The Reality of Hell

It was in love that Jesus delivered so many warnings about hell. Today, Sinclair Ferguson gives sober attention to the condemnation our sin deserves so that we may cherish the grace of salvation that belongs to all who trust in Christ.

Welcome to Friday’s edition of Things Unseen. This week, we’ve been thinking about the four last things: death, and judgment, and heaven, and now today about hell. That’s the traditional order, and we’ve stuck to it. I suppose many of us would rather have reversed the last two.

People sometimes say that we don’t know much about heaven, but that’s not strictly true. We haven’t experienced much of it, for sure, but the Bible has a lot to say about it. We could say we know even less about hell, which is true. Nevertheless, the Bible does have quite a lot to say about it, and it’s often said with some degree of truth that Jesus spoke more often about it than anyone else in the Bible. The fact that our loving Lord Jesus did so is a very sobering fact about a very sobering truth, but he said it because He loves us.

I once heard a story that a member of the British royal family asked a member of the clergy of the Church of England if there was a hell, and the clergyman apparently replied, “Your Highness, the Bible says so, Jesus taught so, and the articles of the Church of England affirm so,” to which the member of the royal family was reported to respond, “Then why in God’s name do you not tell us about it?”

But what is hell? The Bible doesn’t try to answer that question in subtle philosophical terms. Rather, it paints pictures because its basic concern is to tell us how to avoid it. And it tells us why we need to avoid it: because it means to be separated from all the privileges and blessings, not only of God’s saving grace, but of God’s common grace. And what that means can’t fully be described in terms we can understand. It’s too awful to understand. All we know, actually, is a world in which God is present and kind in His common grace, even to rebels against Him. That’s why our Lord paints these pictures for us—pictures we can understand, and feel, and sometimes almost smell.

Today, I want to focus on just one statement that gets us to the heart of the Bible’s teaching. It’s 2 Thessalonians 1:9, where Paul speaks about God’s final judgment on those who reject Him. He says, “They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.”

Now, that’s a very densely packed statement, isn’t it? But notice some of its features. Hell is being “away from the presence of the Lord.” That’s simply a way of saying that hell is ongoing life in death—life separated from the blessings that flow from the One who is the source of all blessing, existence that has nothing positive about it, only everlasting negativity.

And hell, says Paul, is also an existence of punishment. And that suggests that if a person is in hell, they know why: their own rebellion against the loving God who offered life, which they rejected, and then, in addition, despised. Do you know C.S. Lewis’ words? “There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, ‘Thy will be done,’ and those to whom God says, in the end, ‘Thy will be done.’ All that are in Hell, choose it.”

Perhaps that’s the explanation for what Jesus calls the “weeping and gnashing of teeth,” the sobering thought of the permanent regret, the anger against God that has grown, as it were, to its fulfillment. And that’s why we understand from Scripture that God takes our response to Him with utter seriousness, eternal seriousness.

And then, says Paul, hell is “eternal” or “everlasting destruction.” He doesn’t mean annihilation, but the deconstruction, the demolition of life as it was intended to be. I’m reminded of some words of the Puritan writer, Thomas Brooks, when he says this:

Oh—but this word Eternity! Eternity! Eternity! this word Everlasting! Everlasting! Everlasting! this word Forever! Forever! Forever! will even break the hearts of the damned in ten thousand pieces . . .

Impenitent sinners in hell shall have end without end, death without death, night without day, mourning without mirth, sorrow without solace, and bondage without liberty. The damned shall live as long in hell as God himself shall live in heaven.

My, what a sobering word that is in the run-up to Advent, the Christmas season. But it does have this effect, doesn’t it? It makes us see why the coming of our Lord Jesus was so absolutely necessary, and why the coming of the Lord Jesus—called Jesus because He will save His people from their sin—is the most glorious news in the world. And I hope that you are trusting Him as your Savior and following Him as your Lord.