Comment on the Righteous Judge

The concept of God's justice is not easily defended when the same people who are teaching that He is just are also teaching that He is going to burn people forever because they don't sincerely respond to the gospel. Catholics teach that failure to comply with the requisites of Catholicism will have the same result. More disturbing is the teaching that some are effectively predestined to be burned forever1-because of any one sin. And everybody sins!2

Therefore, the argument for eternal torment is that God creates unredeemed man and destines him to sin. Then, when he does sin, as he is destined to do, God resurrects him for the sole purpose of judgment and then burns him in hell forever. And God is just and righteous. What a theological dilemma this is!!

One cannot help but see a massive chasm of absent truth between eternal torment and God's justice. It is a chasm so deep that most prefer to simply turn the page of the Bible rather than attempting to bridge it with the patchwork of apologies offered by the doctrine of eternal torment. Fortunately, however, it is not necessary to live with such an incomprehensible element of God's justice. All one need do is to look without prejudice at the plain words of scripture to see the imponderable justice and righteousness of the Creator.

The plain words of scripture teach that God is indeed just and that His justice means that He will judge all men individually based upon each man’s life and works:

…and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.3

This is in keeping with other scriptures that address the fairness of the Creator, who does not visit the sins of the fathers upon the sons, but rather considers each one based upon his own merits:

What mean ye, that ye use this proverb concerning the land of Israel, saying, the fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children's teeth are set on edge. As I live, saith the Lord God, ye shall not have occasion any more to use this proverb in Israel.4

Also, in Galatians:

But let every man prove his own work…Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.5

We may therefore expect that those who reject Christ will be treated justly by the Creator based upon that person's life. They will reap what they sow and in the end He will make all of it right. But this necessarily includes the ultimate consequence of sin, which is death.6 Therefore, eventually "the soul that sins shall die"7 in the second death exactly as their bodies died in the first death. Every applicable scripture states that without Christ to pay for a man’s sin, the man must pay for it himself, and that payment is, in every instance, death.8

With this understanding, the predestination conundrum is resolved. Because the final end of the unredeemed is no more than justice followed by death. So, God gives us life and we die and God judges sin. No surprises there. We all knew that going in.9

The fact that God is just means that we live in a moral universe and sin has a consequence. If one steals a shirt, there is a consequence for it. If one causes World War II, there is a consequence for that as well. But they are not the same consequences. One cannot engineer the death of millions and then escape with a vial of poison. But, in the end, all souls who sinned will die, just as Ezekiel said.10

The Parable of Lazarus shows the souls of the dead in hell prior to the judgment. Following the judgment, the unredeemed are cast into a different place called the lake of fire. Hell is therefore not the eternal abode of the damned. It is a holding place for the unredeemed dead pending the judgment. Some are in agony in hell; but hell can't be the same for everyone because God is just and everyone is different. There is simply no scripture teaching that hell is the same for everyone.

Although we see the events of judgment and hell as consecutive, we must understand that these things are outside of time and in that regard they are beyond our understanding. We must understand also that the very fact that God is just requires that He judge justly. And sin has a consequence: death.

What is unusual and unexpected, however, is that someone would step forward and pay the death-penalty for us. That someone is, of course, Jesus Christ. It is only through Jesus Christ that God may both pardon us (forgive us) and remain just. It is only through Jesus Christ that God may remain true to His justice and at the same time true to His love.

Sin kills and there is no way around it. And man, not being God, is fallible. He will inevitably sin and, as a result, he must die. The only way that the Creator could avoid that inevitability is to never have created us in the first place or to send someone to die in our place. He chose the latter.

Of course, there are peripheral arguments, such as God's justice is impugned because not everyone in the world has heard the gospel. The answer to those arguments is simple: God is not limited to the actions of man and man, from man's perspective, is wholly free to turn or not to turn to Christ. But notwithstanding any of the arguments relating to His justice, God requires a response from each of us regarding Jesus Christ, and no response is a rejection. What is your response?

When we are thirsty for spiritual life, we come to the cross and we become adopted into His family.11 Jesus became sin for us12 and we become "in" Christ.13 As such, we die vicariously with Him and thereby receive the benefit of His sacrifice.14 Because we are in Him and because we died with Him, our death was died by Him. Justice is satisfied and all of the scriptures that say that our sin causes our death are satisfied by the death of Christ.15† And, like the first Passover, the death angel comes and sees the blood of Christ and passes over us like it did that night in Egypt some thirty centuries before.16

The Error and the Cross

The ubiquitous error of eternal torment has wormed its way directly to the cross itself by implicitly denying that Christ paid the penalty that we were called upon to pay. Our ultimate penalty was death and Jesus paid it. With His death He paid not only the ultimate price but paid for whatever punishment in hell we would have received before the final judgment and eternal death in the lake of fire. We were in Him; He became our sin.

He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.17

Because He became sin for us and paid our penalty, the penalty that He paid must necessarily be our penalty. If our penalty for sin is eternal torment, then Christ did not pay our penalty.

His death was our death, and His death paid our penalty. He did not suffer eternal torment for us because eternal torment was not our penalty. He took on our sin and died for us. That is the reason why He tells us that He saves us from death;18 and He never mentions eternal torment. He died the death proclaimed in fifteen centuries of scriptural warnings.19

The Bible contains no direct statement that the unredeemed will suffer eternal torment; all the arguments for eternal torment are conclusory. That is, the belief in eternal torment is only that, a belief. There is no scripture that actually teaches it. Would it not be astounding if the Bible should concern itself with sin from beginning to end and never once directly say what that penalty for sin is? It would indeed be astounding. But the Bible does directly say what the penalty is and it says it repeatedly. The penalty is hell and then death.

There is no death penalty for Satan. Satan, the antichrist and the false prophet are not judged as unbelievers are judged. No books are opened for them. There is no resurrection to judgment and no judgment for them and they do not go to hell. They are summarily cast alive into the lake of fire and burned forever without ever appearing before any judgment and without any review and without ever being held in hell with the unredeemed. They die neither the first death nor the second. They are not permitted to die. Unredeemed mankind is, however, permitted to die because unredeemed mankind is not the un-holy trinity.

These are two distinctly different endings. They should not be compounded into one ending. One ending is eternal torment for Satan, the antichrist and the false prophet; and the other is ending hell, judgment and eternal death for the unredeemed. There is simply no scripture that supports the position that the ending called death is really eternal torment in disguise.

Justice falls upon mankind like a cataclysm that cannot be stayed. It begins in Genesis 18:25 where Abraham debates with God about the destruction of Sodom:

That be far from Thee to do after this manner, to slay the righteous with the wicked: and that the righteous should be as the wicked, that be far from Thee: Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?

It continues in Psalm 62:12 where the God is Just:

Also unto thee, O Lord, belongeth mercy: for thou renderest to every man according to his work.

It ends in the final judgment:

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them, according to their deeds.20†

Scripture is filled with affirmations of God’s justice, and it repeatedly affirms that His justice requires each person to be judged based upon what he has done. Scripture is wholly devoid of any teaching that all of the unredeemed will receive the same punishment as Satan.

2