How Can A Loving God Send People To Hell?

I remember being asked this question by someone while sharing the gospel with him. The following is how I answered him. I said to him, the real issue is, in order for God to be God, He must be not only loving, but also righteous and just! The difference between the Lord God and even the best human judge is that God is absolutely holy. Because God is holy, He will not allow any sin into His presence. The most basic definition of what sin is can be found in 1 John 3:4: "Everyone who practices sin also practices lawlessness; and sin is lawlessness." Here we see that God defines a boundary for mankind. He says that sin is practicing lawlessness! Lawlessness is the breaking of God's holy spiritual law. Breaking that law, crossing that divine boundary, that limit God set for us is sin! If God allowed this type of activity in heaven, He'd cease being God! If God allowed this breaking of His laws in heaven, heaven would not be heaven. Sin is what makes the world in which we live so corrupt and rotten! God has said that the wages of sin is death, which means eternal separation from Him in a place called hell. Since God is a perfect being, we can rest assured that He'll be perfectly just when He judges every person. Not a single person will receive anything that he or she doesn't deserve. It's very interesting that in Jesus' account of the rich man and Lazarus, we never hear of the rich man complaining for being sent to hell! It was if he knew that it was not wrong for him to be there. His only concern was for his brothers who were still alive on this earth. See Luke 16: 19-31. As a matter of fact, we all deserve God's wrath because we have repeatedly gone beyond God's holy laws. But thank God for Jesus! Simple trust in what He did on the cross will save you from being eternally separated from Him in the place called hell! Your move. Be encouraged!