Alan didn’t like the ideas of hell, damnation, and the underworld. How could God condemn anyone to hell? Alan thought God was supposed to be good, even a savior. Why didn’t God just save everyone? Then the world could be truly good, all of it, with no place of eternal despair. Except, of course, the few individuals, or maybe the many, who were truly evil, beyond rescue and repair. Alan was fine with hell for them. He just didn’t understand why anyone had to confess anything to avoid hell. Why not just recognize that nearly everyone is basically good and leave it at that? But then, in the middle of yet another night of drinking and drugs when he could not sleep, Alan felt a presence telling him to look at his own life, what he was wasting, the harm his violence and theft had done, and the pain he had caused his mother and father. Yet the presence wasn’t condemning Alan. The warm figure showing Alan his deep and continual wrongs was instead inviting him. And for the first time, Alan had both a vision of hell and a sense of how he might find rescue from it.
Definition
Hell is the place from which God finally and permanently separates himself from those who do not desire him. Jesus refers to hell as an outer darkness, away from the light and love of God. Separation from God’s light, love, and affirmation must mean darkness and damnation. Hell is thus a punishing place not of peace and healing but of torment and suffering. Images associated with hell, used in both the Old Testament and New Testament, include a consuming fire, pit, grave, and prison. Hell is both permanent and severe. Hell is permanent because it is only for those who rejected God through the very end of their earthly life. The thief on the cross avoided hell and received paradise with his last-gasp embrace of Christ at the very end of his life. Hell is severe because final banishment from God leaves no hope for life. Reach for heaven, not hell. Embrace God’s saving Son Jesus Christ.
Destiny
The concept of hell is a significant impediment for many who would prefer a cosmos that had nothing but good in it, one that was all heaven and no hell. They ask questions like why does evil exist and why would God allow evil. And they blame God for evil or use the evidence of evil to conclude that God does not even exist. The horror of evil makes preferring a wholly good cosmos easy. Yet heaven, free of all evil, is exactly the choice that God offers us through his Son Jesus Christ. And the restoration of all the earth for good, in a marriage of heaven and earth, is the end that God promises. So God offers to fulfill the desire of anyone who wishes good and hates evil. Don’t hold it against God that you would prefer pure goodness. So does God, and God offers you exactly what you desire. Instead, embrace his Son Jesus Christ for offering heaven to you, at great expense for that matter.
Choice
When thinking of hell apart from the goodness of God, one does well to keep in mind that humans were the first to desire it. To offer humans their crowning attribute, that which makes humans God’s image, God granted us the ability to choose our own good and evil. He warned us against grasping that choice, telling us that paradise remained available to us for leaving the distinction to him. Yet we chose to go our own way against God’s warning for us not to do so. God created us so that he could have our companionship, to give us everything he had, and to love us volitionally, of our own choice. Yet God could not put conscious creatures of free will like him in a perfect world that had no choice. A world that God guaranteed would remain perfect would have to eliminate human choice. The God whom we know through Jesus Christ reveals the goodness of creation and heaven precisely by distinguishing heaven from hell. Given that God is love, goodness, and light, a life apart from God must mean darkness and damnation. God created humans not for hell but instead for heaven. In that respect, God does not consign people to hell but instead lets them choose what they prefer, God in heaven or a life eternally apart from God.
Revelation
Hell also reveals the depth of God’s goodness and love for humanity. Some wrongly assume that hell indicates an incompleteness, weakness, or flaw in God, when to the contrary hell reveals how far God has gone to love and save his human images. God sent his Son Jesus Christ to harrow hell, meaning to break hell’s grip and to break hell open. Hell holds no power over humankind, other than the power humans willingly give it by denying God’s extravagant offer of Jesus Christ. Jesus went through hell on and below earth to save your life from it and to grant you heaven. God reveals the depth of his love and mercy not only by giving you the choice to join God in heaven but by offering his own Son as the means to choose it. Hell doesn’t reveal the power of corruption but the glory of God’s redemption from it, free to you while exquisitely expensive to God. To choose the great and free gift of eternal life, and to reject eternal damnation, is entirely within your grasp and voluntary choice.
Reason
While heaven is our enticement, hell is our accountability. To make the better choice, we may need hell as much as we need heaven. God desires that we turn our attention to his glory and our desires to his will and gifts in heaven. God’s glory and gifts are all that we should desire. Yet we often turn from God’s spectacular offer to pursue sodden things having no life, satisfaction, or reward in them. To shape our character and desires, the world must be consequential. It must not only reward good desires but also discourage wrong desires. We experience hell’s pain, loss, and destruction only temporarily in life. Hell’s specter of permanent suffering helps hold us accountable to the process of our purification that our free will makes necessary. Without hell, we might not turn back to embrace and receive God’s offer of eternal paradise. Without hell, we might choose our sodden state over God’s eternal glory. Hell may be a necessary impetus for those who have inadequate sight of God’s grand offer. Hell makes it clear and simple: choose eternal life, not eternal damnation.
