because he loved us, and so that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. And so what John's getting here is that the cross was the ultimate display of God's love. And so let me let me talk to you in the room. If you have difficulties feeling loved, maybe that comes from a hard relationship with your parent, maybe that comes from a hard relationship with your friends, you transferred schools, you don't know anybody, maybe you get picked on, I don't know. If you have difficulty thinking about how in the world could God ever love me, look no further than the cross. Because the cross is the clearest picture of God's undisputable, inarguable, 100% love for you and for anyone else, including the people who reject him. Because you don't send your son to die for someone unless you really love them. Look, I love you guys, I love you guys to death. But if you were to ask me to let one of my kids, Leighton or Michael, die for you guys, I'm sorry, I'm picking them every day of the week, right? Because they're my children, I love them, but not God. While we were God's enemies, while we had nothing to offer, Jesus died for us. Like, think about the craziness of that. The Father gave his son so that we could become his sons and his daughters. That's love. And so this is probably the point you're thinking, how does this answer a question about hell? Well, one, we wanted to start, I wanted to start by showing you the heart of God. Because a lot of time when people ask that question, how could a loving God send people to hell? What they're assuming is that God isn't loving. But that assumption is not in line with what the Bible says about God at all. The God of the Bible is love, He's the source of every love that you've ever experienced. It comes from Him. And He's so loving that He would go to the greatest lengths possible. He would literally give His own Son to die for you so that people who originally wanted nothing to do with Him don't have to go to hell. The cross was God's way of giving us eternal life and making a way for us to become His children once again. And so as Peter writes in 2 Peter 3 9, the Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. Instead, he is patient with you. And here's the key not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. God wants all to come to eternal life. That is his desire. That's why he sent Jesus. Because he loves even a world that doesn't love him. So then you might ask, well, why does hell exist at all? Like, like if God doesn't want people to go there, why do they still go there? Well, that's a great question, and thankfully we're actually going to get some more answers in these next few verses. So back to John 3.16, we're going to be in verse 17 now. For God did not send his son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of God's one and only Son. So some people read this and they'll try to spin it as like, well, God's not going to judge anyone because Jesus didn't come into the world to condemn the world. Well, the problem is verse 18 is there, right? And verse 18 says, Whoever believes in him is not condemned, who, but but whoever does not believe stands condemned already. And John's making it clear that Jesus didn't come to condemn the world, not because there's no judgment against sin, but he didn't come to condemn the world because the world was already condemned. So let me try to phrase this differently. God didn't send Jesus to condemn a morally neutral, like in the middle, gray world. God sent Jesus to save one that was already condemned on its own. Again, to put it a different way, the world wasn't full of people sincerely trying their best to reach their hand out to God, say, God, if you would just accept me, if you would just have me, and then Jesus shows up and be like, psych, turn a burn, sinners, y'all going to hell. Like, that's not what Jesus shows up and does on the scene. The picture that Scripture gives us is that the world was full of people who knew what was right and still chose to do evil. People chose violence, theft, exploitation, pride, rebellion, to murder one another, to take advantage of the weak and the vulnerable. That was what the world was full of. Jesus came into a world that was already desperately lost and headed towards hell all on its own. And so God didn't send Jesus to show up and push people to hell or to send people to hell. He sent Jesus to save them from it against their own best efforts. But again, why hell? Right? Couldn't God just forgive everyone? Like, why is there this place of punishment, of judgment? Well, the next verses describe that a little bit more. Verse 19 This is the verdict. Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that they have done what has been done in the sight of God. So, to break that down a little bit, in these verses, John uses a common biblical metaphor. He talks about light and darkness. And what he's saying is that when Jesus came into the world, it was like light breaking into the night. That there was only hurt and brokenness and death. And when Jesus comes in, it's like a light at the end of the tunnel has come into the world. And that's what we see in the gospel that God made a way for us to be saved from sin and death. By Jesus taking our place, we can now have Jesus' place. We can now have righteousness and a right relationship with God. But that light didn't just give us salvation. It wasn't just our get out of hell free card. It also exposed what was already there, already in people's heart. Because if you were to look at humanity before Jesus and you read the Old Testament, there's a part of you that just thinks, like, man, maybe like if somebody just came and said this like really clearly, or you know, maybe if if you know, maybe they're just ignorant, maybe they just don't have all the info, right? When Jesus shows up, surely everybody's gonna repent, right? Wrong. That's not what happens. When the light came, people rejected Jesus. And many people today still do the very same thing. Well, why? Well, the truth is God has given us free will. Uh and that's a really big topic that's hard to wrap our head around sometimes, but but the point is God is love. And God made us in his image to reflect him, to be a visible representation of an invisible God to the world around us. And so we are called to