Why is there an Eternal Hell?
The Fear of God and your eternal Destiny
Jay Wegter
11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and
heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.
12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were
opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
13 And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead
which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds. 14 Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake
of fire.
15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the
lake of fire.
The gravity of being created in the image of God is seldom discussed in polite social circles today. For the moral obligation which comes with our creational identity is a most sobering subject. It is joined to our eternal destiny. We were created to reflect God’s righteous character—so that in word and deed and motive our lives would reflect the moral rectitude of God. And that is only possible if a person knows and loves God. This casts a most intense light upon the seriousness of sin. For men imagine that their misdeeds are of little consequence as long as no one was hurt during their committal. But Scripture declares something far different about human sin. All sin is against God Himself because as His image-bearers, our lives are designed to be a constant commentary of what God is like. We are created to be ‘reflectors’ of the virtues of our God.
Thus, in this sermon we will frequently ask questions like these, “Is your life telling a lie about God?” “Have you ever really considered what you owe God?” “What does God require you to do about it if your life is telling a lie about God?” “What are the results of the consequences of not obeying God since your life is telling a lie about God?” This all goes back to the question, “What does a man owe God by reason of being made in His image and likeness?” To even hear such a concept that we owe God something tends to enrage the natural man, for it is an outrage to him to hear that he is not autonomous. We Westerners take pride in our independence, our individuality, that there is no authority we recognize that tells us what we should do or what we should be. This leads us to a very important question, what is our creational identity? We can’t have it both ways. We can’t be the image of God and also merely the image of an animal.
As the image of God it should be clear that our Creator is the source of our dignity and morality. But with that creational identity as the image and likeness of God comes accountability to our Maker—every person will give an account of himself unto God. If you have even an inkling of moral wisdom you will care very deeply about the standard of judgment by which you’ll be examined on that last day. Our passage indicates that two great factors appear in the examination of every man: 1) there will be a judgment by works, 2) there will be a judgment which depends on whether a man’s name is in the book of life. So what is the ultimate basis for judgement? The answer is that basis of judgement is the character of God Himself, that is what will examine you. God’s character sees everything in our lives. By His omniscience He knows the motives and intents of the heart, nothing is hidden, all is laid bare before the eyes of Him with whom we have to do (Heb 4:12-13).
There is so little fear of God today because there is so little knowledge of God. The evil one deceives the whole world by normalizing sin (2 Corinthians 4:4). The powers of darkness work overtime to conceal the fact that sin is the greatest imaginable disaster; it is a cruel, murderous intruder. But God requires truth in the inner most being, God requires absolute righteousness. So again, the sinner takes umbrage, feeling insulted that he should be required to supply a level of righteousness he is unable to generate. The sinner is insulted that he must look outside of himself for the righteousness which is acceptable to God. But, with the sinner’s self-righteousness there comes a lofty arrogance that will not stoop to be represented entirely by the Son of God. I picture Noah’s neighbors looking up and scanning the dimensions of that massive Ark but seeing the smallness of the door. They would not stoop low enough or bow their heads to enter the door of the Ark but like every natural man held fast to their spiritual pride. They were willingly ignorant in their delusion that they could protect themselves from a mythical threatened flood. “Would God destroy everything with breath because of us? How utterly absurd, Noah is not a sane man—his dry dock ship is proof of his troubled mental state.”
So also the natural man imagines he can protect himself from God by his own ideas about life, and by his moral and religious efforts. By contrast, oh how self-renouncing is saving faith, for it looks completely away from self to God’s appointed representative. Only the soul which is thoroughly convicted, humbled, and bankrupted of all moral merit welcomes Christ with his whole being. He flees to the Savior for refuge knowing that his own sins expose him to the hot displeasure of God’s fury and wrath (Ps 90). It says in Hebrews 4:1 “let us fear lest any of us come short.” Oh my friends what is the Lake of Fire that burns forever? In what way does that burning cauldron manifest God’s holy character? Have we forgotten the lessons of moral cause and effect which fill Israel’s history (1 Corinthians 10; read Lamentations)?
