It is time to stop apologizing for the doctrine
of eternal damnation (Part One).
It’s a tragedy that pastors are ‘protecting people’ from God’s holiness.
In an attempt to be relevant to the prevailing winds of culture, countless churches have adopted an ‘attraction model’ of ministry (Paul Washer). Accompanying that trend is a growing embarrassment over an expression of God’s holy character—namely that He has an eternal hell. R. C. Sproul offers the following assessment: the doctrine of God’s holiness is being systematically concealed from His people. This doctrine of endless punishment, if faithfully preached, cannot be marketed. It is just too devastating. And what is the evidence that the truth about hell is a source of embarrassment to the church? Answer: church leaders only refer to it in hushed tones, or preferably not at all. When encountering that doctrine in the biblical text, the tendency is to apologize for it, lest its exposition frighten children, and disturb the ‘respectable’.
Ministers who intentionally pass over this doctrine often DO know that the truth about hell is withering to their hearers’ self-focused sense of goodness, security, and importance. “It can be tempting for pastors and elders, who serve gathered congregations of saints, to be misled into thinking that we no longer need to reflect on the excruciating sorrows of the damned. Such weakening resolution can be diminished even further by comments from the pews (or indeed other pulpits) that the people need more grace—more of the sugar, none of the vinegar”ⁱ (Pastor Andrew Kerr). 19ᵗʰ Century theologian William G. T. Shedd warned that due to opposition to the doctrine of endless punishment, the following repercussions were increasingly being manifested in society: breaches of trust (especially in business), corruption in mercantile and political life, the deadening of moral life, a propensity for luxury, a hunger for power, waning of the fear of God, shameless vice and sensuality. As the doctrines of the immortality of the soul and future endless punishment disappear from pulpits and lecterns, the same wickedness which swallowed up Babylon and Rome will infallibly engulf the West. Luxurious ages and luxurious men rail against the doctrine of eternal hell. The above was written by W. Shedd in the second half of the 1880’s.ⁱⁱ
Why do impenitent sinners deserve unending hell, and why is this doctrine avoided by so many church leaders? The place to begin is the two major prongs of God’s character: His justice and His mercy. The lesson so often repeated in Old Testament through the types and shadows of Levitical worship is this: there is no divine mercy without the satisfaction of God’s justice (Lev 17:11). Frequent reminders are needed because God’s justice is opposed by the natural heart. The comprehensiveness, deservedness, rigor, severity, and finality of His justice is disquieting to say the least. That is a significant reason why unsaved people do not exalt God’s justice.ⁱⁱⁱ Thus, is it any wonder that they cannot imagine how God can be glorified in the eternal destruction of the impenitent?
The Holiness and Justice of God
The scarlet thread of redemption running through Scripture reiterates a central theme: the reconciliation of God’s justice and mercy can only come by means of the life blood of the divinely appointed substitute being poured out in place of the sinner. This truth, communicated by 1500 plus years of Levitical worship is summarized in Hebrews 9:22, “Without the shedding of blood there can be no remission of sin.” Divine mercy is only poured out richly through the bloody death of the substitute. The sacrifice of that substitute demonstrates God’s justice against sin. We must be reminded that not a drop of that mercy can be shown without the satisfaction of God’s righteous demands.ⁱᵛ
Bare, general benevolence has never saved a single person, and yet millions of people have placed a false hope in God’s charitability.
A ‘Christ-less’ false hope dominates today—namely the attitude that God is genuinely kind and will not judge those who are sincere and who acknowledge His existence.ᵛ This present author recently met a Jewish doctor at a restaurant. This man does not attend a church or synagogue, and he doesn’t believe the gospel, but he stated that he is putting his hope in God’s general benevolence. And since he believes in a divine being, he has concluded that due to his acknowledgement of the existence of the divine, God is obligated to release him from judgment.
