Revelation 20-21 | How can a loving God send people to hell?
Due to technical difficulties this sermon was not recorded.
A rough transcript from the talk is provided below.
So if you are here with us for the first time today, we're going to be talking about hell. Welcome.
We’re in a series on the difficult questions that people ask about Christianity, and today we’re at one of the toughest. Today’s question: How could a loving God send people to hell? It’s a great question.
And it has me wondering: Why does the subject like hell disturb us so much?
I think it might be because of our situation. Most of us in this room have relatively comfortable lives, relative safety, and we're polite because we're from the Midwest. And so the thinking goes like this…”If there is a God, then, of course, he's supportive of us. That's what he's there for. And so that means he must be loving. It means he must be forgiving and must accept everybody. And any idea of God being a judge or getting upset about things, that's sort of an ancient, unsophisticated idea from primitive cultures. But we know better today, a God of wrath or a God who judges is offensive.”
Now, if injury, injustice or abuse, make it into your situation or into the situation of somebody that you care about, your ideas about hell might be different. You might tend to rethink your idea of God and you might stop asking, "Why would anybody believe in a God who judges people and doesn't accept everybody?" Your thinking might change to, "Why doesn’t God smite the wicked right now? Why would he delay his judgment of wicked men, even offer forgiveness to those who seem to enjoy and profit from injustice?”
Rachel Denhollander famously confronted Larry Nassar, the serial child abuser who worked for Michigan State women's athletics, and systematically abused women, and she was one of his victims, and she declared to him two things in her talk. It’s amazing. She said, "Number one hell is reserved as a place for people like you. And as a Christian I can say that there is a God who's a God of grace, who can forgive people like you."
Are you offended by either aspect of her message?
In 1972, a Nazi prison camp guard approached Corrie Ten Boom after she gave a talk on forgiving others just as God in Christ has forgiven you. And she was approached by this Nazi prison camp guard after that talk, who was also one of the most violent guards at the camp where Corrie and her sister were detained and where Betsy, her sister was tortured and killed. And he comes up to her and says, “Since those days, I remember you. I'm sure you remember me. Since that time I've become a Christian. So tell me, do you forgive me?”
Or if you've seen the popular Netflix series, "When they see us," it chronicles an experience that five teenage boys had of being falsely accused of assault and rape in Central Park and being incarcerated and spending years in prison. Some of them tortured by fellow inmates and prison guards. Then finally somebody came later years later and confessed to the crime and they were released. Jess and I tried to watch this series and we had to turn it off. We couldn’t watch much more than 30 minutes of it. We got so angry and our blood pressure was rising. It was awful.
Can God forgive the people who did that to those kids?
I just want us to consider both sides this morning. If you’re here and you’re upset at the notion of a God who judges people, let's also talk about how upset we ought to be about the idea of a God who forgives every kind of person. Your perspective depends on your situation. If you've been sheltered, you're probably going to be offended by the idea that there is a God who judges sin. But if you've experienced injustice, injury and abuse, you're probably going to have a different outlook on that.
Let me say up front that we want to be the kind of church where people who aren't Christian see Trinity as a safe place where they can come and wrestle with and explore Christianity and know that they're not going to be judged and ostracized for it. This is a place where, if that’s you, I hope you feel like you can belong.
That said, if the Bible shapes your reality, then you are a person who believes that hell and judgment are as real as heaven and love. And if you're uncertain about that, the Bible isn’t. Hell and God’s wrath and judgment are absolutely vital to the gospel story.
So what I want to do is wrestle with three questions together.
What does the Bible teach regarding hell?
How does the Bible address our objections to hell?
What does the cross say to us about all of it?
What does the Bible teach regarding hell?
The Bible clearly teaches that hell is real. Every New Testament author mentions it. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Paul, James, Peter, Jude, and whoever wrote Hebrews, they all address it. So we’ve got to take hell seriously.
And if we start reading what the Bible has to say about hell, one of the things we’ll quickly notice is that the authors use different images to describe its reality: punishment, destruction, and exile. Each of these descriptions teaches us something of the nature of hell.
Punishment
Punishment is the main way the Bible describes hell, and it is usually portrayed as judgment, suffering, and torment by fire.
In Matthew 25, Jesus claims the authority as the judge who determines the destinies of the world. He consigns the wicked to “eternal punishment” and grants the righteous “eternal life.”
Jesus again in Mark 9:43-48, speaking of the seriousness of sin, says these words, “If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, into the unquenchable fire...And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.”
The apostle Paul believes that hell and judgment will be an encouragement to the believers who are suffering at the hands of their persecutors in 2 Thessalonians 1. He comforts them by proclaiming, “God’s judgment is right...God is just: He will pay back trouble for those that trouble you...He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”
The apostle John, in Revelation 20, we see the wicked are “cast into the lake of fire,” while the righteous experience the unhindered and glorious presence of God on the New Earth.
According to the Bible, hell is punishment, because God is the judge who justly sentences the wicked.
Destruction
It is also described as destruction with words like perishing, death, or the second death.
