Faith Is For Weak People By Ray ComfortSample

“What sort of God would threaten to torture people in hell forever just because they don’t believe in Him?”

The people who ask our current question are actually asking who our God is—they don’t understand His character. God entrusts us with declaring who He is. This question also can be summarized as “How could a God who is good create hell?” But when we consider God’s goodness and His glory, the question further changes to “How could a God who is good not create hell?”

In order to enter into discussion around this question, we must understand the glory and holiness of God. Moses asked to see God’s glory, and God responds by saying that He would pass His goodness before him. This is because His glory and His goodness cannot be separated. If Moses had stood directly before God’s goodness rather than in the cleft of the rock, the wrath of God would have consumed him in an instant because of his sin. 

Like an evil criminal before a righteous judge, God’s holiness demands justice to be brought upon all evil. The only way sinners could ever stand in His presence and see His glory without being consumed would be if we were pure of heart. God makes our hearts pure through the redemptive blood of His Son, Jesus Christ.

The way for the concept of God’s holiness to make sense to the lost is to address their conscience rather than their intellect. Through our conscience, we innately recognize right and wrong, good and evil—we have a gauge by which to measure morality. When we expand the spirituality of the law, it shows sinners the nature of their Creator because the law is holy (Rom. 7:12). 

The gospel makes sense only in light of God’s law. Jesus said to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15). Gospel simply means “good news,” and the good news is that Christ died for our sins and rose again on the third day. We broke God’s law, and Jesus paid the fine. However, the good news of somebody paying a fine on your behalf makes no sense if we don’t understand that a law was violated. If we want the gospel to make sense, we must use the law to bring the knowledge of sin so that the sinner can understand why Christ died. Remember, the true convert “hears the word and understands it” (Matt. 13:23).

Why can’t a holy God look upon sin? How does God’s justice point also to His mercy?