Tough Questions Christians Shouldn’t Dodge - Part 3
If God is Love, Why Would He Send People to Hell?

Romans 2:6-10 - 16 March 2008
Andrew Lim

Is there life after death? Is there an afterlife?

Talk about the afterlife is in vogue again
Newsweeklies cover it / talk-show hosts discuss it
Eastern gurus claim they have a map to help you locate it
New Agers pay big dollars to learn how to fit themselves into it
And some churches / after keeping mum about it
have begun preaching about it again

But though this is true most people still grapple with the idea /
some will spend afterlife in heaven or hell
- the very idea of hell is repulsive
- it makes Christianity look primitive and barbarous

A God who sends people to suffer eternally in hell
has got to be a vengeful blood-thirsty God / brutish and heartless

Can there ever be any justification at all
for God to consign any human person to hell?

In recent years, this questions caused some theologians to change
their stand.
Clark Pinnock / once a stout evangelical / has largely now
abandoned evangelicalism / and gone down a very slippery slope

This is what he says: “I was led to question the traditional belief
in everlasting conscious torment / because of moral revulsion
and broader theological considerations
not first of all on scriptural grounds
It just does not make any sense to say that a God of love
will torture people forever for sins done in the context of a finite life
It's time for evangelicals to come out and say
that the biblical and morally appropriate doctrine of hell
is annihilation / not everlasting torment”

Of course the idea of hell is hard for us to understand

Peter Kreeft / the theologian said: “Of all the doctrines of Christianity
hell is the most difficult to defend
the most burdensome to bear / and the first to be abandoned”

But Dorothy Sayers / speaks for God when she says:
“The doctrine of hell is not “medieval”: it is Christ's
It is not a device of "medieval priestcraft" for frightening people …
it is Christ's deliberate judgment on sin…
One cannot get rid of it without tearing the New Testament to tatters.
We cannot repudiate Hell without altogether repudiating Christ”

And C.S. Lewis says / “There is no doctrine
which I would more willingly remove from Christianity
than the doctrine of hell / if it lay in my power.
But it has the full support of Scripture
and especially of our Lord's own words
it has always been held by the Christian Church
and it has the support of reason”

Sayers and Lewis are right.
It is undeniable that hell is a plain / clear teaching of Scriptures

Romans 2:6-10 teaches us clearly / that when you die
and when this present world is over
God will give you / either eternal life or eternal death
You will either be in God’s presence to be blessed
or you will be in God’s presence to be in great distress

You will either be in heaven or hell when you die
But the point is this / in any of those two places / you will live forever

Look closely at v. 6: “God will render to each person according to his deeds
v. 7 / to those who by perseverance in doing good
seek for glory and honor and immortality he will render eternal life
v. 8 / but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth
but obey unrighteousness / he will render wrath and indignation

The apostle Paul puts it the other way around /
just in case you didn’t get it
v. 9 / There will be tribulation and distress
for every soul of man who does evil
of the Jew first and also of the Greek
v. 10 / but glory and honor and peace / to everyone
who does good / to the Jew first and also to the Greek”

There is absolutely nothing more vital that this

That in a moment in time / even before this morning is over
you could be in the one place / or in the other

And right here, we are faced with a huge puzzle / when we come to the teaching of hell
Did you know that it wasn’t Abraham / Isaac / Joshua/ Moses / Solomon
who preached hell / it wasn’t even the prophets who preached hell
- not Elijah / Zechariah / Isaiah / Jeremiah / Amos / Zechariah
- All in all / the OT has very little to say about hell

And even in the NT / you will find
that it wasn't Paul / or John / or Peter / who spoke about hell
- wasn't any of the apostles

Instead / God picked the most merciful / the most loving
most kind / most patient / most gentle person
to talk about hell - our Lord Jesus Himself

Now / this is the puzzle / Jesus Christ - so merciful / yet so insistent of hell

It’s as if / for a matter so grave as hell
God would not want us / to take it from any other person
than the One who came / precisely to deliver us from it

So it fell upon our Lord to warn us of hell
And He not only talked about hell / he talked about hell
more than all those who talked about hell put together
It looks as if He’s always talking about it

Further / He talked more about hell / than He did about heaven

And among other things / this / is what He says
“Do not fear those the can kill the body but not the soul
but fear him (God) who kill both body and soul / and cast it in hell”

