The Challenging Character of God
All day long people say to me, “Where is your God?”
Psalm 42:3
Each day the severity of suffering and distress in the world is as unimaginable as the vastness of the universe. This very second, despite their precious innocence, infants are dying in pain. Day after day millions of ordinary people are emotionally oppressed and passing through times of turmoil. In their isolation and confusion they struggle daily with the suffocating blackness of depression. Today countless thousands are giving up—they have run out of hope and are preparing to take their own lives. Everywhere on the planet, from your back garden to the vast plains of Africa, driven by instinct the earth’s creatures violently prey on one another just to survive. And besides all this, since Cain murdered Abel, man’s contentions, greed, deviousness, wickedness and inhumanity have torn the world apart time and time again.
What has caused these horrendous circumstances throughout the long history of God’s creation? Should we blame everything on the Fall and just get on with life as best we can? Or will we run the risk of damaging our faith because we privately blame God? After all, although He knew the end from the very beginning, He nevertheless allowed all these upsetting miseries to befall mankind since Adam and Eve were banished from Eden. He knew how history would play out long before it even started. (Consider Isaiah 46:9-10.) More challengingly, must we conclude that God as the all-knowing creator and instigator is ultimately responsible for the suffering and chaos we see around us, yet without blame?
Clearly God has a tolerance for distressing and horrific events that is far beyond our understanding. This is true of those sobering biblical events He is directly responsible for. Who among us will dare find fault with the God of loving grace Who in Christ wept in grief after allowing His friend to die? (We dare not forget that God suffered deeply in Christ and loved us greatly.[1]) Yet it was this same God Who, somewhat incongruously perhaps, slaughtered Israel's enemies in a violent, destructive fury sent down from the clouds (see John 11:35; Joshua 10:11). The Bible reveals a God Whose actions bring great distress on the innocent child as well as blameworthy adults. Consider the terrible afflictions of the Egyptians in the Book of Exodus and the desperate suffering by drowning caused by the cataclysmic flood in Genesis 6-8. Worse still perhaps are the horrifying implications of “the words of the Lord” in 1 Samuel 15:2-3.
No one has satisfactorily reconciled the extremes of God’s character and behaviour. It can’t be done. We search in vain throughout Scripture for a satisfactory answer. We cannot understand how the divine Spirit endures the full knowledge of such atrocious events. But those who truly belong to Christ dare not accuse the Lord of being inhumane in His many acts of measured ruthlessness. His eternal intentions remain a vexatious riddle—a thorny mystery that is a part of His holy identity. His behaviour and character test our free will, but we must learn to submit to His absolute authority. (We will bow the knee someday.) Our knowledge and understanding are as nothing compared to His transcendent reason and wisdom. If we aren’t fully subservient to His sovereignty we will become discontented and may eventually struggle with bitterness.
Would it fortify our resolve and help us to be patient if we humbly accepted His uncompromising character as revealed in Scripture? His ways are past finding out, His thoughts high above our thoughts. He forms light and creates darkness. He causes well-being and peace; He creates disaster and calamity. He kills and gives life. He wounds and heals. He is the Lord Who makes man mute or blind or seeing. From the mouth of the Most High proceed both adversity and blessing. Who then are we to question Him? He is the Lord and He will do what He pleases (see 1st Samuel 3:18).
Although some aspects of God’s character are beyond our comprehension and hard to accept, we must never question His sovereignty. It is a serious mistake to overemphasise His love and undeserving favour (grace) while downplaying His holy wrath and sovereign right to execute terrible justice. We cannot avoid the sobering truth of His Word: “It is a terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God” (Hebrews 10:31).
Oh, the depth of the riches
and the wisdom and the knowledge of God!
How unsearchable his judgments
and untraceable his ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord?
Or who has been his counselor?
Romans 11:33-34
A Loving God Who Punishes Forever?
"How can you escape from the judgment of Gehenna?"
Matthew 23:33
"It is better for you to enter life [the kingdom of God] maimed than to have two hands and go to Gehenna, into the fire that cannot be put out."
Mark 9:43
"I will show you the one to fear: Fear him who has authority to throw people into Gehenna after death."
Luke 12:5
In this context then, we come inevitably to the troublesome issue that must be faced: Since God has lived with an unimaginable awareness of suffering and distress for thousands of years, can we seriously doubt that He will condemn multitudes to everlasting punishment? The very real tears of love we see in Christ, and His immeasurable compassion for lost sinners expressed through the cross, shouldn’t blind us to His unbending commitment to vengeance, justice and wrath. The one true God of the Bible nowhere offers the hope of a Purgatory. This is the make-believe of religion. Rather He promises wrath on all those who reject the Son. These will come under judgement and will not see eternal life (see John 3:36; 5:24).
Judgement and eternal punishment are subjects that often raise serious questions about the character of the Christian's God and the teaching of the Bible. Can a loving God righteously judge multitudes, find them guilty and in His wrath condemn them to a never-ending torment? Is God's punishment after death anything other than eternal? Is it for a limited time? Is it mere exclusion from Heaven? Is it utter annihilation (extinction)? Do people simply cease to exist, regardless of their wrongdoing and sinful, lost condition? Does the Bible warn of a future judgement and punishment that, at the very least, entail a conscious and everlasting cutting-off that's likened to fire? It's understandable many will object to such a concept.
