Introduction from Kathy Keller (July 2024):
Every so often we will publish an article from the archives on various topics which Tim addressed. This is an article which was originally written for the Redeemer Report in 2008 — “The Importance of Hell.” In it, Tim gives four primary reasons that demonstrate how critical it is to understand the reality of hell. My favorite reason for considering the importance of hell is the fourth one (no, don’t only read that one!).
When I first encountered the verse in Romans 8:1 “Therefore there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus,” I thought for the first time “I didn’t know I was under condemnation!” If we think we are standing in a neutral space, considering whether to trust Jesus to save us or not, we deceive ourselves. We are already condemned, by our idolatry, hypocrisy, self absorption, devotion to our own comfort and, above all, our cosmic treason in believing that we know better than our Creator how our lives should go.
That was me…I thought I had adopted Christianity because of its satisfying rationality, its moral warmth, its intellectual cohesion. But I should have been running into the arms of Jesus to beg for his death to be applied to my sin and release me from the condemnation I so richly deserved. It took a while, but understanding the hell of separation from God played a big part.
— Kathy Keller
Not only are there plenty of people today who don’t believe in the Bible’s teaching on everlasting punishment, even those who do believe it can find it an unreal and remote concept. Nevertheless, it is a very important part of the Christian faith for several reasons.
1. It is important because Jesus taught about it more than all other biblical authors put together.
Jesus speaks of “eternal fire and punishment” as the final abode of the angels and human beings who have rejected God (Matthew 25:41,46). He says that those who give into sin will be in danger of the “fire of hell” (Matthew 5:22; 18:8-9). The word Jesus uses for ‘hell’ is Gehenna, a valley in which piles of garbage were daily burned as well as the corpses of those without families who could bury them. Matthew 10:28 says, “Do not fear those who can kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” He is speaking to disciples, some of whom will eventually be tortured, sawn in half, flayed and burned alive. Yet, he says, that is a picnic compared to hell. Clearly, for Jesus, hell was a real place, since he said that after judgment day people would experience it in their bodies.
2. It is important because it shows how infinitely dependent we are on God for everything.
Virtually all commentators and theologians believe that the biblical images of fire and outer darkness are metaphorical. (Since souls are in hell right now, without bodies, how could the fire be literal, physical fire?) To say that the Scriptural image of hell-fire is not literal is of no comfort, however. The reality will be far worse than the image. What, then, are the ‘fire’ and ‘darkness’ symbols of?
In the teaching of Jesus, the ultimate condemnation from the mouth of God is “depart from me.” That is remarkable—to simply be away from God is the worst thing that can happen to us! Why? We were originally created to walk in God’s immediate presence (Genesis 2). All the life, joy, love, strength, and meaning we have looked for and longed for is found in his face (Psalm 16:11)—that is, in his favor, presence, fellowship, and pleasure. That is why, for Paul, the everlasting fire and destruction of hell is “exclusion from the presence of the Lord” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). Separation from God and his blessings forever is the reality to which all the symbols point. Fire and darkness represent eternal, spiritual decomposition and disintegration.
We were originally created to walk in God’s immediate presence. All the life, joy, love, strength, and meaning we have looked for and longed for is found in his face.
3. It is important because it unveils the seriousness and danger of living life for yourself.
In Romans 1-2 Paul explains that God, in his wrath against those who reject him, “gives them up” to the sinful passions of their hearts. It means that the worst (and fairest) punishment God can give a person is to actively give them their sinful hearts’ deepest desire. What is that? The desire of the sinful human heart is for independence. We want to choose and go our own way (Isaiah 53:6). We want to get away from God—but, as we have seen, this is the very thing that is most destructive to us. Cain is warned not to sin because sin is slavery (Genesis 4:7; John 8:34)—it destroys your ability to choose, love, enjoy. Sin also brings blindness—the more you reject the truth about God, the more incapable you are of perceiving any truth about yourself or the world (Romans 1:21).
What is hell, then? It is God banishing us to regions we have desperately tried to get into all our lives. J.I. Packer writes, “Scripture sees hell as self-chosen… [H]ell appears as a God’s gesture of respect for human choice. All receive what they actually chose, either to be with God forever, worshiping him, or without God forever, worshiping themselves” (J. I. Packer, Concise Theology p.262-263). Even in this world it is clear that self-centeredness rather than God-centeredness makes you miserable and blind. The more self-absorbed, self-pitying, and self-justifying people are, the more breakdowns occur, relationally, psychologically, and even physically. They also go deeper into denial about the source of their problems. But if, as the Bible teaches, our souls live on, then hell is simply one’s freely chosen path going on forever and ever. We wanted to get away from God, and God, in his justice, sends us where we wanted to go.
What is hell, then? It is God banishing us to regions we have desperately tried to get into all our lives.
I’ve found that only stressing the symbols of hell (fire and darkness) in preaching rather than going into what the symbols refer to (eternal, spiritual decomposition) actually prevents modern people from finding hell a deterrent. Some years ago I remember a man who said that talk about the fires of hell simply didn’t scare him, it seemed too far-fetched, even silly. So I read him these lines from C.S. Lewis:
Hell begins with a grumbling mood, always complaining, always blaming others… but you are still distinct from it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or even to enjoy it, but just the grumble itself, going on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God ‘sending us’ to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud.
To my surprise he got very quiet and said, “Now that scares me to death.” He almost immediately began to see that hell was a) perfectly fair and just, and b) something that he realized he might be headed for if he didn’t change.
4. It is important because it is the only way to know how much Jesus loved us and how much he did for us.
In Matthew 10:28 Jesus says that no physical destruction can be compared with the spiritual destruction of hell, of losing the presence of God. But this is exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross—he was forsaken by the Father (Matthew 27:46). In Luke 16:24 the rich man in hell is desperately thirsty (v.24) and on the cross Jesus said “I thirst” (John 19:28). The water of life, the presence of God, was taken from him. The point is this: unless we come to grips with this “terrible” doctrine, we will never even begin to understand the depths of what Jesus did for us on the cross.
We must come to grips with the fact that Jesus said more about hell than Daniel, Isaiah, Paul, John and Peter put together. Before we dismiss this, we have to realize we are saying to Jesus, the preeminent teacher of love and grace in history, “I am less barbaric than you, Jesus—I am more compassionate and wiser than you.” Surely that should give us pause! Indeed, upon reflection, it is because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus’ proclamation of grace and love are so brilliant and astounding.