Now Jesus / of course / did not use the English word “hell”
He used the word gehenna / from the Hebrew word ge-hinnom
the Valley of Hinnom / located south of Jerusalem

This valley was the site where children were sacrificed to Moloch
during the days of Ahaz and Manasseh
- later this place was used a dumping ground
and garbage would be thrown over the wall into this valley
and there /the worms ate up whatever they could the rest burned

Gehenna was a putrefying place of horrible odour and filth
- a place where maggots did their repugnant job
- a place of perpetual smouldering garbage fires

It was in that valley that Judas in his remorse hanged himself
In the time of our Lord / when a criminal was executed
his body was thrown into that valley

And it was into this valley
the body of our Lord Jesus would have been thrown
had Joseph of Arimathea / not gone up to Pilate
and asked for his body / in order to give it a decent burial

So when Jesus went about teaching / he saw that the figure of Gehenna
was the most vivid and graphic picture he could use
to help the people visualize a place of utter desolation
- a place for the condemned / of death / doom and gloom
- a place of horror / a place to be avoided at all cost:

Jesus said / “If your hand makes you to sin / cut it off
it is better to enter life maimed / than having two hands
to go off into Gehenna” / Mk 9:43

The Bible uses words such as these to describe hell
fire and brimstone / burning wind / fiery oven / flames of fire
judgment by fire / unquenchable fire / furnace of fire / eternal fire
eternal punishment / fiery hell / pits of darkness / lake of fire
a place of torment / where there’s only night / and weeping
and gnashing of teeth / where their worm does not die

hell will be a dark place / there will be no light
there will be no rest / hell will be one eternal restlessness
- there will no semblance of order or meaning in hell
- there will be utter total disorder and chaos
- some have said that in hell / silence will be banished
- it will be a kingdom of noise
- someone has said that its capital city / would have to be called
Pandemonium / pan = all / demonium = evil
- a place pervasively evil / without a tinge of goodness

People like Marilyn Manson / have said
that “hell would probably be a more comfortable place
because everyone they know / and like would be there”

But they do not know
that relationships is precisely what will be missing in hell
- they will always be in perpetual utter loneliness
- no one around / no relationship / no love / no warmth

There’ll be remembered by no one / not even God
Ps 88:5 says / “Free among the dead like the slain
that lie in the grave / whom thou remembers no more
Cut off from thy hands”

This will be his greatest loss / no longer be in God’s mind
- never again to be in God’s remembrance
We take for granted God's tireless love and patience for us
so our mind cannot conceive / what it will mean
to never again be in God's mind / to be in His thoughts

Now all that is the teaching of the Bible.
How then may we seek to explain the teaching of hell
in the light of a good and loving God?

POINT There are 5 replies I’d like to give.

A few generations back / some people propagated the idea
that in the long run God will save everyone / what is called universalism

I wish I can embrace this rosy creed / How very nice it would all be
In the end everyone will be saved / all's well that ends well

But the universalists forgot one simple truth
And that’s this / It is a fact / that not everyone wants to go to heaven

Listen to what Marilyn Manson / the musician say”
“I’m gonna say hell would probably be a more comfortable place for me
because everyone I know would be there / and I wouldn’t really
be allowed to do anything in heaven / that would be any fun”

And point is this / The offer of love must be very annoying
to the person who does not desire to be loved / by a certain person

If you are passionately in love with one person
there must comes a time when the offer of love by another
will be decisively rejected / with a sure finality

And it is only natural / that without the return of love
- the wooing cannot go on forever
- the Lover will one day stop
wooing the one who repeatedly spurns His love

And C.S. Lewis so rightly says / that “The only place in the world
where a person is free from the agitations of love / is hell”

Lewis also said / there are ultimately / only two kinds of people:
Those who now say to God: "Thy will be done"
and those to whom God says in the end "Thy will be done"

You see / if in the end / everyone will go to be with God / in heaven
then some people must find that prospect / most miserable
for there are people who find God’s presence / most repulsive
- not everyone finds God's presence a joy

The very thought of heaven / must be so very repulsive
to people who have no desire whatsoever to be there

This / is one serious flaw of universalism
It robs each human person of his/her own free choice

Finally when the door of hell slams close
there will not be a single person in hell / who didn’t want to be there

We sometimes think / that God sends people into hell
No / God sends no one to hell / God forces no one into hell

Finally when everyone is accounted for
there will be no one in hell / who has not chosen to be there
Everyone who ends up in hell
ends up there because she has chosen to be there

God doesn’t send anyone to hell
God says in His Word: “He is not willing that any person should perish
but that all will come to everlasting life”
It is God’s desire to save people
But not all / will want to be saved

And we can leave it to God / to decide who will end up in hell
“Shall not the Judge of earth do right!”

