Which Life Will You Choose?

People often ask: How can a loving God send people to hell? For the purposes of an agreed definition, we will biblically describe hell as eternal, tormenting, separation from God.

Let me say from the start that God has never, or will ever, send anyone to hell. Very soon after they were created, mankind made a conscious and deliberate decision to separate themselves from God, believing the lie that they could be the god of their own domain, their own lives. In making that choice, man forfeited all his rights and status that came with sharing the life of God. Before they once had both God-Life and physical life. After their fateful choice, they had physical life only. Choosing to separate themselves from God, they forfeited their God-Life or Spirit-Life. They used to be alive to God and dead to sin (although before the separation there was no sin). 

As a result of separating themselves, they were then dead to God and alive to sin. Sadly, this is the condition in which we are all born into this world. It's a helpless, hopeless state. However, this did not take God by surprise.  

He devised and provided an incredible plan of rescue and redemption, sending His Son Jesus to atone for and cancel our sin. 

 Not only that — but at Christ's death, burial and resurrection, He arranged for the void spirit-life of all humanity to be placed into Christ, so that all who believed in Jesus Christ would experience a spiritual death, burial and resurrection making them a brand new person, now being dead to sin and again being alive to God and having their very life IN GOD.

 I want you to see that both states of being for mankind — being spiritually dead in Adam's life OR being spiritually alive in Christ's Life — involve making a conscious, deliberate choice. Choosing the lie that you are the god of your universe, rejecting the one and only true God, leaves you spiritually dead, eternally separated from God in a place of torment the Bible calls hell. Choosing to believe in Christ and His finished work on the Cross — God's rescue plan — makes you alive to God, enabling you to have full fellowship with Him, knowing you will spend eternity with Christ, and with all your loved ones who have made the same decision.

So back to my initial point: God has never, or will ever, send anyone to hell. Sadly, people CHOOSE to spend their eternity there. Jesus says in Matthew 18:14 that His will is that no one would perish. 

His plan of rescue and redemption is open to ANYONE who chooses to believe and receive.

 May I say it a different way? No one goes to hell because their sins are not forgiven. People go to hell for choosing to be in the wrong life — Adam's life vs Christ's Life. Which life will you choose?