…People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious. For as I walked around and looked carefully at your objects of worship, I even found an altar with this inscription: to an unknown god. So you are ignorant of the very thing you worship—and this is what I am going to proclaim to you.

-Acts 17:22b-23

Two Questions:

1. How can Christians claim God is loving and merciful?

2. Why would God create people whom He knows will end up in Hell?

How can Christians claim God is loving and merciful?

When the Lord your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations—the Hittites, Girgashites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites, seven nations larger and stronger than you—and when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you are to do to them: Break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you out of all the peoples on the face of the earth to be his people, his treasured possession… He will give their kings into your hand, and you will wipe out their names from under heaven. No one will be able to stand up against you; you will destroy them.

-Deuteronomy 7:1-6, 24

Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy all that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.

-I Samuel 15:3

…The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, 7 maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished; he punishes the children and their children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation.

-Exodus 34:6b-7

Say to them, ‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live…

-Ezekiel 33:11a

Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it…Anger isn’t the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference….God’s wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer….which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.

-Becky Pippert, Hope Has Its Reasons

…My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline, and do not lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the one he loves, and he chastens everyone he accepts as his son.’ Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as his children. For what children are not disciplined by their father?

-Hebrews 12:5b-7

Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows.

-Galatians 6:7

And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment.

-Hebrews 9:27 (KJV)

For the wise men of old the cardinal problem had been to conform the soul to reality, and the solution had been knowledge, self-discipline, and virtue. For magic and applied science alike the problem is how to subdue reality to the wishes of men; the solution is a technique; and both in the practice of this technique, are ready to do things hitherto regarded as disgusting and impious…

-C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

If God were not angry at injustice and deception and did not make a final end to violence—that God would not be worthy of worship.

-Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

Only if I am certain that there is a God who will right all wrongs and settle all accounts perfectly do I have the power to refrain.

-Miroslav Volf, Exclusion and Embrace

Why does God create people He knows He will end up judging and who will end up eternally separated from Him?

As He was setting out on a journey, a man ran up to Him and knelt before Him, and asked Him, ‘Good Teacher, what shall I do so that I may inherit eternal life?’ But Jesus said to him, ‘Why do you call Me good? No one is good except God alone. You know the commandments: ‘Do not murder, Do not commit adultery, Do not steal, Do not give false testimony, Do not defraud, Honor your father and mother.’’ And he said to Him, ‘Teacher, I have kept all these things from my youth.’ Looking at him, Jesus showed love to him and said to him, ‘One thing you lack: go and sell all you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow Me.’ But he was deeply dismayed by these words, and he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.

-Mark 10:17-22 (NASB)

But he was deeply dismayed by these words, and he went away grieving; for he was one who owned much property.

-Mark 10:22

You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may prove yourselves to be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.

-Matthew 5:43-45 (NASB)

So why did God create people He knew would reject him?

There is a much better question:

Is God committed to love and freewill?

Is God committed to justice?

Is God committed to redeeming those He loves?

Here is what we know with certainty:

The Hound of Heaven is after everyone.

All who call on his name will be saved.

The grace of God covers a multitude of sin.

The message of the gospel is not a message of shame but of mercy and forgiveness, of joy and celebration, of security and eternity.

God creates every person with the freedom and revelation to choose him.

The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.

-Romans 1:18-20

For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life.

-John 3:16 (NASB)

And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

-2 Corinthians 3:18

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

-1 John 1:9

Make a Decision