Someone please explain why unbelievers must endure eternal hellfire.
The stumbling block is not that you aren't forgiven. The problem is that you don't want to be forgiven. You can't want to be forgiven by God unless you believe in God. And then the issue is, even though God is GOD, is he your God? Obedience is the typical evidence of who is your God. The bottom line is that people that don't acknowledge Jesus as their Lord from their heart don't want to have anything to do with him or don't like what he said we need. Unbelievers are going to get exactly what they want (as expressed by their heart and actions).
My understanding is that Jesus took our place. Doesn't that mean our punishment should just be a crucifixion? Or perhaps 36 hours of hell if you believe Jesus went there while he was dead? Or perhaps a longer finite stay in hell? But how could Jesus have paid our punishment if he didn't endure it?
The big issue that is often overlooked by Christians and non-Christians alike (and is often only explained piece-wise) is the condition of our
nature. Man was created in unity with God. God was Adam's father and Adam receive God's nature. Man had a nature that was compatible with God—they were connected (which is the Biblical meaning of
life). When Adam sinned, he intentionally chose to reject his own God-connected nature. Because of the loss of connection with God, Adam's nature changed. Being disconnected from God is what is called Biblical
death. Adam died spiritually. One effect was that he could no longer give birth to children with God's nature. His children inherited Adam's disconnected-from-God nature.
And this still doesn't explain why his one payment has some sort of multiplier effect to atone for billions of Christians. If the answer is that God can just do whatever he wants, why not just forgive us without torturing himself/his son?
An aspect of God's nature is revealed in the Law that I refer to as the
kinsman-redeemer laws. It is not all laid out nicely in one place. It is, for example, referred to in the book of Hebrews. It is consistent with God's nature that a family member can purchase the freedom of a slave (in his family). All mankind has been, was, and is a slave to sin as a result of not having the God-nature Adam rejected. God, the Son became a man which made him a member of mankind. Because he existed before all people, he had authority over all people. He paid the price required (death) to free mankind/the slaves to sin. However, if a slave wants to remain a slave, that was his right. To receive the benefit of the purchase, the slave needed to acknowledge Jesus as having authority over him and accept his gift of redemption. It's easy to say "ok! he's my master," but that can be done without really meaning it. If a person really means it, it will be reflected in his thinking, words, and actions. The book of Ruth gives us a picture of a kinsman-redeemer in action.
If you don't believe that Jesus took our place but rather bore our sins, then why does hell even need to exist? Also, if Jesus bore our sins, why was he not punished? Wouldn't he be responsible for our sins if he bears our sins?
The payment for our sins was death, but bodily death doesn't change a person's spiritual nature. The person's spiritual nature would still be disconnected from God. God created angels and all of us to exist forever and nothing can alter that. It was an amazing act of God—creating beings in his own image. God never undoes something he did, because everything he does is as good as it could possibly be already.
Having our sins paid for made it morally possible for God to save us, however, we don't only need his forgiveness. We also need our natures changed. We need God to give us a free gift: being reborn
in Christ. Anything tainted with sin can't be cleansed. Since God clearly loves us (he sent his son to earth to pay for our sins with his death) he freely will give us a rebirth if we are willing to give him the moral right to do so, which only comes by accepting him as "my" God.
Or do you not believe in hell? If so, why are you a Christian and why should I care about any of this? If there is no hell aren't you better off hedging your bet and appeasing some other angry deity? If you believe Christianity because it's simply true, why haven't I seen your evidence or good arguments? If you have neither, why believe? Faith? What proposition couldn't be justified by faith? How, then, is faith something that leads to truth?
When taking the verses about hell in the context of the whole Bible, we see that hell is definitely real. People, Christians included, that don't feel eternal punishment is justified for anyone have not accepted the fact that God has "no choice" but to let people go there that have not been reborn with a nature compatible with God's nature. It would be immoral for God to cause them to cease to exist. The spiritual concept of God never breaks his promises can be used here to deduce that whatever God creates has an implicit promise that it is forever. (This concept appears in a variety of ways in Scripture.) When he created sentient beings it was so they would stay created forever.
The concept of annihilation is totally non-Christian earthy thinking. People
seem "annihilated" when their bodies die (but they actually aren't; it is only their bodies). The idea that a judgment of
guilty in the afterlife means annihilation is a projection of what we see happen on earth. In the next life, there is a parallel to bodily death, but it isn't annihilation—just as when we see a body on earth die, the person is not actually annihilated. Spiritual death after judgment is called "the second death" in Scripture and it is a reference to being cast into the lake of fire to experience the separation from God they demonstrated was their choice in life. Both
death and
destruction are words used to describe what happens when someone already dead dies.
After physical death, salvation
by faith is no longer possible, because a person will then see God and have a full knowledge of God still with their sinful nature. This is exactly what happened with Satan, who cannot be redeemed, doesn't recognize his need to be redeemed, and doesn't want to be redeemed.
God is the executor of justice, but he is not the reason for that justice. It is terribly incorrect to view God as an judge who wants to punish evil people forever. God is the one who has done and is doing everything he can to save people from that. When we sin, it was
our choice to sin (and confirm it is right that we should have Adam's fallen nature). Those that do not want to give God complete control over everything that they have and are are rejecting God for who he is (GOD and Creator "Father"). Instead people retain the nature that they had and have confirmed is the correct nature for them, rather than rejecting their sinful nature and coming under God's wing as a result of his gift of forgiveness, and receive rebirth and ceasing to be a slave to sin.
God is very generous. It is we who don't want to accept his generosity. Mankind's perspective has become more and more corrupt from persistent sin that, as you might expect, that which is good seems more evil than before, and that which is evil seems more good than before. It's not just how we perceive things with our thoughts and feelings, it is also how we experience "reality."
