Is eternal punishment a contradiction of Gods love?

The bible defines for us what love is:

1Cor13:4-8(NIV)
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."

According to the bible, God is love (1Jn 4:8), and therefore his actions can never be inconsistent with his own definition of love.

In my opinion, an eternal punishment would contradict Gods own character. If love always perseveres and never fails, how can God give up on anyone?

Flying_Spaghetti_Monster wrote:

The bible defines for us what love is:
1Cor13:4-8(NIV)
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
According to the bible, God is love (1Jn 4:8), and therefore his actions can never be inconsistent with his own definition of love.
In my opinion, an eternal punishment would contradict Gods own character. If love always perseveres and never fails, how can God give up on anyone?

God never gives up on anyone while they are alive and have a chance to trust in Christ. Indeed hell itself is said to have been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). It was never prepared for anyone else. But the deliberate continued rejection of the Gospel until death is simply a choice made by man

Also, God's character as love is shown clearly in the stories of Luke 15, especially about the Prodigal son. Luke 15:20 shows the son returning. "..But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him". The son is still far away but the father was looking and hoping for his return, if they had binoculars in those days he would have used them -- and was rewarded while the possibility existed.

Contrast that with the tragic facts of Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man in hell and Lazarus in heaven. The rich man had 5 brothers at home, would God give up on them? The answer is in verse 29-31 "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, No, father Abraham:but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said to him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

If you reject the truth of God as spoken, reject the love Christ offers on the cross, God says there comes a time when you will not be persuaded. The miracle of the resurrection will not change you then. You have calloused your heart.
You see, love does not bulldoze over our will or create us as robots that we must love Christ. God's character is love, but love rejected is the fault of man not God

true liberty wrote:

God never gives up on anyone while they are alive and have a chance to trust in Christ.

My interpretation of the 1 corinthians Ch13 is that love never gives up, even after the death of the one who love is being directed towards. What is your interpretation?

1 Corinthians 13:13 (NLT)“Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.”

true liberty wrote:

Indeed hell itself is said to have been prepared for the devil and his angels (Matthew 25:41). It was never prepared for anyone else. But the deliberate continued rejection of the Gospel until death is simply a choice made by man

Than the mere fact that people end up in hell would be an accident on Gods part?

true liberty wrote:

Also, God's character as love is shown clearly in the stories of Luke 15, especially about the Prodigal son. Luke 15:20 shows the son returning. "..But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him". The son is still far away but the father was looking and hoping for his return, if they had binoculars in those days he would have used them -- and was rewarded while the possibility existed.

I don’t wish to dispute the claim that many bible verses point towards a loving God. If we agree that God is love (1Jn 4:8) and that he cannot act contrary to that nature of love, then the eternal punishment of unrepentant sinners must also be an act of love, right?

I am merely trying to understand which aspect of love would motivate God to eternally judge people for their sins.

true liberty wrote:

Contrast that with the tragic facts of Luke 16:19-31, the story of the rich man in hell and Lazarus in heaven. The rich man had 5 brothers at home, would God give up on them? The answer is in verse 29-31 "They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. And he said, No, father Abraham:but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent. And he said to him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead."

The bible does say that God disciplines those that he loves (Hebrews 12:6). In my opinion, discipline is an act of protection and therefore consistent with love. However, I have trouble reconciling the fact that God can eternally persevere in love while simultaneously giving up on sinners at some point. I’d be most interested to read your thoughts on how you reconcile the two.

true liberty wrote:

If you reject the truth of God as spoken, reject the love Christ offers on the cross, God says there comes a time when you will not be persuaded. The miracle of the resurrection will not change you then. You have calloused your heart. You see, love does not bulldoze over our will or create us as robots that we must love Christ. God's character is love, but love rejected is the fault of man not God

I am seeking to have a consistent interpretation of the bible here. I agree with you that love does not impose itself on others as it is not self-seeking. I also agree with you that love offered to another can be rejected, therefore putting the one offering love in a position of vulnerability. However, 1 Corinthians 13 claims that love always perseveres without fail, and therefore I am curious as to how God can stop offering that love to unrepentant sinner’s , even after physical death.

