“Are We Going to Hell?” (Jude
20-23)
It was about 14 years ago. A 22 year old man, the son of one our deacons,
was living with his girlfriend. I was an
unmarried, pastor fresh out of seminary, and this couple was not much younger
than me. They came to church often and
made no attempt to hide their living arrangement. Why should they? Cohabitation was celebrated on shows like Friends and Seinfeld. There was nothing
wrong with a man and woman living together except sex outside of marriage is a
complete violation of God’s way for humans, and they knew that. Instead of enjoying the blessings God gives
and waiting, they jumped the gun thinking they knew better than God.
They decided they needed to talk the pastor, so they came in. Sitting in my office, she asked in giggle,
“Are we going to Hell?”
The issue is not an unmarried couple shacking up. That is an example, but the issue itself is
deeper. It is a matter of sin. They knew their choice was against God’s
vision for humanity, but they did what they wanted.
Are we going to Hell? Giggle – he can’t seriously say, “Yes.” Nervous giggle – in our choice to live
together before marriage, we know that we actively choose to reject God.
What is Hell?
Last week we looked briefly at universalism, the notion that all
people are eventually saved and with God for eternity. Many Christian universalists believe in Hell. They believe the fires of Hell exist to
purify those who have reject God’s grace.
In the New Testament all people are confronted with a choice. We have to choose to follow Jesus. We have to decide to worship God. We can opt to reject God’s ways but this
means we separate ourselves from God. If
we die separated from God, the separation is forever. That is what we call Hell.
In Matthew 10, Jesus is teaching his disciples. He says, “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” (10:28).
In a parable in Matthew 24, Jesus
compares people to slaves. God is the master, one who is absent. The absence refers to the time between Jesus’
crucifixion and his second coming at the end of time. The slave who is “at work” when the master
unexpectedly returns will receive the master’s blessing. From context we know that “at work” means
announcing the Kingdom of God as we love God with our heart, soul, mind, and
strength, and our neighbors as ourselves.
However, not all slaves do this work
in the master’s absence. Some violate
the master’s commands. Sin – every sin
you can think of – is how the master’s way is rejected. When we sin, we reject God. Jesus says the master will come and will “cut
the [wicked slaves] to pieces and put [them] with the hypocrites where there
will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (24:45-51).
In the next parable, at the beginning
of Matthew 25, people are represented as bridesmaids and Jesus is the
bridegroom. The bridesmaids are to wait
outside in the dark. Thus, they need
their lamps lit. The oil for the lamps
is the symbol for faith in Jesus. The
foolish bridesmaids have no oil. The
master comes and those who have oil, those who have put their faith in Christ,
are invited into the wedding banquet.
The foolish ones then try to enter, but the master says, “I do not know
you.”
Thus from Jesus we can say the
following:
-
Hell is worse than having one’s body killed (Matthew 10:28)
-
Judgment is like being cut to pieces and put among Hypocrites
where teeth are gnashed (Matthew 24:51).
-
Hell is like seeing into the Heavenly banquet, but having
Jesus reject you, by saying I don’t know you (Matthew 25:12).
Additionally, in other parables,
Jesus indicates the following:
-
Hell is outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of
teeth Matthew 25:30).
-
Hell is eternal fire (Matthew 25:41; also implied in Luke
16:24).
-
Hell is eternal punishment (Matthew 25:46).
We could cite many other Bible
verses, but I will for the sake of time just read the following, Jude 5-7. Jude is the short letter right before Revelation. It is only divided by verses, not
chapters. Jude 5-7 says:
5 Don’t
forget what happened to those people that the Lord rescued from Egypt. Some of
them did not have faith, and he later destroyed them. 6 You
also know about the angels[a] who
didn’t do their work and left their proper places. God chained them with
everlasting chains and is now keeping them in dark pits until the great Day of
Judgment. 7 We should also be warned by what
happened to the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah[b] and
the nearby towns. Their people became immoral and did all sorts of sexual sins.
Then God made an example of them and punished them with eternal fire.
Two schools of thought take many of
the verses related to Hell or judgment and punishment, verse found in Matthew,
Luke, Jude, Revelation, and throughout the New Testament, in very different
directions. The most common reading
among scholars is that the Bible teaches that the punishment for sin is
everlasting torment, a punishment God imposes out of holy hatred of sin. The great American theologian of the 18th
century, Jonathan Edwards, has written extensively on how awful Hell is and how
much each one of us deserves it. His
sermon “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” and his essay “The Justice of God
in the Damnation of Sinners,” are examples of his writing on this topic.
An alternative view, one held by a
minority of scholars, is the annihilationist view. The most prominent among recent theologians
to lean in this direction is English evangelical scholar John Stott. A leader in global movements to spread the
Gospel, Stott shocked many of his evangelical colleagues when he expressed that
he could not tolerate the idea of eternal conscious suffering. He found annihilation more appealing. Annihilation is simply the idea that we
suffer in Hell for a time, and then we are forever wiped out of existence. There is no suffering because we are no
more.
Proponents of both views refer to the
same scriptures, but debate how the passages are to be understood. For example, in Matthew 25:41 Jesus says, “You that are accursed, depart from me into
the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” Traditionalists triumphantly say, see, Jesus says eternal fire. Eternal punishment.
