Why Must Unbelievers Spend Eternity in the Lake of Fire?
One of the most heart-wrenching issues about God's plan is that most people who ever live will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. This will include many very nice people from the human viewpoint. They will be people who just live out their lives quietly and do not seem to do any harm, people who are not especially sinful, people who are nice neighbors, people who donate money to worthy causes, people who are just ordinary or maybe even extraordinary in some ways. Some will even be heroes, lifesavers, hospital builders, humanitarians, and people who do many forms of good deeds. It is a terrible thing to contemplate their eternal fate. Why must such people spend eternity in absolute misery? Why can't God simply accept that they are "good" people?
The simple answer is God cannot associate with anyone who has not complied with His requirement to accept the salvation He has offered in grace through Jesus Christ, because only salvation makes a person acceptable to God. God went to great lengths to provide a way of salvation, and it is the only way. Jesus said “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me." (John 14:6) Jesus was not being allegorical, or boastful, or speaking in hyperbole, or rambling on for no purpose. God's plan required extreme effort to provide a way of salvation for sinful mankind, and God Himself as Trinity suffered greatly in the process. God cannot ignore His own perfection, that He is perfect righteousness and perfect justice. God demands perfect righteousness, not some form of relative righteousness, and no matter how good someone might appear to be it is never good enough to meet God's perfect standards. Therefore salvation is accepting what Christ has done for us to make us acceptable to God. First, Jesus Christ removed the sin issue as a barrier to salvation since He paid in full the penalty due for all sins of mankind. No one will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire because of sins, because that issue was removed entirely by Jesus Christ. But the second issue is what results in condemnation, namely to live with God forever requires perfect righteousness, and that is not gained based on one's own merits or good works. Jesus Christ made it possible to claim His own righteousness as the basis of a relationship with God, which is rejecting our inadequate righteousness and instead claiming the perfect righteousness of Christ. Romans 3:10 says "As it is written, There is none righteous, no, not one." And 2 Corinthians 5:21 says "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Therefore, accepting the salvation work of Jesus Christ is accepting two issues, namely that He paid the penalty for our sins, and also that He provides us with His own righteousness in place of our own works. Anything else falls short. There are no relative standards, since that would never meet God's perfect standards. There is no "good enough" or "not as sinful" or "did wonderful deeds" or "a very nice person" or any other relative standard by which mankind evaluates people. There is only one way which is acceptable to God, and it is absolute and eternal. John 3:16 says: "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son." The difference regarding eternal status is not a relative standard, but rather a matter of faith in Jesus Christ vs. rejection of Jesus Christ. It is that simple, and eternal in impact.
God has made the issue of salvation vs. condemnation clear through His Word revealed to mankind. Eternal condemnation is a choice, just as salvation is a choice, and they are the only two options each individual has. People live and die on earth for one main reason, namely to either accept or reject the salvation God has offered. It is a simple choice. The purpose of human existence is not to prove how good or bad they are, but rather to make a choice for or against God's salvation plan, which has only one way of salvation. Many very nice people throughout history will reject God's plan and be condemned, and many not so nice people will accept it and be saved. Every human is born condemned by God as a descendant of Adam, because Adam's sin is passed down to us all as a sinful nature. "For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive." (1 Corinthians 15:22) The first sin does not condemn us, but rather we are born condemned, and then all sin as a result of their sinful nature. Therefore no relative goodness, or minimal sinfulness, can save anyone.
One of the most often asked questions about unbelievers is "What about those who have never heard the gospel?" The answer starts with the fact that God is fair, and that He desires every person to be saved. From this alone we know that God handles the issue. Although that should be enough, there is more to the answer than that. There are two levels to a person in an isolated location hearing the gospel. The first level is a desire to know God, then after that gospel hearing. If any person ever expresses a desire to know God, then God is required to provide the gospel information to that person, no matter how remote they are. The gospel has made its way into remote regions during the entirety of human history, although much of it has not been documented. A second aspect of the question about never hearing the gospel is answered by how God distributes human souls at birth. God creates all souls, and puts them into human bodies at the point of birth. God is omniscient, so He knows which souls will ultimately seek Him and desire the gospel and salvation. Therefore God has put the souls where they belong at birth, with the ones who will seek Him put mainly into places where the gospel is available, and those who will ultimately reject Him often go into the remote places where they will not hear the gospel anyway. A third aspect is that children who die in remote locations are automatically saved, since a person must achieve the point of accountability in order to make a salvation decision. If that point is not reached, the child (or very low mentality person) who dies will represent that remote region in eternity.