In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says, “And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
Paul in Galatians 6:8 says, “Whoever sows to please their flesh, from the flesh will reap destruction.”
Hebrews 10:26-27 says, “If we deliberately keep on sinning after we have received the knowledge of the truth, no sacrifice for sins is left, but only a fearful expectation of judgment and of raging fire that will consume the enemies of God.”
And in our passage from Revelation 21:8, “But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
According to the Bible, hell is destruction, because God is a warrior who vanquishes all his enemies.
Exile
Hell is also depicted as Exile. This is separation from the kingdom of God, exclusion from his presence, or being cut off from eternal life.
Jesus regularly portrays hell as being outside the kingdom and in outer darkness.
He says in Matthew 13:40 “As the weeds are pulled up and burned in the fire, so it will be at the end of the age. The Son of Man will send out his angels, and they will weed out of his kingdom everything that causes sin and all who do evil. They will throw them into the blazing furnace, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
In his parables in Matthew 25, Jesus says to those being judged, “‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels...Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
According to the Bible, hell is exile because God is a king who allows only lawful citizens into his kingdom.
Jesus says in Matthew 7:21, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?’ And then will I declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.’”
So there it is. Hell is punishment, destruction, and exile.
I don’t think it is a coincidence that this is exactly what we see happen after sin entered the world in Genesis 3. When Adam and Eve indulged in that very first sin, we see the Lord punish them with the curse. And destruction immediately ravaged the world in the form of relational, physical, and spiritual death. And what does the Lord do with Adam and Eve? He exiles them from Eden. Genesis 3:23 says, “So the Lord God banished him from the Garden of Eden.”
From Genesis 3 to the end of Revelation, sin always brings with it punishment, destruction, and exile. All three, all the time. Because another thing to note about hell is that it is eternal.
2 Thessalonians 1:9 puts all of it together for us in one verse—The wicked “will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”
So the Bible is pretty consistent and clear in what it says about hell. But that doesn’t mean we like it.
We need to ask ourselves a second question.
How does the Bible deal with our objections to hell?
There are too many to address in one sermon, but I’m going to do my best to tackle three of the most common objections.
Hell is an overreaction.
The first objection is that hell is an overreaction.
Often heard like this: Why can’t God simply forgive? How can any sin deserve everlasting destruction?
The problem here is that sin is far more serious than we realize. We get glimpses of its seriousness when we see its consequences. It’s why we get so upset when we watch shows like “When They See Us.”
But we get desensitized to sin too. Remember the outrage and shock and horror of Columbine? The entire nation seemed to shut down for weeks. Now we’ve got school shootings every week or so, and we just press on.
God doesn’t. God can’t and won’t just look the other way at wickedness. Because the heinousness of sin is not measured by the sin itself but by the value and dignity of the one being sinned against. Which makes it a very big deal.
Every emotional reaction you and I have to the doctrine of hell is a direct reflection of our view of God’s holiness and glory. We’ll only believe hell to be an overreaction if we have a small view of God. The more we know the depth of our sin, the more we’ll appreciate the wrath of God against it.
Imagine walking out of this building passed a little boy sitting on the curb pulling the legs off of a grasshopper. What would you do? It’d be strange and bizarre.
Now imagine if you walked out of the building and the same little boy were pulling the legs off of a frog, that would be a bit more disturbing.
Now imagine if it were a bird, you would scold him and go find his parents.
If it were a puppy, that would be too shocking to tolerate. It’s awful to even imagine. You couldn’t help but intervene.
Now imagine if it were a little baby girl, it would be so reprehensible and tragic that you would risk your own life to protect the baby.
But what’s the difference in each of these scenarios? The sin is the same (pulling the limbs off). The only difference is the one sinned against (from the grasshopper to the baby). The more precious and valuable the creature, the more heinous and reprehensible the sin. And the same is true with God.
He is the most precious, valuable, beautiful being in the universe. His glory and worth are infinite and eternal. So to sin against an infinitely glorious being is an infinitely heinous offense that is worthy of an infinitely serious punishment.
Hell is not an overreaction. Hell makes sense when we realize how infinitely serious it is to rebel against a perfectly holy God.
The Psalmist writes in Psalm 5:
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness;
evil may not dwell with you.
The boastful shall not stand before your eyes;
you hate all evildoers.
You destroy those who speak lies;
the LORD hates the bloodthirsty and deceitful man.
(Psalm 5:4-6)
Hell is unloving.
The second objection is that hell is unloving.
Even if hell isn’t an overreaction, isn’t it unloving that people suffer for eternity?
The picture most people have of hell is this: God gives us time, but if we haven’t made the right choices by the end of our lives, he casts us into hell for all eternity. And as we’re burning we are crying out to him for mercy, but God’s got his arms crossed and he’s saying, “Too late. You had your chance! Now you’re gonna suffer.”
But it is a caricature completely misunderstands the character of God and the nature of evil. The biblical picture is that sin is what separates us from the presence of God. Pastor Tim Keller puts it this way, “hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory to infinity.”
