It is time to stop apologizing for the doctrine of
eternal damnation
By Jay Wegter
In an attempt to be relevant to culture countless churches have adopted an ‘attraction model’ of ministry. Accompanying that trend is a growing embarrassment over an expression of God’s holy character—namely that He has an eternal hell. This doctrine, if faithfully preached cannot be marketed, it is 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 women and children, and disturb respectable men. Pastors who intentionally pass over this doctrine actually DO know that the truth about hell is withering and crushing to their hearers’ self-focused sense of goodness, security and importance.
This article addresses why the judgment of sinners in hell is unending. 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 Levitical worship is that there is no mercy without justice (Lev 17:11). Frequent reminders are needed because God’s justice is resisted by every unregenerate person (see G. Spring). Unsaved people do not exalt God’s justice. Thus, is it any wonder that they cannot imagine how God can be glorified in the destruction of the impenitent. 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 lesson, 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.”
Mercy is only poured out richly through the bloody death of the substitute. The sacrifice of that substitute is a picture of 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 (Inf. Merits). Bare, general benevolence has never saved a single person, and yet millions of people have placed a false hope in God’s charitability—the attitude that God is genuinely kind and will not judge those who are sincere and who acknowledge His existence. I met a Jewish doctor at a restaurant several days ago. He doesn’t attend a church or synagogue, and he doesn’t believe the gospel, but he is putting his hope in God’s general benevolence. Since he believes in a divine being, he has concluded that 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 but that is a call to imitate God’s common grace ( o ). But, to exercise mercy toward enemies is not a forecast that God will abandon His justice on the last day. No, according to 2 Thessalonians chapter 1. 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 ( ). But we as reconciled believers are sent out as ambassadors of reconciliation. We are to plead with sinners to avail themselves of the gospel; to accept peace with God on the terms God has set. For the doors of his mercy are soon to close, swift, comprehensive justice is coming. A searching, exposing, devastating justice which 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 the heart (Rom 2:16). It will be a justice so penetrating 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. And then when God’s wrath is poured out, there will be severity, the severity of His uncompromising justice.
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 an Israelite who had committed presumptuous sin worthy of death, his execution was to be carried out without the show of pity. In referring to those 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 has situations in which he commands no mercy and no pity. (Rom severity and mercy).
This execution without pity foreshadows that someday, when God’s enemies have rejected all opportunities to repent, His adversaries are going to receive no mercy. 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 in which He commands no mercy or pity, only severity. 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 him in his own image and likeness. The unregenerate has fashioned a benign god who easily dismisses sin and is lenient toward it. His carnal mind has manufactured a god whose glory and honor has no association with the divine justice exhibited by the lake of fire in which God’s holiness is vindicated. The doctrine of eternal hell is scandalous because it is ‘only reasonable to us’ that its penalty should be limited by time. But, as creatures made in God’s image and likeness, human beings will never go out of existence.
The doctrine of eternal punishment is being lost today; for unending punishment of the damned does not comply with natural reason. The words of Puritan Jeremiah Burroughs disturb our consciences. For Burroughs has said, “God has made His own holiness His great end and goal.” (Treasury). He created the universe to put His holiness on display. His moral majesty is the great cause of God. He’s 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. As a consequence, 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.” What?? The impenitent sinner shall experience as much suffering as God had dishonor by his sinning? Does this not shed some light on why there is an eternal hell?
My friends, sinners think lightly of their sin because they think lightly of the One against whom they have sinned. God will forever display His holy justice against rebels. You may rage against this truth. You may accuse God of a tyrannical, petulant tantrum. You may cast aspersion on Him as dealing out unkindness and horrific cruelty. You may even refer to hell as an atrocity, but not for a millisecond will you be able to hold God hostage by your false caricature of Him. 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 in order to avoid being blasphemed by you.
