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Thanks, Bill, for your thoughtful and well-reasoned post. You premised this in response to those evangelicals who dispute permanent punishment, and while you offered plenty of on-point Scripture, actually winning them back probably requires a fuller, more well-rounded argument.

Please consider these aspects of God’s relationship with humans: His love, His liberty, and His protection.

God’s love for his spiritual creatures—angels and humans—goes on forever. Therefore, he wants the very best for every one—and the minimum discomfort necessary.

God’s liberty (leaving aside predestination/free will) grants to every creature the right to choose whether or not to live in subjection to Him.

God’s protection extends throughout our earthly lifetime far more comprehensively than we are aware.

When God permits people to exercise their liberty to reject Him, He honors that choice: He is not at all present with them in hell. But that rejection eliminates His protective presence, too, so that hell’s denizens are completely exposed to their pitiless neighbors. Their eternal punishment would not then be proportional to their sin, and their loving God cannot permit that.

Those are the dynamics: how does a loving God punish (and protect) appropriately while still remaining completely absent?

Here is one possibility. God surrounds each person with just enough punishment—let’s say “flames”—to keep them from lunging at their neighbors. The punishment is “just enough” because it corresponds to the level of evil in each one: harmless old Aunt Minnie gets a few hot coals, while Satan requires an entire lake of fire. Each one, being evil, lunges incessantly at others and receives the appropriate pain. But none of them has reason for complaint: God is absent as they insist, and He has limited their pain to the minimum required.

For your consideration…