Let's look at Romans chapter 7:
For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
That was a lot of text, but in it Paul clearly outlines something called the law of sin or the "Mystery of Iniquity" that we all carry as sinful people (see Romans 3:23). The very fact that we have sinned, rejecting the perfect leadership of Jesus, is punishable by eternal damnation. There is no one more holy or perfect or kind or loving who rules any greater than Yahweh, and to reject his leadership is treason against love.
Who would sin in a perfect world? YOU! So would I! Or did Adam and Eve, having been with God, dwelling with Him in the garden, not reject his perfect leadership in paradise? At that moment, the law of sin took effect, infecting the entire human race. That day, humanity chose to reject the perfect leadership of Yahweh... Humanity, knowing the punishment, chose sin! Satan didn't shove anything down anyone's throat, and you cannot say that you would have responded any differently. We are now subject to futility, to the law of sin and this desire of iniquity.
This is true of humanity throughout history! We have a propensity to purposefully reject the leadership of Jesus and choose hell. We do it knowingly! Do you not think that every time you sin you crucify Jesus again choosing the punishment of hell over His promises (Hebrews 6:6)?!
Again and again, humanity chooses hell rather than to subject themselves to the leadership of Yahweh (Psalm 2 is a great Biblical example). And it will continue to happen; at the end of the millennial reign of Jesus after His second coming on earth, the nations reject the leadership of Jesus AGAIN!
And when the thousand years are ended, Satan will be released from his prison and will come out to deceive the nations that are at the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them for battle; their number is like the sand of the sea. Revelation 20:7-8
Even after Jesus has been ruling and reigning on the earth with resurrected saints who are without sin, the remaining inhabitance of the earth who are without resurrected bodies (and thus still subject to iniquity) reject His leadership again, choosing the punishment rather than the promise, with the promise right in front of them!
Thus, we cannot place any accusation against the leadership of Jesus. The lake of fire is not a place where "innocent people" spend eternity, because all are guilty. Make no mistake, humanity rejects Jesus (which is made even clearer in the End Time events).The mystery of iniquity is that we continually reject our savior and the promise of salvation. We choose hell, thinking that the immediate pleasure is somehow better than the everlasting.
Thankfully, there is hope. Thus Paul exhorts us in Romans 8, just following his lament about the law of sin, to surrender our lives to Jesus and wage war against this law with the power of the Holy Spirit.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death... For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit... You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you... For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. Romans 8:1-2,5,9,18
Even though we choose hell, God still desires us (1 John 4:19), and offers us salvation through repentance and subjection to the leadership of Jesus. There is no salvation apart from Jesus, He is the way of salvation. Therefore choose life.
I call heaven and earth as witnesses today against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; therefore choose life, that both you and your descendants may live; that you may love the LORD your God, that you may obey His voice, and that you may cling to Him, for He is your life and the length of your days; and that you may dwell in the land which the LORD swore to your fathers, to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to give them. Deuteronomy 30:19-20
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