We do not hear much today about God’s justice and wrath against our sin. As a consequence, we don’t hear much about wrath in conjunction with the cross of Christ. In fact we seldom hear of that association between divine wrath and the atonement (G. Spring). The justice of God is a scandalous thing to the unregenerate mind and heart (G. Spring). And in ‘guarding’ hearers from that scandal, pulpits have adapted themselves to the way people think today. They offer a message of the cross that is weak on propitiation. It is so weak and impotent in fact that the cross becomes merely a symbol of spiritual therapy. (Or as the liberal leaning theologian, Jurgen Moltmann has inferred, “The cross is an apology to humanity for all the suffering man has had to endure.” In our evangelical churches, the cross seems not be associated with God’s settled anger expressed in His immutable justice. On the contrary, the cross is becoming a synonym for God’s general benevolence, as if the sinner can come to his senses and avail himself of the fine opportunity God offers. Perhaps, without meaning to do so, 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 our sinning tendencies (Titus 2:14, ). The cross applied plants in a man the knowledge of our holy God and the deliverance from the rule and reign of sin (G. Spring; W. Marshall).
When the sinner hears the truths along the lines of Jeremiah Burroughs’ preaching, maybe through a faithful minister today, it is arresting, foreign, and intrusive. This is jarring to those who have never considered this: outside of Christ, the dishonor to God that our sinning has caused will be reaped in the suffering of eternal hell. The contemporary churchgoer has no category for this. It scandalizes his thinking, namely that God will vindicate His own majesty, honor, and glory by means of the punishments in eternal hell. The sinner is stopped in his tracks, this withering reality of 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, I had better find out how much dishonor my sin caused to God.” “If the dishonor my sin has cast upon God is to be the measure and scope of my eternal misery, I must know the magnitude of the dishonor my sin has caused Almighty God!” It is an awakened sinner that thinks in this manner, most settle back into their spiritual apathy. (natural conviction Mead)
Unregenerate sinners asleep in nature’s night, even if church-going religionists, do not normally reason in the manner described above. But, a sinner might say to himself regarding the doctrine of hell, “You have my attention, tell me more.” “Even though I don’t believe this monstrous doctrine of hell, I’m willing, out of curiosity to hear more.” “But, as I listen, I want you to know that I regard this doctrine as a monastic layover from an age of medieval ignorance and superstition.” “Perdition was held over people’s heads to scare them into obedience.” “But, though I am a skeptic about hell, there is something in my conscience that bids me keep listening, for there is an infinitesimal chance this might be true.”
Dear fellow sinner, there are reasons why you presently cannot conceive of a God whose honor is rescued and vindicated by human misery in perdition. The first reason you do not think hell is just is this: your concept of God is that of a large divine category. You’ve made Him into a pantheistic god as if He were part of His own creation—a large category belonging to reality, but nonetheless, just a category. He sits alongside other categories which are also large such as galaxies and constellations, but my friend, large categories do not command holiness and large categories are not omnipotent and are not able to deal out eternal damnation. In your unbelief you cannot conceive of a God existing independent of the universe. You’ve made Him a parallel category, or relative to the cosmos. In fact, your concept 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 (Heb. 1:3). He is the One upon whom all things rely for their existence (Job ). 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 ).
That is too staggering, you’d rather attribute the cosmos and its contents to internal natural causes 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. 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 is vindicated by judgment is because you are willfully ignorant of why God put you on Earth. You don’t know who you are as His creature, nor why He created you in His image and likeness (Gen ). In fact, you don’t understand or accept that that the great purpose for your existence is to know your Creator so as to glorify Him by reflecting Him and imaging His moral majesty in all your relationships (Is ) (Beeke Puritans ). In fact, that is the very heart of the Ten Commandments to love God and neighbor (Deut ). 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 reflect His holy character.
This truth is invasive to your sense of self, it is deplorable to you because your illusory worldview has ‘granted you’ autonomy. The fact you exist for God, to know and to reflect Him, you regard as despicable, and thus contemptable to your freedom. Therefore, in your mind, you construct an idolatrous version of God which denies the Creator-creature distinction. This is why you cannot envision the justness of eternal perdition. 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, and direct you.