There are many places in Holy Scripture wherein God calls believers to exercise mercy, even to love their enemies (Mt 5:43-48). That is a call to imitate our Lord Jesus Christ who is the epitome of mercy, love, and meekness. But God’s common grace is temporary, it precedes the final condemnation of the impenitent (Rom 2:1-9). When Christ’s followers exercise love and mercy toward their enemies, it is not a forecast that our Lord will abandon His justice on the last day. No, according to Second Thessalonians chapter one, Christ will return in flaming fire dealing out wrath and retribution to those who do not obey the gospel and to those who do not know God (2 Thess 1:6-10).
In this age of gospel grace, reconciled sinners are sent out as ambassadors of reconciliation (2 Cor 5:18-21). We are to plead with our fellow sinners to avail themselves of the gospel; to accept peace with God on the gracious terms God has set. For the doors of his mercy are soon to close—swift, comprehensive justice is coming. A searching, exposing, devastating justice will soon descend, and it will examine souls to the point of identifying every idle word, as our Lord states in Matthew 12:36. It will be an omniscient justice that will reveal publicly the secrets of men’s hearts (Rom 2:16). It will be a justice so invasive that it will bring to light thoughts and motives and intents of the heart (Heb 4:12-13). All will be laid bare before God’s uncompromising justice (Rom 2:16). And then, when God’s wrath is poured out, there will be severity, the undiluted strictness of His uncompromising justice (Rom 11:22).
Eternal punishment can never be harmonized with humanist thinking.
There will be no mercy for the impenitent on that day. Now with the many commands in Scripture requiring mercy of us toward others, we shudder at the thought that passages such as Ezekiel 7:9, Deuteronomy 17:2-6, 13:8, and 19:21 refer to the fact that, under judgment, God will be severe only. In fact, when carrying out the execution of an Israelite who had committed presumptuous sin worthy of death, his punishment was to be carried out without the show of pity. In referring to those penal commands under Moses, Hebrews 10:28 reads, “The person who sets aside the law of Moses was to die without mercy.” This is shocking to us that the same God that sent His beloved Son in love to bear our sins addresses situations in which he commands no mercy and no pity.
This execution of the guilty ‘without pity’ foreshadows the day when God’s enemies, having rejected all opportunities to repent and receive mercy, will receive no mercy (Rev 14:9-11). This does not square with our modern way of thinking—it doesn’t comport with our idolatrous concept of God. We cannot conceive of a God who is love, but also has instances under Moses in which He commands the exercise of no mercy or pity (Deut 7:16; 13:8; 25:11-12). We are baffled by this because we have projected our own nature upon God. Instead of viewing Him as transcendent in holiness and altogether other, the unsaved religionist has formed a god in his own image and likeness.
The unregenerate has fashioned a benign god who easily dismisses sin, who may excuse it, or even show continual leniency toward it. The natural man has manufactured a god whose glory and honor have no association with the divine justice and holiness vindicated in the torments of those who will face eternal damnation. The doctrine of eternal hell is scandalous because it is ‘only reasonable to us’ that sin’s penalty should be limited by time. But, as creatures made in God’s image and likeness, human beings will never go out of existence. God’s image does not evaporate over time, though that image will be nearly unrecognizable in hell, it will never be annihilated.
The doctrine of eternal punishment is gradually being lost today; for the reality of unending punishment of the damned does not comply with natural reason nor with a spirit of licentiousness. The words of Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs disturb our consciences. For Burroughs has said, “God has made His own holiness His great end and goal.”ᵛⁱ And, in the thought of Edwards, God created the universe to put His holiness on display. His moral majesty is the great cause of God. He is extending the glory of His transcendent holiness by means of redemptive history. But because we are blind to the purpose the cosmos exists, it is rare to contemplate the enormity of what it means to sin against God. Consequently, we cannot fathom why sin justly deserves eternal misery. Again, the words of Jeremiah Burroughs stagger us and mortify us, even terrify us and scandalize us, for Burroughs said of hell, “God has determined that you shall have as much suffering as He had dishonor by your sinning.”ᵛⁱⁱ The impenitent sinner shall experience as much suffering as God had dishonor by his sinning—this only begins to make sense if one understands something of the dignity of the One against whom we have sinned. The doctrine of an eternal hell must be preached and taught in the context of God’s infinite majesty and dignity.
