If God is Love...

The modern world doesn’t like absolutes. It recoils from calling even the most vile acts evil. It dismisses the idea of hell as an antiquated notion that the Church needs to rid itself of. It looks at the morality of the Bible as a suggestion, something that can be changed when needed. That is why it is so interesting that this same mindset has latched onto the declaration of the Letter of First John that “God is love”. If God is love, they say, he wouldn’t send anyone to hell. He wouldn’t fault anyone for believing in a false religion, or no religion at all. The God who is love will always choose love over any other quality.


Sadly, this particular God doesn’t resemble the God of the Bible. He isn’t the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Nor is he the God who revealed himself to Moses and gave his Covenant people the Law. To reduce God to a one-dimensional principle (even one as fundamental to his nature as Love) is to treat God like a force, and not a person. But the God who chose to reveal himself to us through the Scriptures is clearly a person. God has emotions, God gets angry, God laughs, and yes, God loves.

God cares about holiness. He can’t accept rebellion, he can’t ignore sin. How do we know, besides the fact that the Bible is full of God saying exactly that, consider that God cared enough about sin that he tossed Adam and Eve out of the Garden. He flooded the world in disgust in the day of Noah. He leveled Sodom and Gomorrah, and put the sons of Eli to death for their blasphemy. God made his people wander in the desert for forty years because of their unbelief, and he decreed that the people of Canaan were so evil that they must be wiped out, all of them. God takes holiness serious in his people too. When David sinned, the unborn child died as a consequence. When the whole nation of Israel wandered away from him, he sent them into captivity. When Judah did the same, they followed suit. God cares enough about holiness that he sent his own Son to die on the Cross to save us from ourselves. God is love. No doubt about that, why else would he go to such lengths to try to redeem us?

Is hell real? You’d better believe it. Either hell is real, or God is a liar. Either hell is real or Jesus died in vain. Is there any point in worshiping a God who lies to us? Any reason to worship a God who would put his Son through torture for no real reason?? So, go ahead, tell everyone that God is love, just don’t forget to also tell them that God is Holy. And oh, by the way, we’re not. Either we fix that problem through faith in Jesus Christ, or we’re going to hell. Not because God sends people there, but because we earned it.