There is a third reason why you don’t believe that hell is just. It is because you do not understand that your sinning against other people and your sinning against your own body is regarded by God as sinning against God Himself (Ps 51 ). Please consider this, if you are put here to reflect, honor, serve, know, love, glorify, enjoy and represent God, then your sinning is not only the defiance of God’s moral government, your sinning 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. Therefore, 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 government.
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, as 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 aspersion upon your Creator’s very character and reputation. Therefore in your spiritual blindness you are unable to see that divine righteousness and justice necessitates the damnation of the wicked.
There’s a fourth reason why you can’t understand why your sin deserves eternal judgment. This reason touches upon God’s creation structures, the fact that God has ordered creation in accordance with a particular design or blueprint. We call this blueprint ‘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 an infinitely 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 warnings and signs and so on ( o ).
But what if 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 the sea and bounds ). Remember that the satanic lie in Eden is firmly fixed upon every unregenerate sinner’s heart as he is born into the world (Eph 2). Regarding this present evil age (u ) the light of Scripture has been pushed to the periphery by the raging opposition of popular culture. For the ancient lie has a modern expression; it eclipses the light of the gospel replacing it with the love of darkness (Jn 3:19-21). That is what has happened since the fall in Eden and it dominates the Western world. How ironic, the message of the Bible which is the ‘soul’ of the civilized Western world and which birthed its freedoms (Vishal ) is now considered dangerous to our freedoms.
When the Enlightenment began to dominate Western philosophy in the 17ᵗʰ century, there was an elevation of reason. The enthronement of human reason was accompanied by antagonism against the claims of God and the supernatural. Rushing into that metaphysical vacuum, or absence of meaning was a man-centered worldview. But, if you put God out to pasture and reject His Word you are going to lose meaning and purpose (ox rom 1). Secular humanism made man the owner and definer of life, he would be his own measure. He would define human existence and determine reality for himself. He boasted that by means of empiricism he would be able to answer every unanswered question. Like the illustration 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 (be as God Gen 3 ).
Rather than glorifying God through the sciences, he was determined to assert the structure of reality without reference to God. And, further, amidst the social chaos produced by his sin, he promises his fellow creatures that he can create a political, ecological, and sexual utopia. We are certainly seeing the bitter fruits of that in the immorality and perversion being mainstreamed in our world. By way of secular humanism in partnership with Darwinism, man gave himself tacit permission to be self-sufficient, self-determined, and self-defining. 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: ).
The defiance of God’s created order or, divine 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.” “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 their rebellion against their created purpose, their loyalty to the evil one is being declared; they prefer to be adversaries of God. This is what it means to imitate and follow Lucifer, for that is how he fell. Those who insist upon following his course are not interested in being reconciled to God. But the God who holds the stars in His hands and feeds and cares for puny man will not be mocked (Gal ). For He who makes the galaxies and constellations, even says to the oceans, “Here are your boundaries go no further.” (oceans ).
This is the God who has established the boundaries for us humans. But think 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 the flowers fade, but the word of our Lord endures forever (1 Pet Is 40 ). Our present, mortal existence is but a vapor ( u ) 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 and expect to win? (See Prov 20; Jer 44 Ps 49 beasts perish ). This immense exercise in arrogance and hubris is a clear reason why God is going to judge His adversaries in a very severe way. For the assumptions of humanism despise theism by making self the final reference point and ultimate point of 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 slays the imagined sovereignty of self.
The fifth reason why the sinner does not understand why he deserves, and justly so, eternal damnation. It is because his hatred and hostility towards 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 is enthroned in the kingdom of self. Self is ‘the holy of holies’ so to speak to the sinner—nothing may enter that chamber of self without permission, not even the Creator! Man’s loyalty to himself pits him against his Maker.
