The chasm between heaven and hell is illustrative of the chasm between God and us. He is glorious; we are not. He is holy; we are not. He is righteous; we are not. And this chasm between God's total perfection and our total depravity deserves the the chasm of stinking, smoldering Ghenna.
This is good information to know. It is true information, and it's always good to know the truth. But the problem with this information alone is that it is insufficient to keep us out of the chasm. If someone is heading over a cliff, for instance, it makes little sense to hand him a pictorial display of what will happen when he goes over and crashes onto the rocks below.
What I mean is that we can receive this information of God's severity, we can note it, as Paul tells us to do, and we can explore the biblical array of God's wrath, eternal conscious torment of hell, and how we all deserve both of them, but this information is not sufficient for us to praise God. Have you ever watched Court TV and seen the judge slam down the gavel and say, "I sentence you to die by lethal injection," and heard the convicted party go, "Yeah! I love you, Judge!" No, you haven't. We don't see that, because no one who's guilty wants justice; he wants mercy.
Chandler, Matt, and Jared C. Wilson. The Explicit Gospel. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012. Print. 48-9
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