The question Jonathan Edwards posed comes to mind “Should God make the cosmos and then abandon its created purpose?” Would God allow the created purpose of the universe to miscarry? Does human and angelic sin in any way thwart God’s purpose to make all things for His glory? God made all things in order to showcase His moral majesty and bring Him endless glory. What shall become of that purpose in a fallen and cursed world? Romans 9 tells us the answer, every person will prove to be an eternal object lesson either a vessel of mercy or a vessel of wrath. That means a vessel whose relationship to God is mercy which exists to declare to God’s mercy and is the container of God’s mercy. Oh the other should terrify us for to be a vessel of wrath is to have one’s relationship with God defined as being an object of wrath; it is to be a container of wrath, it is to be an object lesson of divine justice issuing forth and endless wrath so that the expression of divine wrath finds its locus in that individual. The perfect discrimination between these vessels is not owed to the level of innate righteousness in either vessel but to God’s sovereign, free, and indistinguishing grace. Oh how the reasoning of the natural man is frustrated by perfect, divine discrimination. Man cannot stand even for a moment to not be the master of his own fate.
Now let us turn our attention to Revelation 20:11-15. Oh these words disturb us, agitate us, and pierce the conscience of the unredeemed man. “No place was found for them.” (See Job 21.) Their assumed entitlement to walk God’s green earth, to breathe its air, to own a plot of land, to consume its produce, to leave their wealth to their children is all put to the lie. “No place was found for them.” Those who never repent of telling a lie about God will be evicted from their bodies and from this planet. God will not allow a cumberer of the earth to find refuge anywhere in the creation. Oh these are sobering words that there is a Lake of Fire and the impenitent will be unceremoniously thrown into that burning lake.
Our little minds cannot comprehend that phrase “tormented forever and ever.” Because there is so little fear of God there is so little valuing of Christ. My friends, there is no safety in Moses, don’t put your hope there. The Law explains what God requires and the Law closes every mouth, removes every excuse, crushes every alibi, and pronounces the whole world guilty before God. But the Law cannot protect your from condemnation over your sins. Hebrews 10 tells us that our God is a consuming fire. But what does that fire of God consume? The answer ought to make us fear and revere God, for the answer is that God will consume as a furnace all that is not like Him in holiness.
Unlike the false promise of purgatory, God’s burning furnace will never complete its work upon the rational creatures who die in sin and unbelief. God will avenge Himself upon His enemies forever (see white hot lava from His throne in Daniel). But you will say to me that is too much, that is too severe, that is too unlike human justice and fairness. It sounds far too vindictive, cruel, harsh, and much too punitive to levy such punishment against weak human beings that they should endure this crushing condemnation forever. Don’t imagine for a moment that you have the power to hold God hostage by impugning His character. God has shown us what our sin deserves and His greatest demonstration was not the Genesis Flood, nor the fiery destruction of Sodom.
His greatest demonstration of what sin deserves is what He inflicted upon His own Son. For in the cross we see and even more devastating commentary of what God thinks of sin than eternal hell. For in Christ’s agony and wrath-bearing the Father’s gaze is turned away and the Son endured His agony while cutoff from every living thing. It is the abandonment under torment that hurts more deeply than the nails themselves. No my friends you will not escape judgment by attempting to blackmail God’s reputation. Your blood will be upon your own head. For God has publically exhibited His Son as the perfect atonement, as the substitute crucified for sinners. Christ died in time, space, mass history in Jerusalem, right off of the king’s highway at the meeting place of three continents. His bloody death was witnessed by Jew and Gentile and was archived by the eye-witness account of historians. God Almighty has given testimony concerning His Son. The Father has born witness as what took place in Christ’s substitutionary death. Thus, every unbeliever who has heard the gospel yet remains impenitent ‘makes God a liar’ (1 Jn 5). There is safety nowhere else but in the good news of the gospel. Thus, to scorn God’s offer of mercy, yea His command to come and be forgiven, is to have no compassion on your own eternal soul. It is to treat it as dirt. It is to thrust a spear into one’s own heart.