Sinners think lightly of their sin because they think lightly of the character of the One against whom they have sinned.
God will forever display His holy justice against rebels. You may find yourself raging against this truth. You may accuse God of engaging in a tyrannical, petulant tantrum. You may cast aspersion on Him as dispensing unkindness and horrific cruelty. You may even refer to hell as an atrocity, as ‘unworthy of your god’. But, not for a millisecond will you be able to hold God hostage by your false caricature of Him. I have heard lost men say, “Eternal hell?” “I would not wish such a punishment on my worst enemy.” The inference is not difficult to miss; for the unbeliever, in denying the reality of hell is postulating that he himself is more merciful than the Almighty! But God in His infinite rectitude knows Himself, and knows Himself to be holy and completely just, even as He knows exhaustively the mind and heart of every sinner. You are deceived if you think He will spare you from hell to avoid being blasphemed by you.
Today’s preaching, in avoiding God’s eternal wrath, has emptied the cross of its foundational message of propitiation (Wm. G. T. Shedd).
We do not hear much today about God’s justice and wrath against our sin. Consequently, we don’t hear much about divine wrath in conjunction with the cross of Christ. In fact, we seldom hear of that association between divine wrath and the atonement.ᵛⁱⁱⁱ In the fluff and bounciness of modern evangelicalism what easily slips from view is that the justice of God is a scandalous thing to the unregenerate mind and heart. And in ‘guarding’ the hearer’s conscience from that scandal, pulpiteers have adapted themselves to the way people think. They frequently offer a message of the cross that is weak on propitiation. It is so weak and impotent that the cross becomes merely a symbol of spiritual therapy, or worse, a divine apology for human suffering! Brace yourself for the blasphemy contained in this quote from a United Methodist author of ‘God’s Apology’:
For millennia I felt guilty about what I had allowed to happen to Job. It made me rethink this whole business of divinity. Being supernatural was over-rated. I created the universe in the first place because I wanted a loving relationship with somebody. Love requires vulnerability. Job was vulnerable. I was not. Being supernatural got in my way. So, I decided to become a human being – a mortal. In Jesus, I experienced everything that Job enjoyed and suffered. It was wonderful and it was awful. After the torture on the cross, after the tomb, there was no going back. I gave up omnipotence and omniscience and settled for omnipresence. Three days later, I emerged from the tomb… reduced to nothing more – and nothing less – than pure unconditional love. Love is all that is left of me. I can’t fix things. I can’t force things. I can’t control things. All I can do is invite, attract, and welcome. All I can do is exude kindness and compassion, and hope that all beings will be drawn to me. And as they take me into their hearts and treat each other with love, humbly releasing puffed-up pride, I experience overwhelming joy in our companionship. My cosmic loneliness is gone. Just as people must do, I had to give myself up to find the love I was so desperate to have. For eons I suffered loneliness and frustration, and in turn caused humans to suffer from unrealistic expectations of what I could do for them. I really wasn’t very good at being a supernatural divinity because I was so preoccupied with my own jealous rage. I’m sincerely sorry about all that, dear humans. Getting down to your level gives me infinite empathy for all you go through. I don’t want religion to make life any harder for you than it already is. So from now on, know me as love - so that I can know you, and you can know me, fully.ⁱˣ
In our evangelical churches, the cross appears to be less and less associated with the demonstration of God’s righteousness—in the placarding of His settled anger against sin— which is the expression of the vindication of His immutable justice (Rom 3:25-26). Tragically, the cross is becoming a synonym for God’s general benevolence—as if the sinner can come to his senses, avail himself of the opportunity God offers, and then never have to concern himself about his sin again.ˣ Perhaps, without meaning to do so, much of the evangelical church today has emptied the cross of its message of propitiation and left us with something in its place that is more akin to sentimentality. My friends, the cross is designed by God to vindicate His holiness, and to destroy our sin and guilt, and our sinning tendenciesˣⁱ (Titus 2:14, 2 Cor 5:14-15; 1 Jn 3:8). The cross applied to the quickened sinner plants in a man the knowledge of our holy God and the deliverance from the rule and reign of sin (Rom 6:11-13; 1 Jn 3:8).ˣⁱⁱ