be loving and we're called to love him. But the truth is that real love requires a real choice, right? If uh I were to tell or say, pretend like my daughter Leighton runs up to me and says, Dad, I love you so much, you're the best daddy ever, right? That's just incredible, right? Like I just love that. That's amazing. Now, let me ask you this. If Leighton comes up and says that to me, and then I'm like, oh, that's so amazing. And then she runs back to her mom, and I find out Christine was like, hey, do this, you get a time out. Does that real love? Christine would never say that, by the way. Uh so sorry, babe. But is that real love? You can answer me. No. And I know, yes, my daughter actually loves me, but if it's forced, it's not a choice. And so we have free will because God wants us to choose to love him and he wants us to be partners with him in creation. Obviously, he's God, he is in control, he is sovereign, he is all powerful, but he grants us responsibility. And the problem is that we can use that to rebel against him. We can use that to go our own way, we can use that to lie, to cheat, to steal, to hurt people. And John says that with that freedom, many people choose darkness because they love their sin, they love gossip, they love pornography, they love drunkenness, they love greed, they love pride, and they don't want to give those things up. Because stepping into the light means that I'm gonna have to change how I live. And these people want to stay in control of their lives. And so they reject life with God. And if someone chooses a life apart from God, then on the day of judgment, God ultimately gives them what they have chosen. He's not sending them anywhere, he's granting their request. You want to spend eternity without me, then I will let you. Think of it this way imagine that you go in for a doctor's appointment. It's a routine checkup, but as they're doing that checkup, they start to notice a few things that are kind of concerning. Uh, and the results don't look good, and so they start to run some blood work, and the blood work doesn't look good, and so they run some more tests, and eventually a doctor sits you down and says, Hey, uh, unfortunately the tests show that you have cancer. In that moment, the light of the diagnosis has revealed the truth about what's already going on in your body. You have cancer that is killing you. That's been going on for a long time. Well, now you have a choice in your hands. One, you can listen to the doctor. He tells you the treatment plan, and it's gonna require some serious changes. There might be chemotherapy, radiation, your life is gonna look different. You can't do the same things, you can't act the same way, you have to eat different stuff. It's gonna be hard and you'll have to give up some control and trust the doctor, but the recovery chance is a hundred percent. The the reward is life. Or you could say, I don't really want to change my life. I don't really want to go through chemo or deal with the pain or the inconvenience, I don't want to rearrange my schedule. I just want to live how I want to live. And you might convince yourself that it's not serious, you might distract yourself, but choosing that path doesn't make the cancer go away. It just means that you're choosing to ignore the only treatment that could save your life. And by choosing that, you're choosing death. And when death eventually comes, it's not the doctor who sentenced you to death, right? The doctor just gave you the diagnosis of hey, this thing is gonna kill you. And I'm trying to save you from this thing. And so follow this plan, place your trust in me, and you will have life. And so if you reject that cure, the outcome is not the doctor's fault, it's the result of the choice that was made. In the same way, when Jesus came into the world, he didn't come just to arbitrarily, willy-nilly say, you know, about this group of people, I just don't like how y'all look. So I'm just gonna. Or, you know, these people are living up to my standard, and these people aren't. So I'm gonna select some people based on their behavior. No, he says, the whole world is broken. Romans 3 23 says that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And he steps into that and he puts on our death, he puts on our suffering and steps into it and he defeats death so that we can have life. And so the point that I'm trying to make here is this that hell is not because God doesn't love certain people enough or that he wants to keep some people out because they don't follow the set of rules. Hell happens when people reject the light and the life that God freely offers them. And a lot of people, I remember that that student that I had this conversation with, he would reply, so let me just get this straight. Because I won't believe in someone, he's gonna send me to hell. Like, what if I live a good life? What if I try really hard to give to charity and uh volunteer and pick up trash on the side of the road? Like God's gonna send me to hell? Well, that's still this deep misunderstanding of what's going on here. First, you have to understand hell wasn't even made for humanity. I remember when I first learned that, I was like, really? Yeah, Matthew 25, 41 says that hell was created for the devil and his demons. And we don't know exactly what it's like except for complete separation from God. And God is the source of all good. And so complete separation from anything that's good. And there's language and metaphorical language of fire and darkness and all these sorts of things. And there's a lot of really smart people who've debated what's literal, what's metaphorical. That's not what I'm trying to get at here today. But but the reality is God didn't make it for us. God made the world for us. God made this place to be a place where we can live and we can reflect who he is and we can live in a relationship with him. But then, secondly, hell is not somewhere that God sends people that he just doesn't like, or it's not a place that's run by Satan, that's this counterforce. It's a place for the punishment of sin. That's why it was made for Satan and his demons, that they were being punished or will be punished as well for their original rebellion. And that keys into the bigger part of understanding the answer to this question that God is just, that God