“The fear of the Lord is clean, enduring for ever: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether” ~ Psalm 19:9
I have been asked more times than I can recall, different variants of the same question. “How could a good God send anyone to Hell?” Depending on who I am speaking to and the context of the question, I could answer in a number of different ways.
I could reply the cliche, “God doesn’t send anyone to Hell, they send themselves,” referring to unbelief. Or I could appeal to His holiness when I say, “God is good and to be truly good, He must be holy. Nothing unholy can enter Heaven to dwell forever.” I can think of three other responses that could be reiterated like a record scratched and repeating.
But the heart of the matter comes to purity. Cleanliness. A spiritual hygiene of source. No matter where in the Bible you look, this is the heart of the matter. So often people question the goodness of God by separating the clean and unclean, but never see this as something they do too in a drastically less eternal sense.
God is holy (Psalm 96:9). Righteous. Clean.
By free will, humanity sinned and became ill, depraved, and against the efforts of God naturally. Whenever someone gets ill with flu, Covid, or any other benign virus, humanity views them as unclean and isolates them in their room until they get better.
God on the other hand makes it clear through His Word that humanity will not get better (Romans 5:12). So what did He do? Knowing He is the only one with the cure to the virus we call sin, He offered a way to leave quarantine and live. Unmasked.
God is clean and there is no way He would allow the purity of Heaven to be tainted, so… Christ came to be our immunity on our behalf (2 Corinthians 5:21). The medicine is His righteousness and by His righteousness we can be clean. He took the illness and sent it away as far as the east is from the west (Psalm 103:12).
Just believe in Him who died, was buried, and rose again on your behalf and you too, can be clean!