TWO DESTINATION
God is really quite liberating when you think of Him. He allows you to draw your own conclusions and consequences. Your belief doesn’t make God exist as He exists quite independently of you. Equally your unbelief does not make God go away, it just makes you a foreigner to His will. Interestingly in a world that tries to force less impressive opinions on us, God doesn’t even force belief in Him upon us. However, it should be no surprise that God wants you to believe. He made you and He sent his Son Jesus Christ to introduce Himself to you and to save you for a life with Him. That’s a salvation from a life alone without Him.
Of course, you would be mistaken if you thought God needed you because he doesn’t. It’s that truth that makes idiotic, comments like, “I will live it up now while young and do the God thing when I’m old”. God doesn’t need you so it’s worth reflecting on the fact that God doesn’t have to rush to receive you beyond your days of foolishness. The big issue is not you taking on God in your old age but whether God will take you on at any age. The Bible says, “The fool says in his heart there is no God.” The only reason for someone to make this statement is to remind us that we need God more than God needs us.
God may not need you but you would be mistaken if you thought God didn’t want you, because he does. In fact it is this truth that makes us all the more culpable for our sins. He wants you because He knows you will never be complete without Him. His purpose in creating us was always with relationship in mind. We were made for relationship with God and each other and when God is missing our humanity is incomplete, not as intended. The coming into the world of Jesus Christ was, metaphorically speaking, the outstretched hand of God’s offer of friendship to a people who don’t deserve it. He didn’t need to offer it but He did. We don’t need to take it but we should.
Throughout history God has explained the benefits, outlines the promises and articulates the consequences of entering into, or steering clear of, relationship with Him. No force applied but it’s the relationship that determines different destinations for both. One heaven and one hell. One receives the hand of God’s friendship and the promise of heaven, while you could say, others nail the hand offered to a cross and make their future in hell.
We have become very familiar with the concept of hell but it’s the reality you should want to avoid. Interestingly, hell was not prepared for people but for the devil and his angels. Through death and resurrection Jesus said He was going to prepare a place for his friends in God the Father’s house.
Two destinations governed by two responses to the offer of divine friendship. As one writer says, “For a person to go to hell, then, is for a person to go against God’s intended destiny…Hell is man’s choice, not God’s desire.”
Consider then this this explanation of hell. Hell is the chosen place of the person who loves self more than God, who loves sin more than God’s saving Son. Judgement is the moment when God looks on those who rejected the offer of His hand in friendship and he says, “Your choice will be honoured.”
God is really quite liberating when you think of Him. He allows you to draw your own conclusions and live with the consequences.