I have a second reply to the problem of hell
Some people have argued this way / they say:
I am really not a great sinner
I may do a little wrong every now and again
but basically / all told / I’m really quite a good person / inside”

Now if you find yourself responding this way
you’ve basically failed to understand the essential nature of sin

Sin is not so much what you do / or what don’t do
although some of things we do are sins
but bottom line / sin is not so much what you do / or what don’t do

Sin is taking something good / and making it your ultimate good
Sin is allowing another thing / another person
to occupy the position / in our lives / that God alone should occupy

Sin is finally the resolute refusal to let God be God

Jesus said that there is only one demand placed upon you and me
and that’s summed up in the first commandment
“You shall have no other gods before me”

Every other sin / stems from this failure to let God be God in your life

Our gravest sin is our insistence on putting God out of our lives
and putting something else / someone else in His place
whether through active rebellion or passive indifference

And for that God will throw both body and soul into the pits of hell

Of course God is merciful / of course He will woo / and He will plead
but He will not allow any one else to take His rightful place as God


I have a third reply / to the problem of sin
Some people have said / that it is disproportionate punishment
to subject someone to eternal punishment
for the wrongdoings of one short life

But we need to understand / that to distrust and disobey the infinite God
is an infinite sin / and will be punished with infinite torment

Because God is infinite / when we sin / we are offending an infinite God
The reason sin is so bad
is not so much because of the one committing the sin
but because of the One who is offended

Hell is eternal / because of Who it is / that’s being sinned against
When you and I sin
we sin against a God Who is infinitely pure
infinitely holy / and infinitely righteous

The punishment of God is eternal
because it is the eternal God / that we sin against

Yes! God is a God of love But He is also a God of justice
And hell / is the just and fitting response to the person
who commits the ultimate outrage of rejecting the infinite God


Fourth / we need to remember / that when God consigns a person to hell
He is not acting like a gleeful hanging judge

People who ask / How a good God could condemn people to hell
need to learn to see that hell as a natural consequence of our choice
They need to see that God condemns souls to hell
in much the same way that He “condemns” bodies to destruction
if they choose to jump from a 200 storied building

They need to see that God condemns souls to hell
in much the same way that He “condemns” bodies to destruction
if they choose to drink a glassful of potassium cyanide / poison

They need to see that we do not live in a cosmic chaos
We live in a cosmos / not a chaos.

And in a cosmos / if we choose disorder / disorder we shall have

One more point
Quite commonly people ask
If He is so loving / how is it that He can be so angry

Let me put it this way
Just think how we feel / when your own blood brother
keeps making stupid decisions in his life / stupid choices in his life
so much so that his life is being destroyed
by those repeated unwise decisions or bad relationships

Will you not be angry with him? / Of course you will
You will not tolerate / the bad decisions he keeps making
You will be mad with him / for making those decisions

Why? Because you love him

See / anger is not the opposite of love / Hate is the opposite of love

If his brothers remain indifferent to his stupid ways
that / is not love / that is hate

Tim Keller rightly says / “the final form of hate is indifference”

And Rebecca Pippet says / the more a sister loves her brother
the more she hates in him / the drunkard / the liar / the thief / cheat

And she concludes with these words:
“If I / a flawed narcissistic sinful woman
can feel this much pain and anger over [my brother’s] condition
how much more a morally perfect God / who made [human people]?
God’s [anger] / is not a cranky explosion
but his settled opposition / to the cancer of sin
which is eating out the insides of the human race
he loves with his whole being”

But the very crucial point is this
God is not just an angry God
He is also a weeping / loving God / who not only is angry with evil
but also gets His Son to take the fires of hell and judgment
for us on the cross

Hell not only tells us / how angry God was with us
Hell tells us / how much God loves us

