I was talking to someone a few days ago, and that person was wrestling with their faith, and they asked a good question. They said, “why do I deserve hell?”. And I thought, you know that is a good thing to ask. Why do they deserve hell?
How would you respond if you were asked something similar?
So, why do I deserve hell? And it might be a little bit of semantics, but we get hell because of God’s perfection. God’s standard is so high and so holy that no one (except Jesus) could meet it.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 6:23 (NIV)
If God didn’t send people to hell, He wouldn’t be just. We are guilty of sin. We all can’t escape it. And if God didn’t punish sin, then He wouldn’t be a just God.
But here is the good news. Even though we deserve hell, we are given the opportunity to accept God’s grace. God sent His son to do what we couldn’t do, and to live the life we couldn’t live, free of sin. In doing this, He provided a way of escape for us from our sin and the punishment our sin deserved.
So yes, we deserve hell, but we get grace from God. We don’t deserve it, we can’t earn it. It’s God’s free gift to us, it’s just up to us to accept that gift and let Jesus become the payment for our sin.