Urgency
Jesus spoke more about hell than any other Bible figure. He did so not because he was angry at sin and eager to judge sinners. Rather, Jesus spoke so often and urgently about hell because he did not want to lose a single soul, out of his fierce love for us and passionate desire for our eternal salvation. Christ’s reminder of hell exponentially raised the stakes on his offer of heaven. Christ highlighted for us his passionate message to avoid hell and embrace heaven, by voluntarily undergoing the worst possible betrayal, torture, death, and rejection. We must turn our will toward heaven, make our choice, and exercise our election while we are living. The dead have already made their choice, whether of hell or heaven. Don’t wait to make your choice. Embrace Jesus Christ while you are still living.
Judgment
Hell is a place of punishment under judgment. Those who object that a loving God would never punish need to understand that love is not purely an affirming sentiment. Love is instead firm, caring, and discerning. Love cannot approve nor ignore horrific wrongs like murder, rape, and child abuse. Ignoring and thereby sanctioning terrible oppressions would be hate, not love. To reflect care and concern, to encourage and protect, and to show kindness and gentleness, love must instead condemn hate and violence. Love cannot delight in evil, cannot envy and boast, and cannot be rude and self-seeking. Love must instead protect, trust, and hope. Love must be patient, kind, and persevering. Because he is love, God must exhibit loving qualities, which means he must condemn those things that contradict and frustrate love, like the propensity to hate, destroy, and commit other evil. Discipline, even punishment, is an attribute of love, not of evil. Only evil would let one pursue wrongs to no end, with nothing but encouragement. Welcome God’s discipline as an indication of his love for his children.
Justice
Just as God’s judgment of wrongdoers is a necessary aspect of his love, so is God’s justice for evil. If God did not judge and punish evil, while rewarding good, then the world would have no justice. We instead fully expect and desire justice as an attribute of a good creation. We desire justice, perhaps not always when we are the wrongdoer but usually when others commit serious wrongs, especially wrongs against us. If God refused to punish, we would undoubtedly take it upon ourselves to handle punishment for him. A world without a pattern and possibility of punishment would be a dog-eat-dog world in which only the strongest survived. That is not the world in which any of us desire to live. What gives the world its stable and compassionate character is the desire to protect the weak and innocent from the strong and corrupt. Our justice system, however imperfect it may be, reflects the desire of God and our like desire for a just world. Hell reflects God’s ultimate justice.
Compulsion
God cannot compel everyone to heaven. If God forced people into heaven anyway, after they rejected his loving offer, then heaven wouldn’t be a place of peace and harmony but instead a place of great confusion. A place constituted and ruled by those who reject God’s loving order in favor of their own desires wouldn’t be heaven. That place would instead be more like hell than heaven, with its residents rejecting God to pursue their own desires. God would have to withdraw again because God does not countenance evil. If God forced people who rejected him away from their ultimate choice, he would also deny them the essential voluntariness that is the prime aspect of our own divinity in his image. God cannot compel people to accept his offer without contradicting his character and our own divine character in his image. To ask God to make you do something that you don’t choose to do is also irrational. Instead, just do it, or you don’t really want God to make you do it.
Adversary
Hell is also the adversary’s place, the place of the devil, opposer, deceiver, or Satan. The Bible depicts the fall from heaven of a divine entity, cast out for lifting himself up toward God’s level in pride and for rebelling against God. Jesus said that he saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. The Bible further depicts Satan taking many other rebelling divine entities from heaven to earth with him. Hell is Satan’s place, the prison to which God banishes him and his evil minions. Hell holds and quarantines evil, containing earth’s contamination to manageable levels. Earth would hold little or no possibility of salvation if Satan ruled it unrestricted. Heaven and hell leave earth as the battleground over which God’s heavenly forces fight to vanquish hell’s evil. Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection won for good the war of good versus evil. But although our victory in Christ remains assured, the clean-up battles on earth for a time continue, while God brings the last souls into his kingdom. Join the battle, and embrace God’s kingdom.
Reflection
Does your worldview include not just a healthy perspective on heaven but an equally healthy perspective on hell? Can you articulate the necessity and value of hell, as awful as it is? Can you see in the reflection of hell the glory of God in heaven? Have you embraced Jesus Christ for the escape from hell and reward of heaven that he offers you? If not, what would convincing you require? Do you fully appreciate the length to which the Father went in offering his Son, to help you escape hell and receive heaven? Do you sense an urgency about choosing heaven over hell, whether for yourself or for loved ones who have not yet embraced Christ? Have you found yourself in a situation where you passionately desired God’s justice, whether against someone who wronged you or committed some other terrible act deserving the harshest consequences? Have you felt the sting of justice denied, enough to appreciate God’s role in providing both full mercy and ultimate justice?
Key Points
Hell is a place of darkness and damnation separated from God’s light.
Our destiny is God’s goodness and light in heaven, not hell’s darkness.
God has given us the free choice of heaven over hell, in his Son Jesus.
Hell reveals the height of God’s glory and depth of his love for us.
The prospect of hell is another reason to choose the gift of heaven.
Christ spoke against hell, revealing the urgency of choosing heaven.
Hell is a place of eternal judgment and condemnation for rejecting God.
Your choice of heaven or hell reveals God’s justice in accountability.
God cannot force to heaven those who firmly and finally reject him.