098. Is it not unjust to punish a few years of sin with an eternity of torment?

Is it not unjust to punish a few years of sin with an eternity of torment? The duration of the punishment of sin can never be determined by the time it takes to commit the sin. A man can kill another man in a few seconds, but a just penalty would be life-long imprisonment.

Furthermore, sin involves separation from God, and separation from God is torment. The torment must continue as long as the separation from God exists, and the separation from God must exist until sin is repented of and the Savior accepted. The time must come when repentance and the acceptance of the Savior becomes impossible, then one becomes eternally confirmed in his separation from God, and eternal torment must necessarily follow.

Further still, it is not a few years of sin that bring the eternity of punishment. A man may continue many years in sin and still escape eternal torment if he will only repent and accept Jesus Christ. It is the rejection of Jesus Christ that brings an eternity of torment. When we see sin in all its hideousness and enormity, the holiness of God in all its perfection, and the glory of Jesus Christ in all its infinity, nothing but a doctrine that those who persist in the choice of sin and who persist in the rejection of the Son of God, whom God in wonderful grace gave to the for our sins that we might have salvation—nothing but a doctrine that those who do this shall suffer eternal anguish will satisfy the demand of our own moral intuitions. Nothing but the fact that we dread suffering more than we hate sin and more than we love the glory of Jesus Christ, makes us repudiate the thought that beings who eternally choose sin should eternally suffer, or that men who despise God’s mercy and spurn His Son should be given over to eternal anguish.