No!
The annihilationist responds.
Fire burns something and then it
burns up. What is eternal is the
effect. It is eternal punishment because
once it has happened, there is no undoing it or going beyond it. And they go back and forth
The debate is worth following, but I
have a confession. I do not know which
is accurate. I feel comfortable
rejecting universalism based on my reading of the New Testament. I don’t know whether proponents of eternal
conscious torment or those arguing for annihilation are right. I am sure, from my own reading of scripture,
that there are eternal negative consequences for dying in sin.
It
matters. This conversation is important
for every one of us. In “the Justice of
God in the Damnation of Sinners,” Jonathan Edwards writes
But God is a being infinitely lovely, because he hath infinite
excellency and beauty. To have infinite excellency and beauty, is the same
thing as to have infinite loveliness. He is a being of infinite greatness,
majesty, and glory; and therefore he is infinitely honourable. He is infinitely
exalted above the greatest potentates of the earth, and highest angels in
heaven; and therefore he is infinitely more honourable than they. His authority
over us is infinite; and the ground of his right to our obedience is infinitely
strong; for he is infinitely worthy to be obeyed himself, and we have an
absolute, universal, and infinite dependence upon him.
So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.[i]
So that sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and so deserving of infinite punishment.[i]
He is
obviously a traditionalist, but what I appreciate most about Edwards is the
recognition of how grave sin is. And
this takes me back to the encounter I had at the beginning of my journey as a
pastor.
“Are we going to Hell?” The young woman asked me through an uncertain
giggle. We giggle at sin. We laugh out loud. We pay to see it.
Of the top grossing films in 2012,
none were rated G. Six were rated
PG. Thirteen were rated PG-13. And six were rated R.[ii] The G rating, of course, is for all audiences
and is typically the rating for harmless children’s movies. What they call “adult” content is added for
PG movies, and then more is added for PG-13.
You can be sure in a PG-13 movie you’ll hear some foul language and see
some content that suggests either sex or violence. And it escalates with R-rated movies and
those rates NC-17. Why is it called
“adult” content, instead of morally damaging content? Why is alcohol an “adult” beverage instead of
an addictive drug that kills brain cells?
I do not suggest that drinking a beer
or seeing an R-rated movie is cause for going to Hell. However, the New Testament condemns
drunkenness. We snicker and ignore someone who questions it, especially a
preacher. Do we snicker at the New
Testament?
The New Testament demands sexual
purity in word and in behavior. We laugh
at dirty jokes.
Why?
We don’t take sin seriously
enough. We love God’s grace and
forgiveness and we should. Jesus went to the cross for the sins of the
world. Sin is so awful that the one who
never sinned was betrayed, abandoned, humiliated in a mockery of a trial, and
then beaten and crucified. In the
process, he experienced abandonment.
That’s how harsh sin is. That’s
what Jesus went through. We treat it is
as a joke.
As Paul writes in Romans 6, “Sin pays
off with death.” To die having never
repented and never called on Jesus as Lord and never received forgiveness in
His name is to die in sin. It is to die
apart from God – forever. There is no
recovery once we enter forever.
On the other hand, to repent is to
turn from sin. It is to call on Jesus as
Lord and to receive His forgiveness and receive life in His name. When we do that, He is in our lives
permanently. From that point forward,
everything we do, we do in the Holy Spirit’s presence.
A crude joke
is told. Would I laugh if Jesus were
present? He is in Holy Spirit form.
Would Jesus be aligned with my heart
attitude if he knew my heart’s attitude?
He knows. He lives in my
heart.
Whether my sin is murder or the
nastiest language I can muster or silent affirmation of sins around me, it is
sin that God abhors sin and punishes. Sin
always results in pain and loss and alienation from God.
I have not
settled the debate – Hell as a place of eternal conscious torment or Hell as a
place of punishment that is followed by annihilation. But, I know what Hell is. Hell is living with
all the pain sin brings forever, with no hope of rescue from God.
Today, we have
that hope of rescue. Today, we can turn
from our sins and receive Jesus. If you
do that, it does not mean going forward you must strive to avoid sin. Sin avoidance always fails. We won’t stop sinning because we try hard to
stop sinning. We aren’t that
strong. We need help and we have
it. Receiving Jesus means He takes up
residence in us and we live in grace, joy, and love. We sin less and our lives are oriented away
from sin when we spend our lives seeking Him.
My prayer is
that a talk about Hell will lead to us seeking rescue from sin by turning to
Jesus. We constantly seek Jesus and seek
to love hurting people and introduce to Him to those who don’t know Him. As to Hell, we do well to read Jude read
verse 20-23.
20 Dear
friends, keep building on the foundation of your most holy faith, as the Holy
Spirit helps you to pray. 21 And keep in step with
God’s love, as you wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to show how kind he is by
giving you eternal life. 22 Be helpful to[g] all
who may have doubts. 23 Rescue any who need to be
saved, as you would rescue someone from a fire. Then with fear in your own
hearts, have mercy on everyone who needs it. But hate even the clothes of those
who have been made dirty by their filthy deeds.
Hate
sin, love people, and share the Gospel.
Heaven or Hell is riding on it.
AMEN
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