Gods love and grace is offered in THIS life. Read the story of the rich man and Lazarus and pay special attention to this verse..

Luke 16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.

We have the same Moses and the prophets to read,,but now we also have the One that rose from the dead,,Jesus Christ. And, true to the verse,,MANY are still not persuaded. So, who's fault is that? Gods or yours?

Wayne wrote:

Gods love and grace is offered in THIS life.

According to the bible, God is love and cannot act outside of love. Therefore, every act that God performs must also be an act of love....both now and forever, right?

Wayne wrote:

Read the story of the rich man and Lazarus and pay special attention to this verse..
Luke 16:31 And he said unto him, If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.
We have the same Moses and the prophets to read,,but now we also have the One that rose from the dead,,Jesus Christ.

I have not tried to apportion blame to anyone in this thread. In accordance with the principles of good biblical interpretation, i let the bible itself define what love is. The final judgement on unrepentant sinners must be consistent with the attributes of love (as defined by 1Corinthians 13)...do you agree or disagree?

Wayne wrote:

And, true to the verse,,MANY are still not persuaded. So, who's fault is that? Gods or yours?

If you claim that it is my fault that i am not persuaded, you are most welcome to find fault with my reasoning as i always welcome the opportunity to learn new 'truths'. If reason, logic, and evidence dictate that a belief in Jesus is warranted, then im more than happy to make that decision.

>>>true liberty
Also, God's character as love is shown clearly in the stories of Luke 15, especially about the Prodigal son. Luke 15:20 shows the son returning. "..But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him". The son is still far away but the father was looking and hoping for his return, if they had binoculars in those days he would have used them -- and was rewarded while the possibility existed.

>>>Gillette
Do you agree that this parable is told to explain to us how much Jesus thought that his father God loves us and will wait for us to return to him?

And if your interpretation is correct, wouldn't Jesus have inserted into the parable a bit at the end where the patient father has finally had enough and slams the door forever on his prodigal son because the son has waited too long and crossed some sort of boundary?

But there IS no such "point of no return" in Jesus' teaching parable of the prodigal son. WHY NOT?

What is Hell?
It is obvious that the view that most of humanity are destined to spend eternity in misery in hell cannot be reconciled with those scriptures which predict restoration for all; yet the word 'hell' occurs thirty one times in the Old Testament and twenty two times in the New Testament in the Authorized Version (King James). This one English term has been made to represent the Hebrew 'sheol' and the three Greek words 'hades','gehenna' and 'tartarus'.
We must now enquire whether these four terms mean the same, and whether 'hell' in its modern meaning fits any of them.
'Hell' is the noun form of the old Anglo-Saxon verb 'hele' which meant to hide, conceal, or bury something. In one of his poems Chaucer wrote:'To hide and hele thing', meaning to conceal them. In its old English significance 'hell' was an appropriate rendering of the Greek 'hades' which means the unseen or imperceptible and since the Septuagint Greek translation of the Old Testament books produced by seventy two Hellenists (Greek speaking Jews) about two centuries B. C., consistently translates 'sheol' with the word 'hades', we must conclude that these terms are synonymous. Since both invariably refer to the grave or the condition of humans between death and resurrection, or to a state akin to death (Jonah 2:2-5), we can find no more appropriate English term than 'hell' provided we keep to its ORIGINAL MEANING. >>> CONTUNUED:
http://home.earthlink.net/~k7vhq/stevenson.ht...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_and_Dive...
Otis Q Sellers
Google results…
Sellers holds this account as a satirical parable which represents a masterful expose of the Pharisees. Through satire, Jesus effectively strips the Pharisees of any pretense of righteousness and thoroughly discredits their justification for ignoring the poor in Israel. The thought here is that when examining Luke 16:19-31 in the light of history, we note a rather suspicious resemblance between Jesus’ story of The Rich Man and Lazarus, and the traditional teachings of the Pharisees. Sellers' concludes that Jesus was not setting out to confirm Pharisaic beliefs about the afterlife. True, he told their story; the same story they had told a thousand times before, but with one important difference; a rather ironic twist you might say, that sees the Rich Man waking up in torment in Hades and being denied the slightest assistance by application of the same logic whereby he had regularly denied the poor and destitute while on earth. It would not take much imagination to visualize the headlines in the Jerusalem Gazette the morning after Jesus told His version of their story, humorously conveying how the Lord had turned the tables on the Pharisees in the afterlife.