When the sinner hears the piercing truths of God’s just wrath along the lines of Jeremiah Burroughs’ preaching, perhaps through a faithful minister, it is arresting, foreign, and intrusive. This is jarring to those who have never considered the following: outside of Christ, the dishonor to God that our sinning has caused will be reaped in the suffering of eternal hell. The contemporary churchgoer who is a false Christian has no category for this. It scandalizes his thinking, namely that God will vindicate His own majesty, honor, and glory by means of the miseries and punishments of the sinner in eternal hell. The impenitent man is stopped in his tracks. This withering reality of the immensity of God, and a man’s ill desert begs the question, “How much dishonor did God experience on account of my sin, I need to know!” “For if there is an equivalency between the dishonor my sin caused, and my future suffering, it behooves me to find out how much dishonor my sin has caused God!” “If the shame and aspersion my sin has cast upon God is to be the magnitude of my eternal misery, I must look into this matter of the weightiness of my sin!” It is only an awakened sinner who thinks in this way, most settle back into spiritual apathy. Conversely, the ‘natural conviction of sin’—the sense of falling short of a moral standard does not lead to conversion. For genuine salvation is preceded by the work of the Spirit when He brings crushing conviction over one’s sin against God.ˣⁱⁱⁱ
Unregenerate sinners, even church-going religionists are, in their spiritual deadness and depravity, asleep in ‘nature’s night’. They do not reason about their sin in the devastating manner described above. But, in a moment of alarm, a sinner might say to himself in response to a truly biblically preached doctrine of hell, “You have my attention, tell me more.” “Even though I don’t believe this monstrous doctrine, I’m willing, out of curiosity to hear more.” “But, as I listen, I want you to know that I regard this doctrine to be a monastic layover from an age of ignorance, fear, and superstition.” “Wasn’t perdition held over people’s heads to scare them into obedience?” “Though I am a skeptic about hell, there is something in my conscience that bids me listen, especially if there is an infinitesimal chance this horrific doctrine might be true.”
There are pronounced reasons the unsaved cannot conceive of why God’s honor is vindicated by unending human misery in hell:
- The first reason you do not think hell is just, is because your concept of God is merely that of a large category. You’ve made Him into a pantheistic god, as if He were part of His own creation—a sizeable category belonging to reality, but nonetheless, just a category. He sits alongside other categories which are also large such as galaxies and constellations, time, and space, but my friend, large categories do not command holiness, and large categories are not omnipotent and are not able to justly deal with men and angels. In your unbelief you cannot conceive of a God existing independent of the universe. You’ve made Him a parallel concept to the universe, or relative to the cosmos, a mere ‘force’. In fact, your perception of an autonomous universe fits well with your own imagined autonomy. But the one true God upholds all things by the Word of His power (Col 1:16-17; Heb 1:3). He is the One upon whom all things rely for their existence (Job 34:10-15).
In your opposition to His transcendence, you cannot conceive of the fact that in a moment in time He spoke into existence over 200 billion galaxies each with millions of stars (Ps 33:6-9). That is just too staggering, you’d rather attribute the cosmos and its contents to internal natural causes—forces operating in deep time. But consider this: what God has made, He owns, and what He has made and owns, He upholds. And what He upholds and owns, He defines. And as Creator, Owner, Upholder and Definer, He designates the purpose of everything He has made from a toadstool to a nebula. He is Lord of cosmology. Thus, you cannot conceive of hell being a just penalty because you deny the omnipotence of your Creator. You have underestimated His majesty, not by a factor of trillions—but by a magnitude that is infinite.