Believe it or not / hell reveals the depth of Jesus’ love for us

How? You ask
Let me tell you how
Jesus was crucified at 9 am in the morning
From 12 noon to 3 o’clock in the afternoon
a strange unnatural darkness fell on the land

You could never get a natural eclipse at that time of the year
it was the full moon of the Passover
- people found it hard to see in the thick murky darkness
- they found it hard to breathe / the air was heavy
- it was as if a violent thunderstorm was about to break in

And just the tension seem to reach the point of breaking
the silence was shattered by a loud cry from Jesus' mouth
- an electrifying / reverberating / frightening sound
that strikes the ears with a piercing resonance:
Eli / Eli / lama sabachthani

There is so much force and feelings in these words
that two gospel writers have recorded it
in the very language that it was actually spoken: Aramaic

Now / not everyone there understood Aramaic / but there was no mistaking
that it was an ghastly / awful / haunting / eerie sound

Why? Because / for the first time / humans on earth
heard a cry / that came to earth from the depth of hell
a cry that rose from the bottom of Gehana

What’s happening here ?
There / on the holy body of Jesus / was laid all human sin
every sin of every human person
abomination / atrocity / crime / evil / injustice / sacrilege
scandal / lies / vice / wickedness / impurity / ungodliness
profanity / blasphemy / desecration / obscenity / vulgarity

All that / and more / all of it
was found on the fair head of our Lord Jesus Christ

And looking at Him / the Father saw the filth and the scum

And that convulsed Him and He cursed the Son
damned him / and cut him off
turned away from him
Yes / Jesus was cursed by the Father / and sent to hell

The Apostles’ Creed rightly proclaimed He descended into hell

The Word of God says in Galatians:
“Christ saved us from the curse of the law
by Himself becoming a curse for us” / Gal 3:13

But in order to fully become a curse for us / He must pass through hell

No wonder / at that point in the crucifixion
even nature itself convulsed
- the ground shook / rocks cracked open
- and a very black blanket / covered the entire land
the heavens had shut down

We sometimes think / that the physical bodily torture of the crucifixion
must have been the most gruesome suffering imaginable

But listen / the physical suffering was a mosquito bite
compared to what was happening to his soul

What do you mean / you ask
If a casual acquaintance rejects you / that hurts
If a close friend rejects you / the hurt goes deeper
If your spouse decides to leave you and walks out on you
now / that’s absolutely devastating

The more intimate the relationship the greater the grief of separation

Jesus’ relationship with the Father was infinitely / infinitely / endearing
without a beginning / went right back to all eternity
- its the most intimate most passionate human relationship ever

So when He was cut off from God
he suffered the most unimaginable grief and pain

But He did it because He loves you so very deeply

The teaching of hell reveals the depth of God’s love for you
You do not know how much Jesus loves you
until you know how much He suffered

Martyn Lloyd Jones
If someone came by your house / and you won’t there
and he picks up a bill on your front door that was due
and he goes out and pays it for you / how should you respond

Well / you won’t know how to respond
until you know how much of the debt he paid for you

if it’s a parking ticket / say $80.00 / you’ll just thank him
if it’s the bill from the IRS / having caught up with you
for all the last 40 years of dodging your income tax payment
you’ll respond very differently

You’ll never know how appropriately to respond
to shake his hands or fall down and kiss his feet
until you know the depth of his love for you

Now the point is this
Unless you understand hell / you’ll never know how much God loves you

He went to hell / when you should have been sent there
That’s how much he loves you

Unless you know that its not just physical pain he suffered
not just emotional pain / but hell
Unless you believe in hell you’ll never know how much he loves you

Now / understanding that / puts a whole new spin on the idea of hell
suddenly / we become sober / and we think
“Man / if He did all that for me
if what He did / now spares me from having to be burned in hell
if He took my place / then He must love me very very deeply

What then must I do / to be saved?
How can I be transformed / in order to sense his love around me

Faced with this dreadful prospect of hell
you are faced with a simple choice

Will you choose to believe the words of the sceptics
who question the reality of hell

Or will you accept the Words of our Lord Jesus
who went to hell for you / so that you may not need / to be there

You’ve got to believe in hell
And for that you’ve got to believe in Jesus Christ

There is absolutely no other teaching more vital than this
- there is a heaven
- there is a hell
that in a moment in time / even before this day or week is over
you should be in one place / or the other.