God's love demands a hell. Imagine a man proposing to a woman in marriage and the woman refuses saying I respect you, I admire you, but I am not going to marry you. Then he comes to her and proposes to her again and she declines. He comes to her again and proposes and she declines. And then the man says I love you so much I'm going to force you to marry me. That relationship would not be operating by love, forced love is really not love at all. God's love is persuasive, it's convincing, but it's never coercive. He's not going to put your arm behind your back and force you to do what's right. He's going to allow you to have the freedom of choice, yet he will give you all the proof one needs to be convinced that He is love. This love is also perfect in justice, and God is longsuffering in His love, patient, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance. So the choice is really up to us, it's ours to make. It's an eternal choice which we cannot change once we die. There are no shotgun weddings in heaven, but there will be a great divorce for those who refuse to enter into a vow and a covenant with God and Christ as their husband. If there is no heaven to gain or hell to shun, justice would not prevail in the universe. If there is no final judgment there is no Hell. The Bible teaches the dead will be raised to give an account and then punished. So there has to be a final separation for wickedness. We find evil is unable to be contained, it's easily spread. This cannot be said for godliness, which is not easily spread.

We are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth at which time evil will cease. Evil will be totally removed from those of us who are going God's way, who love God, and who have been born again into His kingdom. Sin has taken its effect on this world and its people and we are told in Scripture that all creation groans in travail for the day when all this will be removed. Hell shows the nature of sin and the great cost of salvation, it shows the very love of God. By the cross we see how hideous sin is and how much more powerful God's love is. This is the very reason that Jesus died, to save people from their sins. Death is the penalty of sin, the body dies and the soul becomes separate from the creator who gave them life. If there is no eternal consequences to sin then the crucifixion is robbed of its very significance. Jesus suffered in vain and it would not have been necessary for Him to die for our sins. Yet, God the father said there is no other way, that Christ is the only way. Jesus, who was truth incarnate, warned us, if your hand offends you, cut it off, it was better for you to go to heaven maimed than to go to the unquenchable fire whole, or with two arms, speaking with a hyperbole, using extreme examples to make the point how serious it is. Was He putting a non-existent fear in us for over nineteen hundred years? Of course not. Fear can actually be a good motivation because it leads to the preservation of one's life or soul. The Bible tells us the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that if we want to understand what wisdom and knowledge is, it begins with a healthy respect and fear of God because He is in control and he deals justly. However we need to be as the evangelist D. L. Moody who said, when we speak of Hell, have a tear in your eye and a quiver in your voice.