No one who's guilty wants justice

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

Weighing in on Hell

Well there has certainly been a lot of buzz on the blogosphere about Rob Bell's newest book. I was actually thinking I'd like to start writing formal book reviews on here a bit more, so I'll leave any comments on Bell or his theology to such a time... I do agree with Chris as he said that confrontations like this should get well intentioned Christians in to their own bibles, reaffirming what they believe, and that's good.

I thought I'd share a few thoughts I had and a few, far more intelligent thoughts, some other theologians have had concerning the doctrine of Hell.

First, for those who may cite John Stott, or Martin Lloyd-Jones as other theologians who have questioned the doctrine of Hell (as I've read on several uninformed comments of blog posts that have criticized Bell) , remember that both Stott and Jones publicly contemplated the doctrine of Annihilationism. Annihilationism IS NOT universalism, nor does it renounce the doctrine of Hell... it simply says that sinners are destroyed rather than left to eternal suffering. It argues eternal separation can look like non-existence, or existence that is separate from God.

(It is also important to point out that neither theologian publicly supported this doctrine... it was a thought, or an idea that they gave some credence to. I've wrestled though this doctrine myself and would lean more towards a traditional view now.)

Now, a few things about Hell.

The bible doesn't exactly give us a detailed exposition of hell, but it does describe the fate of it's inhabitants and what they will experience while there with several adjectives, including: fire (Matt 13:42; 5018:8-9 and Rev 19:20), darkness (Matt. 25:30; Jude 13), punishment (Rev 14:10-11), exclusion from the presence of God (Matt 7:23; 25:41; Luke 16:19 and 2 Thess. 1:9), restlessness (Rev 14:11), second death (Rev 2:11; 20:6,14; 21:8), and the weeping and gnashing of teeth we all hear (Matt 13:42 among others).

I like what Richard Niebuhr said of the ongoing attempt from liberal Christianity to ignore the bibles clear teachings on Hell. He says they teach of "a God without wrath who brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a Cross." (The Kingdom of God without America)

Interestingly, all the buzz in liberal Christianity is just being a follower of Jesus and loving people. It seems as though the issues emergent types have with the bible primarily comes from Paul's teachings (church discipline, celibacy, sobriety and clear condemnation of homosexuality) but Niebuhr goes on to remind us that Jesus talked more of Hell than he did Heaven, or the Kingdom and he speaks more on Hell than anyone else in Scripture.

Mark Driscoll, in DOCTRINE, says "Amazingly, 13 percent of anything [Jesus] says is about hell and judgment; more than half his parables relate to the eternal judgment of sinners." (Cited in Doctrine by Mark Driscoll, from "What Ever Happened to Hell?" by John Blanchard)

Another interesting point that Driscoll makes in "Doctrine" is reminding us that hell isn't anything like the cartoons or modern pop-culture depicts it to be. It IS NOT a place where Satan rules. The devil ruling in hell (like so many of our theological assumptions, look for the term "apple" in Genesis in a real translation of the bible-- no I don't consider NLT or The Message real translations) is an idea we get from John Milton's Paradise Lost, in which the Devil arrogantly declares: "It's better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven".

The Devil, like all who die separated from Christ, are describes as those who:

"will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. ¹¹And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name."
Revelation 14:10-11

Hell is real and terrible. It is eternal. There is no possibility of amnesty or reprieve.

I think our attitude towards hell ought to be the same as our Father's... who takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked but pleads with them to turn from their evil ways (Ezek 18:23; 1 Tim. 2:4; 2 Peter 3:9).

Jesus weeps for Jerusalem (Luke 19:41-44)
Paul has "great sorrow and unceasing anguish" in his heart. (Rom 9:2-3)

Charles Spurgeon rightly began a message on the eternal, conscious torment of the wicked in hell this way: "Beloved, these are such weighty things that while I dwell upon them I feel far more inclined to sit down and weep than I do to stand up and speak." (Spurgeon, The Final Separation)

Embarrased of Hell

From Albert Mohler's blog:

In a apologetic gesture, the doctrine (of hell) is essentially lamented.

What does this say about God? What does this imply about God's truth? Can a truth clearly revealed in the Bible be anything less than good for us? The Bible presents the knowledge of hell, just as it presents the knowledge of sin and judgement: these are things we had better know. God reveals these things to us for our good and for our redemption. In this light, the knowledge of these things is grace to us. Apologizing for this doctrine is tantamount to impugning the character of God.

Do we believe that hell is a part of God's justice? If not, we have far greater theological problems than those localized to hell.

Piper contradicts Lewis on hell

I found this article interesting. In it, Piper begins by sharing his indebtedness to C. S. Lewis while at the same time indicating his disagreement with him on a certain issue:

C.S. Lewis is one of the top 5 dead people who have shaped the way I see and respond to the world. But he is not a reliable guide on a number of important theological matters. Hell is one of them.

Piper takes issue with Lewis' assertion that "all that are in hell choose it." Consider this excerpt:

The reason the Bible speaks of people being “thrown” into hell is that no one will willingly go there, once they see what it really is. No one standing on the shore of the lake of fire jumps in. They do not choose it, and they will not want it. They have chosen sin. They have wanted sin. They do not want the punishment. When they come to the shore of this fiery lake, they must be thrown in.

When someone says that no one is in hell who doesn’t want to be there, they give the false impression that hell is within the limits of what humans can tolerate. It inevitably gives the impression that hell is less horrible than Jesus says it is.

We should ask: How did Jesus expect his audience to think and feel about the way he spoke of hell? The words he chose were not chosen to soften the horror by being accommodating to cultural sensibilities. He spoke of a “fiery furnace” (Matthew 13:42), and “weeping and gnashing teeth” (Luke 13:28), and “outer darkness” (Matthew 25:30), and “their worm [that] does not die” (Mark 9:48), and “eternal punishment” (Matthew 25:46), and “unquenchable fire” (Mark 9:43), and being “cut in pieces” (Matthew 24:51).

Read the whole article here.