Again, our Revelation text is designed to bring us to the highest level of sobriety in regards to our final destiny. On the last day the secrets of men’s hearts will be revealed (Romans 2:16). On that day the ability to override the conscience will be gone forever. On that day the conscience will speak in full agreement with the Law of God and in full agreement with God’s record of one’s life. And, that is why the conscience will also agree with God’s verdict. Then, and only then, will the natural man begin to understand that his conscience was God’s moral mark upon him—the very image and likeness of a holy God. At that moment when the final verdict is pronounced, God will introduce a spark of wrath and then that man’s conscience will rise up to its full stature as the very image of a holy God. Then that moral faculty of man, whose conviction of sin was muffled over a lifetime, will speak at full volume and begin to take its eternal revenge against its ungrateful host.
Oh, if men only knew that the worm that never dies already lives inside of them. If men only knew that the pains of hell will be enforced every moment by a conscience that says, “I deserve this forever.” Then will come the saying, “How righteous are thy judgements and how just are thy ways.” Sinners entertain a sentiment which is the polar opposite of that statement. They have created a false hiding place in believing that God is not as good as His Word. Therefore, they stumble over the stumbling stone of the cross. For, the cross is a monument to the world that man deserves to die and be cut off from God forever. But to regard the cross in this manner, the natural man would have to pronounce God’s judgment on himself. He would have to take God’s side against his own sin. He would have to damn himself—agreeing with God’s verdict. This the natural man will not do apart from the work of the Spirit of God. For the natural man is staunch in his commitment to the notion that God would be unjust to damn him. Thus, the sinner in his un-awakened state considers the acceptance of God’s verdict about him to be conflict of interest. Therefore he sues for injustice on God’s part rather than face the gravity of his own wickedness.
How universal it is that modern sinners never give a thought as to what they owe God. They can’t be distracted for a moment to contemplate the countless way their lives are telling a lie about God. And yet, to embody the image of God as our creational identity means that our calling is to know the God whom we are created to reflect. This is why there is an eternal hell, for God has no other place for the eternal souls of those made in His moral image who refuse to reflect His moral majesty. Thus, how can we as fallen creatures possibly measure the magnitude of the disaster of human sin? We cannot take sin’s measure, nor fathom the scope of its consequences. But we can gain but a glimpse of its seriousness and horror when we consider what the image of God has become in eternal hell. (See my summary of the image of God.) Oh the suicidal trickery by which men attempt to assuage their consciences.
Dear brethren that conscience-numbing form of bribery will no longer work for even a millisecond in hell. By reason of us being made in God’s moral image there is a strict correspondence between your conscience and the Law of God—between crime and punishment. Despite your efforts to bribe your conscience and turn the volume down so as to mute its accusations, you know that you were made in God’s moral image. The conscience tells you so each day. Your conscience reminds you that you will face God as Judge. For, your conscience issues countless subpoenas telling you the very things for which you will have to answer unto God. Your conscience lets you know that this moral requirement upon you is not a human invention. It is anchored in God’s holy character.
And yet, even in knowing all these things you love a lie about God and His Word, and you love that lie because you will not serve your Maker and receive His gift of forgiveness. You love that lie because you cherish the impossible dream of personal autonomy from God. You love the lie because you are wed to your iron lusts. So what is the answer? The answer is come home forever. Drop your weapons. Welcome clear views of your sin and guilt— for they fit you for the Savior who is ‘Friend of sinners’. Return to the Father’s house. He will receive you. For there is no lasting love, life, light, purpose, and belonging outside of God in Christ. Cry for grace, admit that God is right and you are terribly wrong. Acknowledge your sin and self-will, be done with your proud, soiled rags of self-righteousness and Christ will gladly receive you.
When Christ walked the earth, the perfect image of God was back on earth for the first time since Adam fell. Ponder for a moment why only the death of Christ (the perfect image of God), suffering in our place could reverse the ruin of sin. This is why Christ is called ‘the last Adam’. For, as our covenant Head, He acts in the room and in the stead of His people. Only the slaying of Christ, the God-man, the perfect image of God could undo the ruin caused by the first Adam. (See Thomas Brooks, Man in his fourfold state.) Heaven is a gift but it’s given only to those who do not insist upon keeping their sin. Who want Christ more that their sin.