Does Hell Exist?

This has been an especially burning question since the recent publication of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins: A Book about Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived.  Listen to how D.A. Carson answers this question:

Doubtless many think that hell, if it exists, is for really bad people, like the guards at Auschwitz, perhaps.  What this overlooks is that the guards at Auschwitz were just “ordinary” people from a sophisticated and highly educated culture.  A number of photographs have come to light showing these guards, including prominent leaders such as Rudolf Hoess and the infamous Josef Mengele (who performed cruel medical experiments on camp inmates) at Solahutte, a retreat center for SS personal located a mere 30 kilometers from Auschwitz.  These photographs disclose merry times—eating berries, mugging for the camera, lighting a Christmas tree.  One is thus introduced to the “banality of evil”: one of the most revolting elements of the evil was the sheer thoughtlessness of it all. 

Yet although this is an evil of a high order, from a biblical perspective the ugliest evil, the highest order of evil, is the erection of idols, the failure to love God with heart and soul and mind and strength.  We may console ourselves with self-deceptive comfort that our culture would never act like that of Nazi Germany, but a little self-knowledge enables us to imagine descending to similar levels, while reflection on the biblical themes shows that these levels are merely symptoms of a far deeper corruption that, in its idolatrous independence, has happily and mockingly ignored the God who is there and thereby attracted his wrath.  Indeed, the heart is more deceitful than all else and is desperately wicked (Jeremiah 17:9). 

Yes, hell does exist—even though many try to deny this fact.  A.W. Tozer was right when he said “the vague and tenuous hope that God is too kind to punish the ungodly has become a deadly opiate for the consciences of millions.”  Since the fall of Adam and Eve in Genesis 3, the theme of judgment and curse runs throughout the Scriptures.  Jesus actually says more about hell than any other person in the Bible (Matthew 10:28). 

Hell is not a time to hang with your friends—there are no “friends” in hell.  Hell is also not separation from God; rather, hell is to be eternally tormented in the presence of the Holy angels and of the Lamb.  Imagine facing God in his wrath, without regard to his mercy—this is what hell is and why the torment is so great (Revelation 14:9, 11).  So, the testimony of God’s Word is that hell is eternity in the presence of the wrath and justice of God with weeping, wailing, and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 13:42; 2 Thessalonians 1:9; Revelation 19:11-16; 20:9-10). 

God is righteous, just, and holy.  We have all broken his law, and are deserving of his wrath and judgment for all eternity (Revelation 14:6-20).  The good news for God’s people is that Christ finished something on the cross; namely, he satisfied God’s justice and bore God’s wrath in our place (John 19:30).  On the cross, Christ didn’t just suffer suffocation and dehydration and blood loss.  While he hung on the tree on Golgotha, the sins of all his people were imputed to him and his righteousness is imputed to us (2 Corinthians 5:21). 

On the cross, Jesus was the ultimate obscenity.  He bore the curse of God’s law and became a horrific mass of depravity in the sight of the Father, suffering the wrath, judgment, and punishment of a holy God who is just and hates sin (Matthew 27:46; Galatians 3:13).  He was punished as a criminal under the justice of God for our crimes.  He drank that cup of the Father’s wrath for us so it wouldn’t come to our lips, and he was baptized into hell for us to be saved.  Carson writes: the measure of Jesus’ torment as the God-man is the measure of torment that we deserve and that he bore.  And if you see that and believe it, you will find it difficult to contemplate the cross for very long without tears.

Today is the day of salvation.  The Bible says that we are to flee from the coming wrath (Matthew 3:7) by trusting in Jesus, who saves us from the wrath to come (John 3:16-18, 36; 1 Thessalonians 1:10).  Carson says “granted that hell is real, terrifying, and eminently to be avoided, it would be unkind and uncharitable of me not to warn you, in exactly the same way that it would have been unkind and uncharitable of Jesus not to warn the people of his day.” 

If you are interested in talking more about the question of hell, you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Wednesday, September 14) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.  

What is Your Only Comfort in Life and in Death?

How would you answer that question?  Check out this video at: http://youtu.be/BJ2-Bw0Rd54

The Battle Against Sin

Christianity is not a list of pre-packaged rules.  D.A. Carson explains that sometimes, Christian pastors get this wrong.  Perhaps we try to discern signs of decay in the culture, and if we are not careful we will begin to say, “Don’t do that.  Do this instead!”  This type of thinking gives the impression that we can fix things by imposing a fresh set of rules—so you can show how righteous, good, and disciplined you are if you adopt all of these rules in your life.

