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"If God knew even a single soul would end up in hell for all eternity, why create them?"
This is a very good multi-level question. It clearly approaches the issue, “What is God like?” It also delves into the mind of God? Can we, as mere humans, fully know the mind of God? Is hell fair if, as so many doubt today, it exists at all? Do I want to know this God?
First we can clearly be assured that all who seek God in sincerity will find Him. The New Testament book of Hebrews tells us that to seek Him we must first believe that He is. Part of the aspect of “that He is” is “who He is.” We cannot find the true God if we are looking for a god of our own making. We cannot find the true God if we are going to confine Him to the scope of our own thinking and rationale.
So who is God? What is He like? The core of the unchangeable nature of God is that He is good. We must believe that God is good to know God. He isn’t just a little good; He is perfectly good. There is no badness in Him. There is no wrongness in Him. The book of James says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.” The psalmist says, “Truly, God is good.” Perfect goodness can also be seen as holiness, a separateness from all that is evil in any way. God repeatedly says of Himself in the book of Leviticus, “I Am Holy.” He does not have bad thoughts, malice or evil intentions.
In fact another immutable (unchangeable) characteristic of God is that He is love. This is not some new idea of God formulated in the New Testament. Deuteronomy, the psalms and the prophets portray God as very loving. This love is climaxed in all of human history by God the Father sending His only begotten Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to die for sinners. John 3:16 proclaims this truth as the great evangelical gospel message. Paul paraphrases John 3:16 in Romans 5:8 where he says, “God commendeth His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Few if any of us would make such a sacrifice. Picture yourself as the switch master on a railroad track. You have one and only one beloved child, a son bearing your own name. He is playing on the tracks one day and his foot gets stuck. A train is coming and that train is loaded with the vilest criminals in the state who are being relocated to a new more secure facility. Their train needs to be switched onto the track where your son is stuck or it will dead end into a parked freight train filled with cement and all the convicts will perish. Will you save your son or save the criminals? God sent His Son to die for us while we were yet sinners. That is God’s love. We must believe that God is both good and love or we cannot know God nor understand Him.
The next thing we must know and believe about God is that He is greater than us in power and scope. God says in Isaiah 55, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, for as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Paul continues the same theme in Romans 11:33 when he says, “O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out.” Again in Deuteronomy 29:29 God says, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of this law.”
Now, if we accept what we know about God and believe it, then we can find an answer for our questions. If, however, we refuse to believe what is true about God, then we will find no truth at all and no answers to our questions. It doesn’t mean we will understand the full answer as we can not understand the full mind of God. But having the answer, since we believe what is true about God, we can believe the answer that He gives.
Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, died on the cross for the sins of the world. As He hung on that cross His own Father turned His face away and Jesus cried out, “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Jesus Christ on the cross had become sin for us, and the Father turned away from the sin which He hates. Jesus Christ bore the agony of the cross after first bearing the agony of two brutal beatings. Then on the cross He became what He was not. The perfect and sinless Son of God became sin and God the Father turned His face away. Then Jesus Christ descended into hell for us. FOR US!!
All this was done so that our sins could be paid for and carried away to be remembered no more. All of it came at Christ’s expense. All of it came because of the Father’s love. He sent Christ to save and not to condemn the world (John 3:17). But there are many who will not accept God’s gift of salvation. They reject what Christ has done for them. They spurn the work of Christ. They spurn the love of God. They insist on taking for themselves what Christ has already taken for them, the punishment of their own sin. They insist on going to the place where Christ has already gone for them, hell. Their rejection of God’s love does not diminish the love God demonstrated. Their insistence on taking their own punishment does not diminish the work of Christ on the cross. God takes no pleasure in the death of those who reject Christ. In Ezekiel 33:11 God says, “As I live,” says the Lord, “I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked would turn from his way and live.”
To not ultimately give the unbelieving the just punishment for sin would prove that God is unjust and therefore not good or holy. To give eternal life in heaven to those who do believe, but who without Christ would justly be condemned to hell, is to prove the truth of His love. His love and His goodness are all displayed for all to see. As to the part of this that we cannot comprehend, well, we cannot comprehend it. We accept the truth of what God says and the evidence of His goodness and love and leave the rest to God. The first line of an old hymn goes like this: “I am not skilled to understand what God hath willed, what God hath planned, I only know at His right hand is One who is my Savior.” We must believe what is revealed and be saved and leave the rest up to God.