Often times, people will squirm in agony over the thought of a God who actually condemns the guilty to hell for eternity. They will make statements like 'a loving God would never do that' or 'a merciful God would never do that' but that only assumes what has yet to be proven.
The fact is that a truly 'loving God' must hate some things, indeed everything that violates his loving nature. Does sin violate love? Absolutely! To love God and your neighbor is to not sin against them. So a truly 'loving God' must hate at the very least 'sin' -- but this begs the question, does God hate sinners? I know the popular bumper sticker Gospecl slogan is 'God hates the sin but loves the sinner' but is this what the Bible tells us? Absolutely NOT!!! Psalm 5:5 states that God hates all evildoers, not simply the evil that they do. Psalm 11:5 tells us that Yahweh hates the wicked and those who love evil.
A quick word on Hebrew thought is appropriate here. Ancient Hebrews had no conception of a man's actions being separate from the man himself. In other words, a man's actions were simply an extension of that man. We see this all throughout Scripture and it is especially clear in the epistle of James with comments such as 'faith without works is dead' and 'I'll show you my faith by my works' etc. Even Peter's command to repent and be baptized shows this concept as it was natural for the physical act of baptism to follow the spirutal act of repentance--obedience to the command is what showed the repentance to be genuine.
So is God somehow unloving for sentencing the wicked to their just punishment in hell? Not at all!!! God forbid!!! If God didn't pusnish the guilty then he would not truly show forth his absolute love.
But now what about mercy? It is often stated (in fact this was just stated to me in the chat room) that a merciful God wouldn't 'torture' (notice the caricature as 'torment' is not 'torture') men in hell for eternity. Well, why not? For God to be merciful he only has to extend his mercy to one individual (and truthfully he doesn't have to extend it to anyone, but if he had not extended it then we wouldn't know of it). But for God to be just he has to punish all of the guilty.
The man I spoke with earlier asserted that justice is accomplished by 'obliterating' (this is the doctrine of annihilationism) the guilty--but as I pointed out, this is NOT justice--it IS mercy (an unjust mercy at that!). There is no justice in not sentencing someone guilty of an eternal offense to an eternal punishment. It is only merciful to annihilate such a person, but then this person would receive mercy unjustly as they never trusted in the merits of Christ to receive it. Christ's sacrifice would then have been in vain. Perish the thought!!! God forbid!!!
Mercy/Love and Justice are not mutually exclusive. God is all of the above but in order for the first two to function the third must function as well. It is absolutely Just for a Holy and Righteous and Loving God to hate everything that violates his Holy and Righteous and Lovong nature. And absolute Justice demands the absolute punishment of the violators.
