God is loving, holy, and just. God’s holiness means that God is spiritually perfect and pure. All people sin and, therefore, are spiritually imperfect and impure. God’s holiness cannot tolerate them in his presence in heaven. God’s justice requires that sinful human beings that reject God will be punished according to their sins. However, the duration of sin and its impact does not have to correlate with banishment in hell for eternity. There is no reason to believe that these people that God banished to hell will stop sinning in hell. Those who accept and follow God will be lovingly transformed so that they no longer sin in heaven and can have an eternal relationship with God.
Hell respects the free will autonomy and intrinsic value of humans. Without a choice to accept and follow God, heaven would not be heaven. God would force rebellious humans to go to heaven against their wills. In addition, those who accept and follow God would go to a fake heaven because there still would be rebellious sinful humans in heaven. Heaven would actually be hell.
First, God does not condemn people to hell for not believing in Jesus. Instead, they are already condemned because of their sin and rejection of God. The real question is why should God save anyone that has sinned and rejected God. The apostle Paul explained that God demonstrated his love for sinners by coming to earth as Jesus to sacrifice himself for sinners. “But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners. And since we have been made right in God’s sight by the blood of Christ, he will certainly save us from God’s condemnation. For since our friendship with God was restored by the death of his Son while we were still his enemies, we will certainly be saved through the life of his Son. So now we can rejoice in our wonderful new relationship with God because our Lord Jesus Christ has made us friends of God” (Romans 5:8-11 NLT). Second, only if people were truly spiritually blind of God would they be absolved of sin (John 9:41). But no one is truly spiritually blind of God, because they can see God’s eternal power and divine nature through the complexity and design of God’s creation to the extent that they have no excuse for not believing in God (Romans 1:18-20). Also, even people that never heard of God’s moral law “show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them of (doing wrong) or tell them they are doing right” (Romans 2:14-15 NLT). Third, God determined the exact times and places that people live so that they would seek, reach out, and find God, because God is not spiritually far from each one of them (Acts 17:26-27). Hank Hanegraaff, After Life: What You Need to Know About Heaven, the Hereafter & Near-Death Experiences (Brentwood, TN: Worthy Publishing, 2013), 142-143.