As a consequence, 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 himself like God it says in Ezekiel 28. He rejects his creaturehood and makes himself “a se” (Jn Frame). A se is Latin and refers to God’s self-existence. It means self-existent or of himself. When applied to the creature it is akin to satanic arrogance which turns Romans 11 on its head. For in describing our great God and His relation to His creation, Romans 11 states, all things are from Him, through Him, and to Him. But the sinner in his self-deification, places himself at the center; thinking about himself in the following way—that all things in my existence are from me, through me, and to me. The sinner’s pride strikes the following posture toward God: “My mind is the definer the producer, even the projector of reality.”
The sinner does not actually grasp that this is high crime against heaven. For, he is seeking to be like God (Is 14, Ezek 28). This is the satanic offer in the Garden taken seriously, and brought into the present. But, on the Day of the Lord, God 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. For there are not billions of sovereign wills out there competing for thrones. There is but one sovereign will, that of our self-existent God alone. All of these impenitent, creaturely wills will be humiliated and, and justly punished as adversaries of God. 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 (Ezek, Rom 9). Thus, eternal hell is considered unfair by the impenitent because he does consider the infinite distance between Creator and creature.
There is a sixth reason why sinners do not understand that damnation is eternal, and that it is a just penalty that will be meted out. The cosmos is created as a stage or theater for God, to point to God. Therefore, our Maker has filled it with ‘glory pointers’. For 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 cosmology of unspoiled creation renewed and remade in the new heavens and new earth (2 Pet 3 ). Then every created thing will glorify God at its designated ‘frequency’. Everything will sing ( Hos Is ), so to speak, in perfect harmony whether a star, a quasar, a planet, or even a creature or a tree (rivers clapping hands etc. ). Angel, nebula, stars, flowers, fish, everything that God has made will harmonize and ‘sing’ unto God’s glory at its proper appointed frequency. Everything, like the members of a choir, will function in perfect joyful compliance in accordance 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 adjusted to their created purpose. For we will be made like Christ, our Great Head (Rom 8, 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 (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 its created purpose. Therefore, those who have despised their Maker and their place in His cosmos shall be punished forever.
Then 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 fringes of that while we were mortals. We only had an inkling of it. But to see that face to face will stagger us. We will marvel (2 Thess 1: ). We will be ravished (Eph 3: ). 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, on that day, when we are glorified, we will wonder at God’s holiness and glory—that in His mysterious plan we should share His holiness (Heb 12: ).
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. 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 (1 Cor 13 ). 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 (J. C. Ryle). For since he is not made like Christ, God’s holiness will repel him as it says in Revelation 6. 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 before the self-existent God who in His own person is the ground of your very being while you are defiled 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. (add fear of God Rev 20 doc’ here).
Yes, the natural man cannot conceive of why hell is eternal because his unquestioned religion is the worship of mankind. Listen to the educated lost speaking of the departure of their friends and loved ones. Listen carefully and you will hear the nature of their religion. They inevitably say, “He lived a full life.” Or, “He died doing what he loved to do.” Or, he was generous and loved by all.” Or, “He followed his dreams, pursuing happiness, after all, isn’t that why we are here?” Do these statements appear to be uttered by God-haters? No, they do not, but they are such. For, in each statement there is a common inference, ‘we successfully lived life without the hypothesis of the God of the Bible, and without repentance, and without His Christ’. It is true, you cannot conceive of an eternal hell because you have never considered what you owe God as His creature, perfect conformity to His righteous law.