- The second reason you cannot conceive of a God who requires endless retribution is because you are willfully ignorant of why God put you on earth. Your creational identity is the image and likeness of God—that is what you will be for all eternity, thus what you owe God is inseparable from who and what you are as His image. But as an unbeliever, you don’t know who you are as His creature, nor why He created you in His image and likeness (Gen 1:27). The great purpose for your existence is to know your Creator— to glorify Him by reflecting Him, worshipping Him, enjoying Him, and imaging His moral majesty in all your relationships (Is 43:21).ˣⁱᵛ That is the very heart of the Ten Commandments; to love God and neighbor (Deut 6:4-5). Thus, to go your own way as a rebel is to willfully violate your created purpose as a creature owned, upheld, designed, and defined by God—a creature uniquely fashioned and formed to know God in a covenant relationship in order to reflect His holy character.
You exist to know your Creator and to advance His glory. This truth is invasive to your sense of self, it is deplorable to you because your illusory worldview has ‘granted you autonomy’. Therefore, you regard His own glory and your own good to be at odds, thus your response is enmity. But, know this, God regards those who despise His glory to be His adversaries (Rom 5:10; Col 1:21). The fact you exist for God, to know and to reflect Him, your heart regards as despicable, and thus contemptable to your assumptions about personal freedom. Therefore, in your mind, you construct an idolatrous version of God which is tantamount to a denial of the Creator-creature distinction (Rom 5:10; Col 1:21). Yet, as a creature of dust formed by Him and for Him, you owe Him your love and devotion and service, and conformity to His moral law.ˣᵛ But, because you deny this, you cannot envision the justness of eternal perdition, for you do not see yourself as you are, lawless in God’s sight (1 Jn 3:4). You cannot conceive of why hell is eternal because you have believed the lie that nothing outside of you has the absolute right to own, define, possess, and direct you.
- There is a third reason why you don’t believe that eternal hell is just. It is because you reject the truth that sinning against others and against your own body is regarded by God as sinning against Him (Ps 41:4; 51:4).
Please consider this, if your Maker put you here to reflect, honor, serve, know, love, glorify, enjoy, and represent Him, then your sinning is not only the defiance of God’s moral government, it is also the refusal to reflect Him. Since your creational identity is the very image and likeness of God, then your creational calling is to live as the image of God. Thus, your sinning is a form of cosmic treason. It constitutes open defiance against His transcendent holiness which He has purposed to glorify through His creation. Your sin is against God Himself because your sin opposes who God is, and it is hostile to His rightful authority as your moral Governor.ˣᵛⁱ
What a weighty thing it is for the creature to carry in his own being the very image of God, for you can never shed that creational identity! Thus, in possessing the creational identity of a reflector of God, your sinful behavior infers, “This is what God is like; if I lie or lust or steal or curse, I am saying by my covetousness, dishonesty, and impurity that these deeds describe my Creator.” This is why God is so offended by sin. God is holy and righteous. He is sovereign Moral Governor of the cosmos. Your sin is not merely an error in judgment, it is living with your back to God in a sin-ward orientation rather than a God-ward orientation. It is akin to the devil’s rebellion. Therefore, it is high-handed treason and revolt. For every unbeliever says by his life, “My impulses, pride, appetites, and self-will shall define reality instead of God defining reality.” My friend, this is why your lying, lusting, dishonesty, and cursing is so serious. Your wickedness casts disgrace upon your Creator’s very character and reputation (Rev 21:8). Therefore, in your spiritual blindness you are unable to see that divine righteousness and justice necessitate the endless condemnation of the impenitent wicked (Ps 36:9).
- There’s a fourth reason why you do not accept that your sin deserves eternal judgment. It is because you are willfully ignorant of God’s creation structures—that God has ordered creation in accordance with a particular design, goal, or blueprint.