The fundamental Christian motivation is not adherence to more rules.  Rather, Ephesians 4:32 says, “forgive each other as God in Christ has forgiven you.”  God’s Spirit transforms us by bringing us back to the cross so that all of our morality is first and foremost a function of gratitude to God for what Christ has already done.  If you begin to see just how much you were forgiven by what Christ did on the cross, how on earth can you possibly nurture bitterness toward others?  Because we have received so much love from God through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ Jesus, how can we not also go forth and freely and impartially love others (Ephesians 5:1-2)?  The gospel justifies us and the gospel sanctifies us. 

And yet we are painfully aware of our continual battle with sin, for we are simultaneously justified yet sinful.  John Newton talked about this reality.  Newton, who lived from 1725 to 1807, was once a slave trader who estimated he transported twenty-thousand slaves across the Atlantic.  He said that in his nightmares he could still hear them scream.  At some point in his life he became a Christian and then a pastor.  Near the end of his earthly pilgrimage, Newton said:

“I am not what I ought to be—ah, how imperfect and deficient!  I am not what I wish to be—I abhor what is evil, and I would cleave to what is good!  I am not what I hope to be—soon, soon, shall I put off mortality, and with mortality all sin and imperfection.  Yet, though I am not what I ought to be, nor what I wish to be, nor what I hope to be, I can truly say, I am not what I once was; a slave to sin and Satan; and I can heartily join with the apostle, and acknowledge, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

If you are interested in talking more about “the battle against sin,” you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tonight (Wednesday, August 24) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. 

The God Who Declares the Guilty Just

D.A. Carson writes: At a certain level, the title above almost seems perverse.  The following is how we would prefer that things work:

Members of the jury, I am not asking for mercy or pardon.  I want justice.  I am demanding full acquittal.  Yes, I committed the murder of which I am accused.  But I am not guilty.  Members of the jury, you must consider all my good deeds—not merely as mitigating circumstances but as reason for exonerating me.  The goodness of my other deeds outweighs the crime I committed.  My good deeds require a “not guilty” verdict.  If justice is to be done, you must find me innocent.

We grin as we read the paragraph above because the argument is so ridiculous.  Yet suddenly we see that an approach to God that depends finally on our balancing of good deeds and bad deeds must be no less ridiculous.  For this is the lamest of all forms of self-justification—yet this is the case we want to make before God.  This argument is not a plea for leniency; rather, it is a bold assertion of innocence.  It assumes that guilt is cancelled by good deeds.  God must acquit us and declare us “not guilty” because we have done enough compensating good things.  This is self-justification.  And it is no more believable before the bar of God’s justice than it would be in a contemporary court.

So how should we think that God looks at things, this God who is himself spectacularly holy and who does not see our good deeds as things that are weighed in a balance against bad deeds but sees even this futile effort at self-justification as one more example of our moral defiance against him?  What is the Bible’s solution?  God does not pretend that good deeds make up for bad deeds.  Rather, he has found a way to declare the guilty just—and retain his integrity while doing it.  Instead of self-justification, he finds a way to justify us.

Do you want to know where God’s justice is most powerfully demonstrated?  On the cross.  Do you want to know where God’s love is most powerfully demonstrated?  On the cross.  There Jesus, the God-man, bore hell itself, and God did this both to be just and to be the one who declares just those who have faith in him.  God views the Christian through the lens of Jesus, who absorbed the white-hot wrath of God that we deserve.  Your sin is now viewed as his, and he has paid for it.  And his righteousness, which he earned by perfectly obeying God's law, is now viewed as yours (2 Corinthians 5:21).  God looks at you and declares you to be just, not because you are just (you are guilty, as Romans 1:18-3:20 says) but because he has set forth his Son to be the propitiation (wrath-appeasing sacrifice) for your sins (Romans 3:21-31).

If you are interested in talking more about “the cross of Jesus,” you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Wednesday, August 10) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. 

What is the significance of Jesus’ resurrection?

D.A. Carson writes: “In the Bible, a handful of people were brought back from the dead before Jesus.  One of the most notable was Lazarus, brought back from the dead by Jesus himself (John 11).  Yet Paul insists that Jesus is the firstfruits of the resurrection of Christ’s people at the end of the age (1 Corinthians 15:20).  What makes his resurrection so special, especially if he is not, sequentially, the first?  Apart from the question of who this Jesus is who has been resurrected—none less than the incarnate Son of God, who by his death atoned for the sins of all his people—the New Testament texts insist that his resurrection is unique.