Think of someone you know who has had their life destroyed by a drug addiction, or a gambling addiction, or a pornography addiction.
Or think of your favorite chemistry teacher from 2008—Walter White—one of the greatest, and darkest, TV characters of all time from the show Breaking Bad. But Walt didn’t start out that way. He started out as the nice-guy, then slowly but surely his lust for power and greed, which were always there deep down inside, found a way out when his circumstances changed. The long-term effects of unrepentant sin gradually hardened him into a ruthless psychopath.
By the end, Walt has been so engulfed by the darkness that he is no longer fully human. And that’s because sin is a force that refuses to let up; like gravity, it relentlessly pulls us inward into itself.
C.S. Lewis described it like this, “Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others... but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God "sending us" to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE hell unless it is nipped in the bud.”
Luke 16. Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus gives us the same picture…
There will not be people in hell begging for the mercy of God and wishing to be where Jesus is in heaven. They will still be in hell rejecting the glory of God.
Hell isn’t unloving. Hell is simply one’s freely chosen identity apart from God on a trajectory to infinity.
Which brings us to the last objection...
Hell is unfair
And it’s that hell is unfair.
In other words, “What about my unbelieving neighbor or family member? Will they be in hell with Hitler?”
I think we all struggle with this point because there’s that little old lady in Boonville who is a good person. She’s a kind and gentle soul, but she doesn’t believe in Jesus and she hasn’t given her life fully to receive the work of Christ done for her on the cross. Isn’t there a way for her?
We know the mass murderers and Hitler and Satan are going straight into the lake of fire. But we’ve got this little old lady in Boonville. Surely, at the end of the day, there’s a little backdoor into heaven for her...right?
Most of us know someone like that, a friend, a family member, or someone we are close to...and they don’t believe. They’re good people, which is why we love them so much, but we struggle with the idea that they deserve to be cast into the lake of fire.
Here’s the deal: If there’s another way for the little old lady, if there’s a secret back door, then is not Jesus the most foolish person who ever lived? Shouldn’t we feel sorry for him? Saying there’s a backdoor way into heaven, that ignores and goes around the cross, means Jesus died for nothing.
When we reject the free offer of forgiveness and grace through Jesus Christ, what we’re doing is forging our own way in a world that is not our own. We’re choosing to live as our own god. Flat out rejecting what the Bible tells us, in that there is only one way to God and that is through faith in Jesus Christ. So on Judgment Day the little old lady still has to have an answer for God’s wrath regarding her sin, she still has to have a covering to shield her from the fury of his righteous love. But the scandal of it is that she’s rejected that in her lifetime.
C.S. Lewis challenges us here, he writes, “In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell, is itself a question: ‘What are you asking God to do?’ To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start …? But he has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them? They do not want to be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what he does.”
Rachel McLaughin has written,
If Jesus is the Bread of Life, rejecting him means starving.
If Jesus is the Light of the World, rejecting him means darkness.
If Jesus is the Good Shepherd, rejecting him means wandering alone and lost.
If Jesus is the resurrection and the life, rejecting him is eternal death.
And if Jesus is the Lamb of God, sacrificed for our sins, rejecting him means paying that price for ourselves.
No one can make it to God on their own merit.
No matter how good that merit looks to us here and now.
So we’ve seen that the Bible teaches hell,
and that the Bible deals with the objections.
There’s one more question we need to address, and it’s the most important…
What does the cross say to us about all of it?
The cross teaches us that we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe…
This is why the cross is so gruesome and miserable. This is why Jesus wasn’t euthanized. This is why he didn’t just pray a prayer, take our sin upon himself, and pass away in the night. No. In the cross we see the full effects of the aftermath of sin and all of what it does to humanity all laid on the innocent life of Christ. And in that judgment we see the Righteous God pouring out his hatred on sinfulness on the cross.
We see the punishment. Isaiah 53:4 says Jesus was stricken by God, struck down and afflicted.
We see the destruction. Isaiah 53:5 says he was crushed for our iniquities.
We see the exile. Isaiah 53:8 says he was judged, taken away, and cut off from the land of the living.
The cross teaches us that we are more sinful and flawed in ourselves than we ever dared believe…yet at the very same time we are more loved and accepted in Jesus Christ than we ever dared hope.
I mean, the guy hanging on Jesus’ side escaped hell on his last breath. Is that not amazing grace? Doesn’t that give you a glimpse into the heart of God? He doesn’t want anyone to perish, but desires that all men would come to Jesus to find healing and salvation.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
When you put hell on the table it is real and awful in every way. But everywhere you see it...you also see God’s grace extended with open arms and with loving shouts saying, “It is avoidable! Flee from it. Come to me.” He’s a gracious and merciful God. So he’s orchestrated time and space to put his Son in our place. Receive him. Accept him. Cling to him. And avoid death. Avoid hell.
As the old hymn says,
“Stand unclean, no one else could
In my place condemned He stood
Now his nearness is my good
Hallelujah! What a Savior!”
Let me pray for us.