Theologians refer to this blueprint as ‘cosmology’, a cosmological design by which everything God has made from a polliwog to a star has an intent and purpose. That means that mankind has a telos or a particular goal or design. It is a telos of glory. We are created to behold His glory, to pant after it, and to reflect His glory. By way of example, in our solar system, our own moon follows a course around our earth. And our moon has a reflected glory. It does not generate its own light, but reflects a supremely greater source of light, the glory of the sun. The moon’s created telos, or glory is a reflected glory. And, in terms of its created function, in addition to illuminating the night for man and creatures, the moon produces our tides and flushes out our estuaries and bays. The moon also is the calendar for months and years, and for the reproductive cycle of countless creatures. The moon also stabilizes our own earth’s orbit and makes life on earth possible. And, according to Scripture, the moon is for times and seasons and for warnings and signs (Gen 1:14).
But, like fallen man, suppose the moon rejected its telos, its created design and glory? What if it defied its created purpose and wandered off from our solar system into the black vacuum of space? It would have no purpose, no relationships, no glory, no orbit, and no gravitational order. In a small way, that illustrates how depraved and rebellious man has defied his God-ordained purpose. Man’s God-ordained glory and telos has been rejected, for man has set aside his God-ordained ‘orbit’ (Jer 5:22-24; 6:16). Remember that the satanic lie in Eden is firmly fixed upon every unregenerate sinner’s heart the moment he is born into the world (Eph 2:1-2). Regarding this present evil age, the lovers of darkness have pushed the light of Scripture to the periphery, for the ancient lie in Eden has a modern permutation which dominates the world—namely, ‘sin is freedom’ and ‘light is hated, and darkness is loved’ (Jn 3:19-21). How ironic, the message of the Bible which is the ‘soul’ of the civilized Western world, and which birthed its freedoms is now considered dangerous to our freedoms.ˣᵛⁱⁱ
When the Enlightenment began to dominate Western philosophy in the 17ᵗʰ century, human reason was elevated, and divine revelation was discounted. The enthronement of human reason was accompanied by antagonism against the supernatural and the claims of God. Rushing into that metaphysical vacuum, or absence of meaning was a man-centered worldview. Secular humanism made man the owner and definer of life, he would be his own measure. He would determine reality for himself. He boasted that by means of empiricism he would be able to answer every unanswered question. Like the parable of the moon wandering off, this constituted a radical retrograde orbit in which man rejected his creaturehood and treated himself as if he were divine, his own focal point, “you will be like God” (Gen 3:5).
Rather than glorifying God through the sciences, modern man was determined to hypothesize about reality without reference to God. And, further, amidst the social chaos produced by man’s sin, the blindness of ancient Babel is evident as man promises his fellow creatures a political, ecological, and sexual utopia. Eternal damnation is the just destination for those who hate their Creator and who prefer a lifestyle of self-love, self-indulgence, and self-worship. No wonder perilous times are here, as Scripture says, when men become lovers of self rather than lovers of God, the times will be highly dangerous (2 Tim 3:1-5).
The defiance of God’s created order originally set forth in biblical cosmology is an attempt to overturn God’s blueprint. It is no less of a revolt than if the moon said, “I am leaving earth’s orbit.” “I’m not going to serve this planet anymore.” “I’m going off to find my own function, which I will define, I am taking charge of my own potential.” “I’m sorry, but this solar system is abusive and restrictive.” “I’m going to go off on my own.” My friends, that would make the moon an adversary of God and His purposes for it. This is what sinners are doing by their insistence upon self-determination. By rebelling against their created purpose, they declare a functional loyalty to the evil one. This is what it means to imitate and follow Lucifer, for it was through his pride of imagined self-determination that he fell (Is 14:4-20; Ezek 28:11-19). Those who insist upon following Lucifer’s course demonstrate that they have no interest in being reconciled to God. But the God who holds the stars in His hands, and who feeds and cares for puny man will not be mocked (Gal 6:7), He will have His day of reckoning (Is 2:12; Dan 4:37; Rev 22:10-13). For He who makes the galaxies and constellations, and even says to the oceans, “Here are your boundaries go no further” (Jer 5:22), declares of His coming judgment, “He who sits in the heavens laughs, the Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger and terrify them in His fury” (Ps 2:4-5a).
