Steven Daniel Schultz
If God is love, then eternal hell is a contradiction in terms. Love by definition cannot cease to forgive, because forgiveness is the very essence of love. To posit that God could withhold forgiveness forever is to posit that, at some arbitrary cut-off point, God could cease to love us, causing Him to violate His own nature — which is impossible.
Instead, the truth is embedded in the biblical claim that Christ was “slain from the foundation of the world.” That phrase means reconciliation was not an afterthought, nor was the cross God’s “Plan B.” Forgiveness was already woven into the structure of creation before a single human being took a breath. From the outset, God accounted for our freedom, and for the distortions of His will and His plan that freedom would inevitably bring.
The problem, then, is not that God refuses to forgive, but that humanity refuses to believe we are forgiven. From the Garden onward, we clothed ourselves in shame – hiding, covering, assuming guilt God never imposed. At Calvary, this drama reached its climax: humanity enacted the ultimate crime, killing God incarnate. Yet even there, God did not condemn; instead, He clothed us again, this time with the blood of Christ Himself, showing that even our worst imaginable sin had already been absorbed into grace. The cross was never about appeasing divine wrath. It was about confronting human guilt.
So what of hell? Once the veil is lifted at death and reality is unveiled in its fullness, who would not run to the banquet of love? Who, having seen clearly the feast prepared and the communion offered, would not desire to enter? Our refusals in this life are born of ignorance, trauma, pride, and distortion – not full knowledge. A contract signed without disclosure of the terms is considered invalid, and no eternal consequence can justly bind a soul that has not yet seen what the terms of God’s arrangement truly entail without ambiguity.
Some may resist longer, of course – perhaps even the Hitlers of history, souls who have so bound themselves to hatred that love feels unbearable. Yet even here, God’s door does not close. For God to permanently bar them would mean God Himself chose unforgiveness. And unforgiveness is the opposite of love. If God is love, He cannot, in principle, cease to forgive.
The punishment of hell, then, is not God’s wrath but the torment of self-exile. It is the misery of isolation, the despair of loneliness, the gnashing of teeth that comes from closing ourselves off to communion. It is not God punishing us, but us punishing ourselves. Hell is real, but it cannot possibly be final. Christ already descended into Hell and unlocked its gates – now, they only lock from the inside, and they remain forever open to anyone who would walk back through them once they reconcile themselves to the God who is love.
Thus the vision is clear: God has already accounted for our sins from the beginning. Christ’s death revealed not the wrath of God but the forgiveness of God, breaking the spell of shame so that we might accept what had always been true. The banquet is eternal, and the invitation never expires. Even if a soul resisted for ages upon ages, God’s love would remain, arms open, feast prepared, forgiveness already given. Eternal damnation, as popularly imagined, is impossible, for it would require God to betray His own nature. And God cannot cease to be love.
If God is love, then eternal hell is impossible, because unforgiveness is incompatible with unconditional love; the cross shows us this most clearly, for Christ was “slain from the foundation of the world,” meaning God had already accounted for sin from the beginning, never holding it against us, yet we assumed guilt ourselves and therefore needed grace to meet us even in our worst crime—the killing of God incarnate—so that we could accept forgiveness that was always already ours. Once the veil is lifted at death, who would not choose the banquet of love? Refusals in this life are born of ignorance, trauma, pride, or distortion, not full vision, and when all is unveiled, nearly every soul will rush in; even those who resist, like the Hitlers of history, cannot be eternally barred, for that would mean God chose unforgiveness, which He cannot. Thus the punishment of “hell” is not God’s wrath but the self-inflicted torment of resisting love: isolation, loneliness, and despair from closing ourselves off to communion. Hell is real but not final; its gates lock only from the inside, and the invitation to the feast remains open for as long as it takes, because God cannot cease to love, forgive, and welcome us home.
Leave a Reply