Q. If a person goes to Hell does God still love them?
A. Yes, God still loves those who are in Hell. As St. John says when he speaks of the identity of God, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)
As we know, God is also the creator of all that is, and therefore also holds all things in being, so nothing could exist without Him desiring them. This perhaps brings up a deeper question: if God loves them, then why are they in Hell?
Again, we can respond with St. John’s statement, “God is love.” Now, we need to dig a little bit deeper into this word “love” to better understand how it answers this second question. Love is often used today to mean something along the lines of not hurting someone’s feelings. After all, love is supposed to be a good feeling, so if I make someone feel bad, how could that possibly be love? Love, as St. John used the term, is more than a feeling. Love is a choice to will the good of another. Love requires that I desire what is best for the one whom I love. Ultimately, what is best for everyone is to know, love and serve God in this life, so that we might live with Him forever in the life to come. So, to love someone is to help them to come to know God and to know God’s desire for their happiness and then to help them to walk with God as He calls them.
So, if love is to will another’s good, how can God be love if He allows people to go to Hell? God does desire our good, and the greatest good that a person can experience is freely choosing to respond to God’s love by choosing to live in relationship with Him. The reason for this is that, if God’s love trampled on a person’s ability to choose to love Him or not to love Him, then God would deny the very gift that He gave us.
St. Paul reminds St. Timothy that, should we choose to deny Jesus Christ, then He will deny us. Yet even when we choose to be unfaithful, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself (see 2 Timothy 2:12-13). This is all to say that, if we choose to deny God’s love for us, and therefore deny a relationship with Him, then He will accept our denial and permit us to live apart from Him. However, even when we choose to be unfaithful to Him, He remains faithful to His promises, because He will not deny Himself. God has promised us an immortal soul and the ability to choose to reciprocate His love for us or not, and He will not rescind those gifts. So, God is showing His love for us by respecting our choice to live apart from Him, and thus His love permits us to choose Hell. However, that does not mean that He refuses to pursue us while we still have the ability to choose Him.
I think that the biggest takeaway from this question is to realize that if God still loves those who are in Hell, then He must love those of us who are still on Earth, even if we have fallen short. This should fill us with confidence that no matter what sins lie in my past, or in the past of a loved one, I am not “too far gone.” So long as I have life, I can embrace the mercy that God’s love offers to me and enter into a full relationship with Him. So long as I have life, despair has no place in my soul. May the knowledge of God’s mercy drive out any bit of despair from our hearts so that we may turn to our Father in Heaven today, entrust to Him the infidelities of our past, and persevere with Him now so that we may reign with Him forever (cf. 2 Timothy 2:10-13).
This question was answered by Father Robert Johnson, assistant pastor at St. Joseph Parish in Lincoln. Write to Ask the Register using our online form, or write to 3700 Sheridan Blvd., Suite 10, Lincoln NE 68506-6100. All questions are subject to editing. Editors decide which questions to publish. Personal questions cannot be answered. People with such questions are urged to take them to their nearest Catholic priest.