This is the God who has established the boundaries for us humans. But consider how tiny we are, we are but dust and wind and ashes. Scripture compares us to the grass or wildflowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our Lord endures forever (1 Pet 1:24-25). Our present, mortal existence is but a vapor (Jas 4:14) it is ephemeral, evanescent. We are like a miniscule puff of steam, Scripture says, but the Word of God is eternal. Shall a vapor challenge Him who is the eternal Word (Prov 21:30)? This immense exercise in arrogance and hubris is a clear reason why God is going to decisively judge His adversaries. For the assumptions of humanism make the creature the final reference point and ultimate authority. Thus, to be willingly taken captive by this philosophy (Col 2:8) blinds a man to his created purpose as the image of God. Redemption alone can slay the satanic delusion of the sovereign self.
- The fifth reason why the sinner does not understand why he deserves eternal damnation. It is because his innate hatred and hostility toward God is so strong. He chooses to curse God rather than bless God. In his pride, he may out of civility restrict his tongue from outbursts of blasphemy, but in his heart, he hates God’s throne. He hates God’s just rule and ownership. The effects of sin on him are so extensive that his entire perspective flows from his imagined autonomy. Sometimes we refer to this deception as the concept of ‘the sovereign self’. For self, so to speak, is enthroned in the kingdom of self. For the natural man self is the ‘sacred holy of holies’ so to speak—nothing may enter that chamber of self without permission from the ‘palace guards’, not even the Creator! Man’s self-love, his unquestioned loyalty to himself pits him against his Maker. Because of his self-love, he cannot love God. The natural man views God’s omniscience as an intrusive and invasive act of trespassing on his inner man. “Stay out!” Shouts the soul of the natural man. In wishing to be his own god, fallen man makes his heart like the heart of God it says in Ezekiel 28:2. But a day is coming in which God will settle the controversy He has with the nations (Jer 25:31). He will publicly ‘hang on the gallows’ of his wrath the wicked and their wickedness. The reprobate mind will be exposed in all its disgusting wretchedness and folly. Like a snail under a gardener’s boot, they will be effortlessly crushed. The Lord will make them into his footstool, and their judgment will be to the exaltation of God’s eternal justice (1 Cor 15:27; Heb 10:13). In summarizing reason five, eternal hell is regarded as unfair by an impenitent because he does not consider his innate hatred toward God and the infinite distance between the Creator and the creature.
- There is a sixth reason why sinners do not understand that damnation will be meted out as a just penalty. It is because of the unbeliever’s willful ignorance that the cosmos is a massive stage or theater for God’s glory.
Therefore, our Maker has filled it with ‘glory pointers’. And the apex of all of God’s glory pointers is the human being. In the new heavens and new earth, when the curse is removed and the last impenitent sinner is rounded up and incarcerated, and entropy and decay and corruption are gone, what a day that will be! Perfect order will fill the creation. It will be a pristine consummation of cosmology—of unspoiled creation renewed and remade as the new heavens and new earth (2 Pet 3:13). Then every created thing will glorify God at its designated ‘frequency’. Everything will sing (Ps 98:8; Is 55:12), so to speak, in perfect harmony whether a star, a quasar, a planet, or even a creature or a tree. “. . .let the rivers clap their hands” (Ps 98:7-9). Angels, nebula, stars, flowers, fish, everything that God has made will harmonize and ‘sing’ unto God’s glory at their proper appointed frequencies. Everything in creation, like the members of a choir, will function in perfect joyful compliance in accord with its created purpose. But what about glorified human beings, the very crown of God’s creation? Yes, the saints will be perfectly tuned, perfectly rectified, perfectly harmonized and adjusted to their created purpose. For we will be made like Christ, our Great Head (Rom 8:29; Eph 1:4). Human beings are the most God-like creature the Lord has ever made; therefore, they are designed by God even above angels to be the chief glory pointer to God. This means that redeemed mankind will have been made like Christ in holiness. For Christ was the most ‘normal’ and human person who ever existed. The redeemed will have been conformed to His image as a new race, a new humanity actually functioning in accordance with their original telos of glory and the restoration of the perfect image of God.ˣᵛⁱⁱⁱ But, those who have despised their Creator by opposing His intent to extend His own glory, and by their heaping dishonor upon His Name by their sin, they shall find that their end shall be eternal punishment.