True, Lazarus was brought back to life in bodily form after spending even more time in the grave than Jesus did.  But his body remained an ordinary body; presumably Lazarus died again.  By contrast, after his resurrection Jesus is said to possess a “spiritual body” (1 Corinthians 15:44).  Jesus’ post-death body has some sort of continuity with his pre-death body (the marks of the wounds are still there); it is certainly a genuine body in the sense that Jesus could be touched and handled, and he could eat with his disciples.  Yet it was more than a body as you and I know it.  Jesus continues to be a human being forever, a resurrected spirit-body human being—and our resurrection bodies at the end will resemble his.” 

The destiny of the Christian is not the immaterial existence of a disembodied ghost; rather, our ultimate destiny is resurrection existence with glorified bodies (2 Corinthians 5:1-10) in the new heaven and the new earth.  Only Jesus has undergone this transformation to resurrection existence.  He is the firstfruits of it, the one who has secured it for us.

If you are interested in talking more about “the resurrection,” you are invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Wednesday, July 27) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie, Minnesota. 

What is forgiveness?

Kim Riddlebarger writes: “Think of the worst sin you have committed—the one sin you don’t want anyone else to know about.  Then think of that habitual sin that holds you in a death grip, that sin you cannot stop committing and have confessed a thousand times and still struggle with.  Then think of the sum total of all the sins you have committed.  What possible chance do you have of making it to heaven if the death of Christ doesn’t satisfy God’s justice toward all your sins?”

How can we be saved when we can all think of terrible, besetting, and constant sins we have committed?  Because Christ paid for the guilt of your sins in full once and for all when he suffered and died on the cross.  Christ satisfied God’s justice toward you by dying in your place and receiving the punishment you deserve.  Christ redeemed you and purchased you with his blood, and he reconciled you to God and God to you.  He turned aside God’s wrath toward you.  2 Corinthians 5:21 says: “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.”

Because of the person and work of Christ, God’s wrath can no more touch you as a Christian than a hurricane that happened a hundred years ago can harm you.  God’s wrath has been satisfied in history for you who believe.  All the satisfaction you ever need has been made, and as a result you can lift up your hearts and rejoice and worship your Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

You don’t need to wonder what happens on judgment day anymore because it has been declared to you now.  Romans 8:1 says “there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  Through his perfect life of obedience to God’s law, his death on the cross, his resurrection, and his ascension, Christ has earned righteousness for you.  His perfect righteousness is imputed to you as the ground of your justification.  God is no longer angry with you because you are now clothed in the perfect righteousness of his Son.

So, what is forgiveness?  Forgiveness is seen in the cross of Christ, where Christ bore the weight of God’s wrath against your sins and was cursed in your place (Galatians 3:13; 1 Peter 3:18).  All of your sins—past, present, and future—were paid for by Christ on the cross.  Your guilt, defilement, shame, and punishment has been taken away.  As a result of what has happened on the cross, God is for you today, Christian, and not against you (Romans 8:31).  Why?  Because his justice has been satisfied and his love has been poured out through the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ.

If you are interested in talking more about “forgiveness,” you are warmly invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tonight (Monday, July 11) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie. 

What is “the love of God”?

When you ask people to define who God is, often the first thing they will say is “God is love.”  D.A. Carson says that “occasionally you will hear somebody saying something like this: ‘It’s Christians I don’t like.  I mean, God is love, and if everybody were just like Jesus, it would be wonderful.  Jesus said, ‘Judge not that you be not judged.’  You know, if we could all just be nonjudgmental and loving the way Jesus was loving, then the world would be a better place.’ 

There is an assumption there about the nature of love, isn’t there?  People wrongly assume that love is nonjudgmental.  It does not condemn anyone.  It lets everybody do whatever they want.  Now, it is true that Jesus does condemn the kind of judgment that is self-righteous or hypocritical.  But God’s love is no some sort of spongy sentimentalism that just winks at sin.

It is true that God is love, but it is also true that God is holy, just, righteous, and glorious. 

We will never understand God’s love and mercy without first understanding the seriousness of our sin and the justice of God’s wrath against us.  Jesus had a purpose in going to the cross; namely, to save people from condemnation that is already hanging over them (John 3:18, 36). 

One author writes: “if God were not just then there would be no demand for his Son to suffer and die; if he were not loving there would be no willingness for his Son to suffer and die.”  In his love, God meets the demands of his justice in the sacrificial work of His Son on the cross (John 3:16-18).  1 John 4:10 says “this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation (wrath-absorbing sacrifice) for our sins.”

If you are interested in talking more about “the love of God,” you are warmly invited to come and join us for our next Bible study, which takes place tomorrow night (Thursday, June 23) from 6:30 to 8 PM.  We meet at 9257 Amsden Way in Eden Prairie.  Our study will focus on John 3:16-21.