What did Jesus mean when He said it is "better" to be thrown into the sea to drown with a millstone around one's neck? (Read Luke 17:2.) Better than what? What is the true nature of the "terrifying expectation of judgment and the fury of a fire which will consume the adversaries"? (Read Hebrews 10:26, 27.) What is the sentence of judgement to be suffered in "Gehenna"? (Read again Matthew 23:33 above.) In what sense are the ungodly under chastisement until the day of judgment and doom? (See 2nd Peter 2:9, Amplified Bible.) It would be foolish to avoid these demanding questions or subject them to our bias.
Consider the Greek noun, aiōn (an age), from which we get the adjectives and adverbs, "everlasting", "eternal", "forever" and "for evermore". In Matthew 12:32 this word is used to compare a limited time with eternity. In Matthew 25:41; 46, the adjective form, aiōnios, is used to describe the "punishment"[2] of those who are "cursed" and the "life" that awaits the "righteous". In Scripture the same root word is used in relation to "fire", "destruction", "blackest darkness", "smoke" and "torment".
In our most reliable Bible versions Greek scholars translate aiōnios in Matthew 25 as "eternal" when referring to both "life" and “punishment” (see NASB, Amplified Bible, ESV, NKJV, CSB, NET, NIV and LEB). Even though the word aiōn does not appear in verses 41 and 46, some mistakenly choose the definition “an age” in an attempt to suggest God's fiery punishment will be for a limited time. But the fiery punishment will last forever:
"Jesus is the source of ‘eternal salvation’... delivering the righteous from ‘eternal’ fire and judgment" (on aiōnios: Mounce's Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words).
"Aiōnios... Eternal, perpetual, belonging to the aiōn... When referring to eternal life, it means the life which is God’s and hence it is not affected by the limitations of time... Of the punishment of the wicked" (The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament by Spiros Zodhiates).
“Anyone with only a schoolboy’s Greek can verify that the same adjective is used in both parts of the verse. If the 'life' to come for believers is everlasting, so must the 'punishment' of sinners be. But if scholars must tell us that Christ uses the word aionion (eternal, everlasting) in two wholly different and mutually contradictory senses, then we may as well lay the Bible aside as an insoluble enigma” (Maurice Roberts, former editor of Banner of Truth magazine, quoted in Whatever Happened To Hell? by John Blanchard).
Unending, conscious punishment is questioned only because of beliefs and bias that distort the balanced fullness of Scripture teaching. The life to come is eternal for those who are secure in Christ, and there are no good contextual or linguistic reasons to believe that there will be a limited torment for those “who are cursed” (Matthew 25:41, CSB). After we die, life in Christ and separation from Him will be everlasting experiences.
God's holy character and sovereign purposes enable Him to acknowledge and tolerate the appalling misery, pain, disasters and cruel misfortunes that deeply distress and hurt the whole world—including the innocent. And He will also bear the dire misery of those sentenced to an endless punishment. Fully supported by Scripture we must accept this, even though we may sometimes struggle with it.
On that day there will be a fearful expectation of "divine judgment and the fury of burning wrath and indignation which will consume those who put themselves in opposition [to God]... It is a fearful and terrifying thing to fall into the hands of the living God" (from Hebrews 10, Amplified Bible).
Christ Jesus, who is going to judge the living and the dead.
2 Timothy 4:1, CSB
Therefore, since we are now justified (acquitted, made righteous, and brought into right relationship with God) by Christ’s blood, how much more [certain is it that] we shall be saved by Him from the indignation and wrath of God.
Romans 5:9, Amplified Bible
You turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God, and to wait for His Son from heaven, whom He raised from the dead, that is Jesus, who rescues us from the wrath to come.
1st Thessalonians 1:9-10, NASB
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[1] "He was despised and rejected by men, a man of suffering who knew what sickness was. He was like someone people turned away from; he was despised, and we didn’t value him" (Isaiah 53:3); "It is necessary that he suffer many things and be rejected by this generation" (Luke 17:25); "No one has greater love than this: to lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13); "...the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me" (Galatians 2:20).
[2] κόλασις kólasis; gen. koláseōs, fem. noun from kolázō, to punish. Punishment (Matt. 25:46), torment (1 John 4:18), distinguished from timōría, punishment, which in classical Greek has the predominating thought of the vindictive character of the punishment which satisfies the inflicter’s sense of outraged justice in defending his own honor or that of the violated law.
Kólasis, on the other hand, conveys the notion of punishment for the correction and bettering of the offender. It does not always, however, have this strict meaning in the NT. In Matt. 25:46, kólasis aiṓnios, eternal, does not refer to temporary corrective punishment and discipline, but has rather the meaning of timōría, punishment because of the violation of the eternal law of God. It is equivalent to géenna, hell, a final punishment about which offenders are warned by our Lord (Mark 9:43–48). In this sense it does not have the implication of bettering one who endures such punishment.
In kólasis, we have the relationship of the punishment to the one being punished while in timōría the relationship is to the punisher himself.
From: The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament, by Spiros Zodhiates