The Heart of God: Righteous Judgment and the Mystery of Eternal Justice
✦ Introduction: The God I Believe In Alan Grant McDougall
I believe in the Bible. I believe in the unadulterated Gospel of salvation through Jesus Christ alone. I believe in the Righteous, Holy, All-Knowing, Almighty God—the Creator of heaven and earth. I do not question His justice, nor do I seek to humanize Him. But I do believe we are called to search and understand His ways with reverence, humility, and truth. And in that search, we must ask:
Would a perfectly just and holy God punish minor, finite sins with infinite torment?
Such a concept, as it is often presented, seems more like the cruel exaggerations of flawed human justice—reminiscent of tyrants hanging a starving boy for stealing bread or burning innocent women because they were feared as witches. That is not the heart of God revealed in Jesus Christ.
✦ God’s Justice Is Not Like Man’s Justice
Human history is soaked with injustice:
- Children executed for theft,
- Women burned alive under suspicion,
- Innocent men lynched or imprisoned because of skin color, politics, or religion.
Even in our modern world, the strong oppress the weak, and the innocent suffer in silence.
But God is not man. He does not judge by appearances. He does not act in haste or out of fear or ignorance. God alone knows the heart—its motives, its struggles, its hidden truths. And God’s justice must be understood not only through His wrath but also through His infinite love, mercy, and righteousness.
✦ The Gospel Is About Redemption, Not Condemnation
Jesus Christ did not come into the world to condemn it, but to save it (John 3:17).
The unadulterated Gospel is not a message of eternal damnation for minor missteps, but a call to repentance, reconciliation, and new birth.
Yes, sin is real. Yes, hell is real.
But the Gospel tells us that God desires all men to be saved (1 Timothy 2:4), and that He is patient, not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9).
Would
a righteous God torment a soul for eternity because of ignorance,
weakness, or failure to perfectly comprehend doctrine in a broken world?
Would the God who forgave the thief on the cross, who prayed for His
murderers, who showed mercy to the woman caught in adultery, cast a soul
into everlasting torment for finite, human sins committed in the context of pain, trauma, and confusion?
No, I say. That is not the heart of the Father Jesus revealed.
✦ Eternal Separation or Eternal Suffering?
We must clarify: Scripture speaks of a second death, of outer darkness, of separation from God. But the notion of infinite conscious torment for finite offenses is not uniformly taught in Scripture and must be approached with care and reverence.
There is a great difference between:
- God’s righteous judgment—where He separates good from evil, light from darkness,
And: - A medieval conception of God as a cosmic torturer, meting out endless pain to finite creatures who lived under ignorance and weakness.
We are told in Micah 6:8:
“What does the Lord require of you? To act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”
Surely, God Himself embodies those same qualities: justice, mercy, humility.
✦ Jesus Revealed the Father's Heart
Jesus is the perfect image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). He is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being (Hebrews 1:3).
If we want to know how God judges, we look to Jesus.
And what do we see?
- He wept over Jerusalem.
- He forgave His enemies.
- He welcomed sinners, healed the broken, and comforted the shamed.
The only people Jesus condemned were those who perverted justice, oppressed the weak, and acted in religious hypocrisy while claiming to speak for God.
✦ The Mystery of Final Judgment
We affirm that God will judge the world in righteousness (Acts 17:31). There is a Day of Judgment. There is heaven. There is hell. But let us not pretend we fully grasp the eternal mechanics of divine justice. That belongs to God alone.
As Paul says, “Now we see through a glass, darkly...” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
And yet, we are called to trust that God’s justice will be perfect, His mercy overwhelming, and His love unsearchable.
✦ A Personal Reflection
When I look at the suffering in this world—at the children born into war, the broken men crushed by poverty, the innocent who suffer abuse—I cannot believe that God, who knit them together in the womb, would cast them into everlasting torment because of their brokenness.
I also remember the injustices of history:
- Apartheid in South Africa.
- Slavery and racism in America.
- The massacre of Muslims, Jews, Christians, and countless innocents by human hands.
Only God knows the heart of man.
Only He can truly weigh the soul.
✦ Conclusion: The Gospel of a Just and Loving God
I believe the Bible.
I believe in the Cross, the Resurrection, and the gift of eternal life.
But I reject the notion of a cruel, unthinking God who damns forever with no regard for the soul’s journey, pain, or ignorance.
The God I worship is holy, just, merciful, and perfect in love. He judges righteously, but not as man judges. His heart is not cold and mechanical but burning with compassion, truth, and grace.
I trust in Jesus Christ—not only as my Savior, but as the perfect revelation of God's justice.
Alan Grant McDougall
Philosopher • Christian Theologian • South Africa
"Let God be true, and every man a liar." – Romans 3:4
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