God keeps a registry of salvation called the Book of Life. The names of those who have accepted God's salvation will be in the Book of Life at the end of human history, and the names of those who did not accept God's salvation will not be found. If the salvation work of Christ is rejected, the person relies on their own merit and deeds, which are never good enough to achieve the perfect righteousness demanded by God. This is why there is another set of books called the "Books of Works" which are used to condemn each unbeliever at the Last Judgment. Each unbeliever will be condemned because their own works fell far short of the perfect righteousness which only Jesus Christ could have shared with them, if they had only believed in Him. Revelation 20:12 says: "I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books." Only the names of believers will be in the Book of Life, but unbelievers will only have their names and deeds recorded in the other books, referred to as the books of works, by which they will be judged. Note they are not judged for their individual sins, but for their lack of perfect righteousness which they sought to achieve through their own good works and efforts apart from God's salvation offer. This is why all those who rejected the salvation offer from God, people who just live out their lives quietly and did not seem to do any harm, people who were not especially sinful, people who were nice neighbors, people who donated money to worthy causes, people who were just ordinary or maybe even extraordinary in some ways, and the heroes, lifesavers, hospital builders, humanitarians, and people who did many forms of good deeds, will all spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. They were not perfectly righteous, just very good people. On the other hand, there will be many people who were sinful, unlikeable, nasty people who accepted salvation because they knew what they were, and accepted the righteousness of God instead of their own unrighteousness. That is God's fairness, because every single person has a choice to make, and Jesus Christ did all the work for salvation, meaning no one could ever work their way into heaven.
God did not send His Son Jesus Christ to the cross to bear the punishment for all mankind just to later say "just kidding...everyone is welcome in heaven". If that were true then Jesus Christ suffered and bore the sins of all mankind for no reason, and the whole plan of God has been without a purpose. But God does not lie, or tell mankind one thing but mean another. He provided a means of salvation in the only way possible, namely through faith in Jesus Christ as Savior. The Bible is clear that salvation is a choice, and that each person must decide to accept or reject the salvation God has provided at great cost to Him. It was the only way God could provide salvation to any of us. Those who reject the offer cannot ever have any connection to God, either while alive or during eternity. And those who accept the offer will live with Him for all eternity, regardless of what else they do or don't do during their lives. This one decision divides the human race into two distinct categories, one group will spend eternity with God, and the other will spend eternity in horrible punishment. There are no other options, and there is no crossing over after death occurs. The division is eternal and unchangeable.
Some will ask "How can a loving God condemn some of His creation to eternal punishment?" That is what Satan asked after he was condemned. In fact, that question from Satan is why mankind was created. Satan appealed his sentence to the Lake of Fire, resulting in God allowing an appeal trial which resulted in the creation of man. As we have discussed previously, mankind is now playing out the appeal trial of Satan, proving that God is indeed loving and fair to condemn Satan and all fallen angels to the Lake of Fire. Since unbeliever humans choose the side of Satan, they reject God and are caught up with Satan in his appeal trial, so God is loving and fair to condemn unbeliever humans to the Lake of Fire along with Satan and the fallen angels. He certainly does not want to see any reject His salvation offer, but God has provided everyone with the opportunity to avoid condemnation.
Many will still ask "why eternity, why not just a shorter time period?" First, God cannot destroy souls once they have been created by Him, so each soul must live forever. Secondly, all who live with God during eternity must be as good as God is, meaning perfect righteousness during eternity. Believers achieve this by accepting the righteousness of God through Jesus Christ, not by being relatively good people. Similarly, no unbeliever can "work off" sins after death to become more acceptable to God because that is still a relative righteousness approach, and since the sin issue was completely resolved by Jesus Christ, personal sin is not the issue in the eternal condemnation of unbelievers. Unbelievers are condemned because they reject the salvation work of Jesus Christ, not because they had more heinous sins or sinned more often during their lifetime. For the same reason, unbelievers who do many good deeds and sin very little cannot ever achieve salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Additionally, unbelievers have a soul but no human spirit, and no amount of good deeds or lack of sin can gain one. A human spirit is required to be a "spiritual being" and without one there is no way to interact with God. A human spirit is part of the salvation package, and cannot be gained any way except through faith in Christ as Savior. God cannot have any contact during eternity with any person who does not have a human spirit.
There is only one way to live with God for all eternity since it is the only way acceptable to God, and is based on one decision which each person must make. It is the reason each person lives on the earth, namely to make a decision either for or against Jesus Christ as Savior. It is also a free gift which cannot be earned. It is grace. Ephesians 2: 8 says: "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast." Refusing the ultimate gift from God Himself is the singular reason for eternal condemnation. Those who spend eternity in condemnation will do so because they rejected a grace gift which was personally handed to them by God, but they pushed it back in His face. Condemnation is a choice, just as salvation is a choice. Earning and deserving have no place in God's plan. Neither salvation nor eternal condemnation are earned or deserved, they are chosen.
God cannot ignore His own perfect essence. If He could ignore His perfect righteousness in favor of His perfect love, He would not have perfect righteousness and therefore would not be God. God did not reject any unbeliever, each one individually rejected God, and each one of them must live with that rejection forever.