On that Day it will be realized that the whole cosmos truly is a theater and stage and worshipping chorus for the glory of God—a stage for His moral majesty, existing for the display of His transcendent, glorious holiness. How stunned we will be. How much we will marvel at this fact, that in seeking to behold God’s transcendent glorious holiness, we only could touch the outermost fringes while we were mortals. We only had an inkling of it. But to see that glory face to face (1 Cor 13:12), will stagger us (Is 25:6-9). We will marvel when we see Him (2 Thess 1:10) We will be ravished by the dimensionless of His love (Eph 3:18-19). We will feed upon this, be amazed by it, when we understand that we were created to take in this glory (2 Cor 3:18). And then, the God of infinite power and wisdom and sovereignty and righteousness and love will fill our hearts with adoration and wonder. We will marvel at God’s holiness and glory—that in His mysterious plan we should share His holiness (Heb 12:10). We will be captivated and enthralled by the sight of our Savior; and by the infinite wisdom of God’s design to extend His glory by means of the salvation of sinners.
God’s holiness is coterminous with His power, His might, His infinite wisdom, and sovereignty. We cannot imagine what beholding infinite holiness would be like, and yet, that will be our experience as the redeemed. The uninterrupted communication of His glory to the creature will be the bliss of heaven. That’s only possible if we are made like Christ in holiness. Yes, the sinner wishes he would not have to go to hell, but there is absolutely nothing for him to do in heaven, for he has no passion for the glory of God’s holiness, nor for the demonstration of God’s righteousness in the gospel.ˣⁱˣ For since he is not made like Christ, God’s holiness will repel him as it says in Revelation 6:15-17. The sight of God and Christ will be unbearable to the lost person—to a defiled creature confronted with infinite holiness, it will be unbearable. To stand as a defiled creature before the self-existent God who in His own person is the ground, and source, and support of your very being is a horrifying experience. The sinner will wish to escape and flee. He will want to go anywhere other than heaven or hell. He will seek annihilation. For the sinful, polluted creature cannot bear the sight of his holy Creator.
End Notes:
i Andrew Kerr, “A Very Important Reason to Keep Preaching Hell to Mature Believers.”
ii William G. T. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Vol. IIB, (Minneapolis, MN: Klock & Klock Christian Publishers,
1979) 745
iii Gardner Spring, The Attraction of the Cross, (Carlisle, PA: Banner of Truth Trust, 1983) 37, 131-132
iv Craig Biehl, The Infinite Merit of Christ
v W. Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, Vol. IIB, 748, 749
vi Jeremiah Burroughs, The Saint’s Treasury, (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1991) 17-20
vii Ibid, p. 55
viii G. Spring, pp. 28, 48
ix Jim Buklo, “God’s Apology,” United Methodist Insight, Perspectives, June 22, 2021
x W. Shedd, Vol IIB, 741, Vol III, 483
xi Walter Marshall, The Gospel Mystery of Sanctification, (Lafayette, IN: Sovereign Grace Publishers, 2001) 19, 20
xii G. Spring, pp. 180-182
xiii Matthew Mead, The Almost Christian Discovered, (Ligonier, PA: Soli Deo Gloria, 1991) 70-73, 82-84, 140-148
xiv Joel R. Beeke, Mark Jones, A Puritan Theology, (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2012) 120,
121
xv H. C. Fish, Primitive Piety Revived, (Harrisonburg, PA: Gano Books, Sprinkle Publications, 1987) 62-63
xvi John Arndt, True Christianity, (New Ipswich, NH: Pietan Publications, 2000) 31, 76
xvii Vishal Mangalwadi, “Must the Sun set on the West?”
xviii J. Arndt, pp. 7-10
xix J. C. Ryle, Old Paths