How can a loving God send you to hell? It is a difficult question because it holds two things together that we struggle to reconcile: the love of God and the reality of eternal punishment. If God is loving, how are we to understand a judgment with consequences that do not end?
We can avoid the question, or we can abuse it. We can turn away because it makes us uncomfortable, leaving the tension unexplored. Or we can turn it into a weapon, speaking about hell without the love that makes the question so important in the first place. Neither response gives the subject the seriousness it deserves.
Matthew 25:46 says, “And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
The verse speaks of both punishment and life, and it describes both as eternal. We cannot consider one side while ignoring the other. The warning is there, but so is the promise. Any honest reflection has to make room for both.
Then there is the question of what we deserve. We do not deserve the love of God, yet God is loving. That does not make the question of hell disappear. It brings us back to the tension we began with: how do we take eternal punishment seriously without losing sight of God’s love, and how do we speak of God’s love without setting this warning aside?