by jimwalton » Mon Oct 13, 2014 12:30 pm
> Am I right now experiencing what your version of hell is like?
No, not really. Just in one sense of it. Anyone who has not made a decision to align their life with God's in a love relationship is still separated from him, as you say, as we were all born separated from him. We all have a choice to align with him or to continue in our separation.
But in this life we are all also still recipients of what is called "common grace". We all still enjoy sunshine and rain, the produce of the earth, joy and laughter, beauty, and things like encouragement, success, friendship. In eternity, in the complete separation from the life of God, people will be separated from these things as well. In eternity, the joy of his followers is made complete, and the separation of those who are in rebellion against him is also made complete.
What does perfect justice and perfect mercy being together look like? The Bible describes a situation where there is one ultimate choice: The choice to align with God, who is life, and therefore to choose life, or to refuse to align with God, which is a choice against life, which is therefore death. There is no middle ground. Humanity chose and continues to daily choose against life, which is the choice of separation from life, which is death. Jesus came, as the Bible teaches, to fulfill the legal requirements both of life and death, and in a legal transaction, bear death for any who want to align with God. He freely took their legal punishment as an act of love so that they can have life. What is necessary is that an individual must choose it; love and life cannot be foisted on people without destroying what love is all about. Therefore mercy is extended to all who ask, and God in his justice grants it because the legal requirements of the law have been met in the death of Jesus. And therefore justice is extended to all: for all who have chosen life, they can find it because Jesus paid the price; for all who have chosen death, they will have what they have chosen and deserve because they have rebelled against the source of Life itself. Thus we have perfect love (sacrificial, substitutionary, freely given), perfect justice (all will get what they have chose and deserve), and perfect mercy (those who turn to life will have it through Jesus, and those who did not will not all be judged the same, but commensurate with their sins).