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Speaker 1
Great creating. If we have free will and then we make bad choices and get sent to hell to get tortured, does that mean Satan is in cahoots with God?
Speaker 2
I’ll let you go for a day.
Speaker 3
I think we’re decided with this because we were just talking about how God provides this will power to do what’s right. So God is giving us the choice, the option to lean on Him to do the good things, but we have to ultimately step further back and talk about what is God like. And in the book of one John, John says twice that God is love and what does it really mean to be love. And if we go look at the definition of love in one Corinthians twelve, right? 13, the love chapter. Yeah, I think it’s 13. 1st Corinthians 13. Paul’s talk about love and he just details it out. Love is patient, love is kind. Well, in that list also it says love, trust. And that’s so critical to this to understand. Now, God, if he wasn’t love, he would be a dictator or he would just outright make it so that we would always obey Him no matter what. He does not want that because also the Bible teaches that love, to truly be love, has to be voluntary, it has to come from the heart, it has to be really authentic. And God wants meaningful relationships, god of love.
Speaker 3
Like love and relationships, they’re so much entwined and so God in of itself, the Godhead, the three of them, they have a relationship with each other where they’re so close, they’re one and then they wanted to expand the family so they keep making more creation. They created the angels, then they created humans. Why? To have relationships with us. God wants to call us his sons and daughters. And as Paul explains in Galatians, pretty much Galatians chapter four especially, I believe if you read that Paul talks about how maybe when we are ignorant, we don’t know what we’re doing, we’re under the law. But God’s plan was that we would be like sons and daughters where we’re free. And not that the law doesn’t apply to us, but we’re now mature and can make better decisions and can run the household and all that. That’s God’s plan. So that we’ll be mature, we will keep his laws by choice. And that’s really the everlasting covenant, which is if you obey God and keep his law, you will have eternal life. And it’s actually by necessity that is that way. Because without love, if we do anything other than love, we’re going to create breaches, we’re going to create inequalities, we’re going to create circumstances where someone ends up experiencing pain and ultimately it leads to death.
Speaker 3
It always will. And that’s why God cannot tolerate these things in the slightest, cannot tolerate sin whatsoever. So how is God going to have a system where we have free will but then allow for sin and then what are you going to do with it? Now we have sin in the system. God’s plan is ultimately to let everybody make a choice. Are we going to continue to identify with sin, hold on to our sin, cling to it? In which case then when God is going to purge sin totally from the universe, we will have to be purged with it. Tina what’s that verse? It will not arise a second time. That is put in utterance.
Speaker 2
It’s Old Testament. Yeah. It will not come again.
Speaker 3
Much in will not arise a second time.
Speaker 2
Amos, I’ll let you look out on the first. Do you mind if I address something really quick on this comment as well while you look that up? So, my friend, great. Cree so another thing I think just a misconception I think you’re having as far as what hell is, as if it’s a place of torture, like eternal torture. And the thing is, that’s not a biblical concept. First of all, Satan will not torture you in hell. Satan is there being punished as well. What hell is? It’s a place that was created for the devil and his angels. It wasn’t even created for man. You can see that in the New Testament. But also, hell is not this eternal place of torture. Hell is basically like it says in the book of Revelation 21, that those who are not written in the Lamb’s book of life that reject God, that say, no, I don’t want God’s way, I want my own way, I want to hold on to my sin. Then they are thrown into the lake of fire and they are consumed. They burn up that fit, they’re gone, they are annihilated, they don’t sit there being tortured and burned forever.
Speaker 2
I know that’s a really big misconception that many people have as far as what hell is. It’s like this place where the devil is having fun torturing people forever. But that’s really not the case because that’s where the devil is destroyed along with sinners. And that’s very clear. There are so many verses from the Old Testament and New want to purge it. Yes, exactly. Even look at John 316. I think this is honestly my favorite verse to show you that sin is or hell is not a place of eternal torture. It’s a place where you are consumed, burned up, and you’re done and you are eternally gone. And that’s really what hell is. It’s a place to burn up, consume those who choose to side with sin rather than with Christ based on their own free will. And John 316 is, you know, a very famous verse, but it says, For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him Jesus should not perish but have everlasting life. And so that word perish, that doesn’t mean to burn and be tortured forever. Perish means to perish, to be no more to be done, to be done away with.
Speaker 2
And you know, Romans 323 says the gift of God is eternal life. It says the wages of sin is death, is death. The second death, as it talks about in the Book of Revelation, that when you die or if you experience a second death, you go into the lake of fire. It says this is the second death, eternal death, where you’d never get a resurrection. That is, the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. So we again, you see the two choices that God clearly has for you. It’s either eternal life through his son Jesus, you have as your choice, as an opportunity to have this blessing, or you choose sin and selfishness and you choose eternal death. And it’s really your choice. And it’s not this messed up idea of God that he’s like wanting you to be lost and he’s in cahoots with the devil. God’s out that way. And I think that the devil is really smart in trying to convince people that God has a character that has an evil side to him when God doesn’t. God is love and God is perfect and his way is always kind and merciful.
Speaker 2
But again, in his mercy, he cannot allow sin to continue because that will continue the suffering that sin brings with it.
Speaker 3
We have a comment that’s directly on point too from Uncle Mg. Yeah.
Speaker 2
Uncle.
Speaker 1
Mg says, speaking to the current question, those bad choices need not cause us to lose eternal life. One John 119 negates those bad choices exactly.
Speaker 2
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So yes, you are on point that, yeah, we don’t have to be lost. Even if we’ve made bad choices, we can confess them and we can still have eternal life. Thank God, because I know I messed up. And I thank God for his mercy. Sorry, Jay, did you want to say did you find that first, I wanted.
Speaker 1
To add one thing to this. Also this topic in this discussion is that it’s the importance of surrender that in those moments when we are tempted and we need to be present first off with ourselves and recognize that we are being tempted. And when we are tempted, we need to surrender that temptation to God and not pursue it. That’s an essential component of overcoming any kind of sinful tendency, any kind of addiction. We have to recognize what we are doing and make an intentional, thoughtful effort to surrender that to God.
Speaker 3
And the temptation does not come from God while God permits it to happen so that we can have free choice. Again, it doesn’t mean God likes that and God is endorsing it. So these are things that people often conflate and I guess this is a good segue to then that verse I mentioned earlier that we’re going to read. And this is Nahim one nine, one verse nine. It says, what do you imagine against the Lord? He will make an utter end of it. Affliction will not rise up a second time. If you study this chapter, I mean, God is talking about how he will put it into sin thoroughly. And how do you put it into sin? You don’t put it into sin by burning people forever and ever and ever and ever, because they’re still around, they’re still in agony, they’re still in pain. That’s not putting into sin. And we agree, like, if God was doing that, god is as bad as Satan, but God is just going to destroy these people. He’s going to put an end to the wickedness, he’s going to destroy everything that came from sin, looks like sin is sin and it will never come back again.
Speaker 3
And those who all made a choice to live with God will have free will and there will never be sin again. So this is God’s ultimate solution, his ultimate plan of how we will have free choice. And we will. All those who choose to be in that system will all abide in his amazing law of love and have an amazing society where you will be able to leave your doors open. Nobody’s ever going to steal, nobody’s ever going to kill, and it’s going to be amazing. And there will be no more death. Because again, death comes from sin. And God never wants to see that.
Speaker 2
No. Amen. I love all God’s promises, especially Revelation 21, like 34. God says he’ll wipe away all tears from their eyes and there shall be no more death. Neither sorrow nor crying. For the former things have passed away. They’re done. These ways of this world are gone.
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In His Service
BibleAsk Team