Google results…
http://www.heavendwellers.com/hd_rich_man_and...

http://hell-fact-or-fable.com
COMMENTS ON WHAT ABOUT HELL
GOOGLE "what-the-hell-is-hell "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazarus_and_Dive...

Google key words and see if you can find more truth... or things that make sense.

Bob Todd USSA wrote:

http://hell-fact-or-fable.com
COMMENTS ON WHAT ABOUT HELL
GOOGLE "what-the-hell-is-hell "

Thanks Bob Todd for some interesting links. In my opinion, an loving God who burns sinners cannot possibly exist. Im curious how some can justify such a sadistic act from a loving God.

People justify their belief in a sadistic God because they have been told the lie over and over again that there is an everlasting hell punishment, from about the fourth century, by the organized church. An idea does not need to be true to be believed and to be effective. It seems the church wanted to scare people into heaven. That is a contrast that God planned just as God planned for Eve, and stupid Adam, to partake of the tree of good and evil... or something like that as I understand it.
What I don't understand is why people believe that one must choose to believe, and accept, in the blood of the cross otherwise at the end of this life all is lost. The Bible says that God is the Saviour of all mankind... so we are saved by what God wills not what man wills. Speaking of God’s will…
http://home.earthlink.net/~btodd2/freewillnot...

Flying_Spaghetti_Monster wrote:

The bible defines for us what love is:
1Cor13:4-8(NIV)
"Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails."
According to the bible, God is love (1Jn 4:8), and therefore his actions can never be inconsistent with his own definition of love.
In my opinion, an eternal punishment would contradict Gods own character. If love always perseveres and never fails, how can God give up on anyone?

Hi FSM, This is an issue that bothers many people who have an incomplete understanding of three things: the nature of God, the nature of man, and the nature of sin. As fallen, sinful human beings, the nature of God is a difficult concept for us to grasp. We tend to see God as a kind, merciful Being whose love for us overrides and overshadows all His other attributes. Of course God is loving, kind, and merciful, but He is first and foremost a holy and righteous God. So holy is He that He cannot tolerate sin. He is a God whose anger burns against the wicked and disobedient (Isaiah 5:25; Hosea 8:5; Zechariah 10:3). He is not only a loving God—He is love itself! But the Bible also tells us that He hates all manner of sin (Proverbs 6:16-19). And while He is merciful, there are limits to His mercy. "Seek the LORD while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon" (Isaiah 55:6-7).

Humanity is corrupted by sin, and that sin is always directly against God. When David sinned by committing adultery with Bathsheba and having Uriah murdered, he responded with an interesting prayer: "Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight..." (Psalm 51:4). Since David had sinned against Bathsheba and Uriah, how could he claim to have only sinned against God? David understood that all sin is ultimately against God. God is an eternal and infinite Being (Psalm 90:2). As a result, all sin requires an eternal punishment. God's holy, perfect, and infinite character has been offended by our sin. Although to our finite minds our sin is limited in time, to God—who is outside of time—the sin He hates goes on and on. Our sin is eternally before Him and must be eternally punished in order to satisfy His holy justice.

No one understands this better than someone in hell. A perfect example is the story of the rich man and Lazarus. Both died, and the rich man went to hell while Lazarus went to paradise (Luke 16). Of course, the rich man was aware that his sins were only committed during his lifetime. But, interestingly, he never says, "How did I end up here?" That question is never asked in hell. He does not say, "Did I really deserve this? Don't you think this is a little extreme? A little over the top?" He only asks that someone go to his brothers who are still alive and warn them against his fate.

Like the rich man, every sinner in hell has a full realization that he deserves to be there. Each sinner has a fully informed, acutely aware, and sensitive conscience which, in hell, becomes his own tormenter. This is the experience of torture in hell—a person fully aware of his or her sin with a relentlessly accusing conscience, without relief for even one moment. The guilt of sin will produce shame and everlasting self-hatred. The rich man knew that eternal punishment for a lifetime of sins is justified and deserved. That is why he never protested or questioned being in hell.

