James from Auckland, New Zealand asks, "Pastor John, how does God's predestining people to eternal hell bring himself glory?" Well, before we embrace the term "predestining to hell," we need to make some qualifications, because the very statement is one that is very rare, if present, in the Bible in those terms.

I could think of one or two texts that could almost be paraphrased that way, so I don't want to be too hard on the question, but here are the qualifications I want to put on the phrase before I give the answer that I see. There will be no one in hell who does not deserve to be there.

No one will be there who can give a good reason, a warranted reason, why they shouldn't be there. And all of the world will know this and will vindicate God in it. There will be no doubting of the justice of God at the last day. That's the first thing that has to be said biblically, is that no one will be in hell who doesn't deserve to be there.

Second, no one will be in hell who's not in a state of rebellion against God. If we have any sense, people are being thrown there who are not in rebellion against God, but they're lovers of God, or they're repenting toward God, or they're embracing God, or they're somehow not in rebellion against God, that's just a foreign concept to the Bible.

The only people who will suffer are people who've been opposing God and are at the present moment in hell opposing God, rejecting God. And the third thing that needs to be said to qualify that phrase "predestined to hell" is, in election and predestination, I think the Bible portrays God as choosing graciously to save some sinners, not choosing to make some really good people bad.

It always pictures Him as rescuing sinners before the foundation of the world. Christ is slain for sinners before the foundation of the world in the mind of God. So with those three qualifications, the question is still a good one. That is, how is God made more glorious by ruling a world or creating the world in which people, by His permission or design, however you want to describe it, will wind up in hell justly?

And the closest thing that I know to an answer in the Bible is found in the end of Romans 9, verses 22 and 23, and Paul says there that God aims to display His wrath and His power. His goal is that the full range of His perfections be known.

I think this is the ultimate goal of the universe. God created the universe so that the full range of His perfections, including wrath and power and judgment and justice, would be displayed. And to do that, there is, as it were, a dark backdrop of the history of redemption called the Fall and Sin, and the acts of grace and the acts of mercy and the experience of salvation shine the more brightly against the backdrop of the Fall and of Sin, so that two effects happen that glorify God.

One is His grace, which I think is the apex of His glory, shines more brightly because it's against the backdrop of judgment and of sin, and we, the undeserving beneficiaries of this election and this redemption, are moved to a more exquisite joy and gratitude for our salvation because we see all the lostness of people who are no worse than we were, and we know better than them.

We should be in hell as well, and our gratitude will be intensified. So at least those two senses, I would say, are the answer to his question, "How does God get glory?" He gets glory because His grace and mercy shine more brightly against the darker backdrop of sin and judgment and wrath, and our worship and our experience of that grace intensifies and deepens because we see we don't deserve to be where we are.

Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. At DesiringGod.org you will find thousands of other free resources from John Piper. I'm your host Tony Reinke, thanks for listening. Tony Reinke, thanks for listening. you