punishes sin. He has to, it's who he is. We want him to. Right? In fact, the truth is if God is going to be good, he has to be just. That's in his nature, right? So imagine it this way, right? Pretend I'm on stage uh and I bring up, who am I gonna use for example here? Who's who's paying attention, who's not paying attention? Pretend I bring up clay, because I use clay for lots of illustrations. So sorry, Clay, it's you today. So I bring Clay on stage uh and pretend like I just beat up clay in front of everybody, right? Like just, I don't know why, didn't like the way it looked today. Like me and Clay have beef, Sunday school hasn't been going well. Andrew and I have tried to talk, Andrew joins in, we beat them up together, right? Now let me ask you, is that okay? No, it's not. Seriously, though, is okay. Pretend I bring up a four-year-old kid, right, and just beat up a four-year-old kid. Is that okay? No. Should there be consequences for that thing? Yeah. And every person in your school, every teacher you have, every atheist friend you have knows that that's not okay. Why would it not be okay if I were to do that and not face consequences? Yeah, what would it say about clay? What would it say about that four-year-old kid if I can just treat them like that and there be no consequences? It would say that clay doesn't matter. It would say that that four-year-old kid doesn't matter. And so here's the thing: God has to punish sin that we commit against other people because if he doesn't, it says that those other people don't matter. I mean, think about it, guys. We want a God who's just. We want to know that there's justice for someone who walks into a school and kills innocent children, of someone who commits war crimes, of someone who takes advantage of someone who's weaker or poorer. We want there to be justice against evil, but the problem is we all have sin. God's standard is a world with no sin. It's a perfect world. But none of us are perfect. And so you ask, man, how do any of us get saved then? Well, here's the truth all sin is punished in one of two ways either you pay for it for eternity in hell, or it's paid for by Jesus on the cross. That's why we talk about he became our sin. So that when God, the Father, Jesus was on the cross, he poured Poured out the punishment we had earned onto Jesus. And so God's not sweeping your sin under the rug. He's saying, I'm paying for it. I know how ugly it is. I know how bad it is, more than you do. But I love you and I'm going to pay for it so that you can be forgiven. And so we're going to wrap up with this tonight to recap. God is not some angry tyrant who just carelessly sends people to hell. God is love. God loved a sinful, broken, rebellious world so much that he sent his son to die to save it. But he's not going to force us to follow him. He gives us the choice to reject him. And if we choose to reject him, then we get the fruit of that choice and it's eternal separation from him. But that's not his heart, that's not his desire. And he went to the greatest lengths imaginable to make sure that that doesn't have to be true of any of us. And so I want to close with two very, very quick action steps. When you come away from this, one, man, maybe you sit here tonight and you're like, I haven't stepped into the light. If I'm honest with myself, I love the darkness. I've always loved the darkness. I've never made a decision to place my faith in Jesus. Tonight can be the night where you step into the light and you're saved. You become a child of God. You're set free from your sin, from your shame, from your guilt, from the death that you've known your entire life. You can be free. That's true of you tonight. And so what I want you to do is here in a moment, we're going to have a response song real quick. And I just want you to find a leader and I want to walk you through that decision. If that's you and say, hey, for the first time tonight, I want to place my faith in Jesus. I want to step into the light. Do that. Don't wait another minute. Then, two, maybe you have stepped into the light. You're a believer, you got saved years ago or two weeks ago. The call to you is to invite as many people into the light as possible. The reality is that for those who have not placed their faith in Jesus, they are choosing life apart from God. And that is a terrible, terrible fate that we don't want anyone to face. And so when you think about, man, I just have a problem with people being separated from God, God has made you as part of the solution. You have the hope of the gospel. God's will for your life might be that you would be the one who shares the gospel with your mom or your dad or your brother or your friend or your teammate or your coach. And God would work through you to bring them into the light so that they can experience eternal life that starts now. And so the call to you might be, hey, you're in the light. But man, don't get comfortable with just knowing that and being good for the rest of your life. Yes, you're comfortable, but what I mean by that is it, I would hope that you have a burden for the lost. I would hope that the thought of, hey, there's people in this world who are going to spend eternity apart from God, I hope that bothers you. I hope you have a deep desire for everyone that you love in your life to know Jesus. Not out of fear, but because out of how amazing your relationship with Him has been. And so maybe your step of faith when we have this moment of response is to pray and say, God, this is my one. This is the person who I want to invite to church. I might not have all the words to say that. Yes, fine. Let's bring them here. Or God, I want to have a conversation with my leader about how I can share my faith with that person. But for you, if you are in the light, if you are a child of God, if you've placed your faith in him, now it's your turn to get to bring as many people with you as possible. To tell as many people as you can about the hope that you found in Jesus. And so tonight, I just want you to see that God loves you deeply, dearly, more than you can ever imagine. And he loves the broken people around you. The people around you who've rejected God, who are still running from Him. And so would you go and tell them? Would you be the one who brings the good news? Let's pray and we'll respond.