The realities of eternal damnation, eternal hell, and eternal punishment are frightening and disturbing. But it is good that we might, indeed, be terrified. While this may sound grim, there is good news. God loves us (John 3:16) and wants us to be saved from hell (2 Peter 3:9). But because God is also just and righteous, He cannot allow our sin to go unpunished. Someone has to pay for it. In His great mercy and love, God provided His own payment for our sin. He sent His Son Jesus Christ to pay the penalty for our sins by dying on the cross for us. Jesus' death was an infinite death because He is the infinite God/man, paying our infinite sin debt, so that we would not have to pay it in hell for eternity (2 Corinthians 5:21). If we confess our sin and place our faith in Christ, asking for God's forgiveness based on Christ's sacrifice, we are saved, forgiven, cleansed, and promised an eternal home in heaven. God loved us so much that He provided the means for our salvation, but if we reject His gift of eternal life, we will face the eternal consequences of that decision.

Who in their right mind believes such stuff? I find the idea of a father deliberately sending his son to his death, for whatever reason, gross, and pointless. And the idea of a supposedly all loving and omniscient being needing people to suffer eternal torture is a contradiction in terms, as FSM has already alluded to. It's just plain crazy, and depressing as far as I'm concerned.

par five wrote:

Who in their right mind believes such stuff?

Hi par five, I believe it. And according to adherents.com there are 2.1 billion Christians in the world today. So I guess there must be about 2.1 billion of us who believe this stuff.

par five wrote:

I find the idea of a father deliberately sending his son to his death, for whatever reason, gross, and pointless.

To wonder why God couldn't find "another way" to do something is to imply that the way He has chosen is not the best course of action and that some other method would be better. Usually what we perceive as a "better" method is one that seems right to us. Before we can come to grips with anything God does, we have to first acknowledge that His ways are not our ways, His thoughts are not our thoughts—they are higher than ours (Isaiah 55:8).

Don't you see par five, Jesus had to die?

God cannot let sin go unpunished. To bear our own sins would be to suffer God's judgment in the flames of hell. Praise God, He kept His promise to send and sacrifice the perfect Lamb to bear the sins of those who trust in Him. Jesus had to die because He is the only one who can pay the penalty for our sins.

par five wrote:

And the idea of a supposedly all loving and omniscient being needing people to suffer eternal torture is a contradiction in terms, as FSM has already alluded to. It's just plain crazy, and depressing as far as I'm concerned.

God does not need anyone to suffer. One chooses his own eternity through free will. I choose to believe God and His Word. I choose to be a Christian. It's not crazy and it's not depressing. It's awesome! It's exciting! It's amazing! Through Christ' death and resurrection, God has made a way for me to spend eternity in heaven with Him where there will be no more crying and no more pain. No more death and no more sorrow. No more pain. No more wheel chairs. No more chemotherapy. No more broken hearts. No more jail cells. No more divorce. No more tears.

God is holy. Heaven is holy. There will be no sin in heaven. There cannot be sin in heaven. By choice, the sinful are in the lake of fire (Revelation 21:8). Nothing impure will ever enter heaven (Revelation 21:27).

Choose life and not death.

Blessings,
Missionary Man

Missionary Man wrote:

<quoted text>
Hi par five, I believe it. And according to adherents.com there are 2.1 billion Christians in the world today. So I guess there must be about 2.1 billion of us who believe this stuff.

Lol, you are outnumbered by those who don't.

http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_cha...

par five wrote:

Who in their right mind believes such stuff? I find the idea of a father deliberately sending his son to his death, for whatever reason, gross, and pointless. And the idea of a supposedly all loving and omniscient being needing people to suffer eternal torture is a contradiction in terms, as FSM has already alluded to. It's just plain crazy, and depressing as far as I'm concerned.

If we reject the love and forgiveness offered, then it proves we are not of the family of God at all! Jesus called those Jews in his day that rejected his message of God's love related to the devil - "of your father the devil" - in the Gospel of John.
So those in Hell are Not sons of the Almighty Father.

Roland_Deschain wrote:

<quoted text>
Lol, you are outnumbered by those who don't.
http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_cha...

Since when is truth always on the side of the majority of adherents?