My friends, there is a seventh reason why the sinner does not understand that hell is eternal. Oh my friends, the skeptic, the scoffer, the doubter, the unbeliever does not know why hell is eternal because he does not see the vileness and wickedness of his unbelief. For your unbelief casts God as a liar (1 Jn 5: ). The spurning of God’s precious mercy, your ingratitude, these are things that you have not considered because your conscience is yet defiled and insulated from the truth by your dead works. Your conscience has not been illuminated by the Holy Spirit, nor educated by the moral law of God. Consider deeply that your life is suspended right now over the eternal pit of hell, yet even still, the God of the universe who formed the cosmos is commanding you to seek peace with Himself, offering you mercy by way of reconciliation. Though your sins are an unscalable mountain of rebellion and pollution, He calls you to receive peace from Him. He offers you reconciliation on the condition that you will repent of your sinning and trust the Son of God as your sin-bearer. Let this sink in, in this offer of peace, it is God who bore the full penalty of the truce. It is God who bore the infinite cost. Think of it! God has made a covenant with guilty sinners out of His Son’s own blood. God will receive you freely solely on these terms of peace He has commended in the gospel (2 Cor 5: ).
But in the sinner’s pride and love of sinning, and hatred of God, the unbeliever will not consent to his Creator’s terms of peace. Consider the wickedness of that spurning of mercy until your heart breaks. For, the infinite price of this peace is the lifeblood of the Son of God whose life was crushed out of Him on that cruel tree (Is 53: ). And yet, you prefer a few short years of sinning, of living as a fugitive under heaven, as a wanted criminal. You prefer straying from your Maker above the infinite mercy of peace with the God of the universe. You’ve preferred your rebellion to pardon and adoption. You’ve preferred your own course to belonging to the God of the universe. Oh consider that this posture of enmity shows that your heart is resolutely committed to following the god of this world, Satan. To follow the god of the is world is to remain an enemy of God, an enemy of God’s Son, and an enemy of God’s cross (Eph 2, Phil 3).
What do you despise about the terms of peace my friend? I repeat, the cost of that peace was paid on God’s side. The infinite cost to make peace with you was paid entirely by God. What is it that you are offended by? The cost of that peace in its weight and value is a price you never could have paid. The price of that peace, His Son’s bloody death reveals not only the character of God, but the depth of the wickedness of your sin. Just acknowledge that you have loved your ignorance of God. You have kissed your chains and bondage to your sin. You have loved your inability to believe upon the gospel and to close with Christ, you have loved your fugitive status. Shall the God of the universe prepare an hospitable dwelling place for those who nailed the colors to the mast of their pirate ship and defied His government of peace? Is God obligated to house those who wish to remain His hardened adversaries? You do not see the justice of eternal hell because you have never examined your hatred of God’s offer of peace.
True believers delight in the fact that God has paid the price to make adversaries into sons. Why would you remain an adversary by retaining the weapons of sin in your hands? Why won’t you drop those weapons and consent to the peace treaty? Perhaps you’ve never considered that your practice of sin and your unbelief is an arsenal of weaponry against God’s character. It’s a cache of armaments aimed at God. It’s directed at who God is in His purity and righteousness. Sin has the personality of Satan, it would plunge a knife into the heart of God if it could. These iniquitous weapons oppose God’s rule, oppose His glory, oppose His Person.
I hope it is becoming clear to you why you despise his terms of peace, why you are spurning this costly mercy. I think you know the reason why you inveigh against His Son’s cross (G. Spring). For instead of alluring you and drawing you to the site of the suffering Savior as a source of mercy, it is a massive stumbling block to you. You instantly trip over the stumbling block. For Christ, the suffering substitute calls sinners to repentance, and this means, outside of Christ, you justly deserve eternal wrath, but you hate that truth. You don’t believe that you deserve eternal misery and torment. You cannot bear that you deserve to be eternally separated from all joy and happiness, so you spurn the offer of mercy because you despise the justice of God. You despise His moral law, but there’s another dominate reason why you reject the terms of peace. It is because, first of all, to receive such an infinite gift to an unworthy soul like yourself would be to owe all to Christ both now and for eternity. You do not wish to be obligated, and so you reject the offer of peace. Secondly, you hate the rightful, holy rule and reign of God, and so you do not desire peace with Him because you cannot stand to be ruled by Him and thus, to relinquish your imaginary throne. You reject His throne because in holding fast to the devil’s definition of freedom, you do not wish to give up your imagined sovereignty.
The Lord is King of the cosmos, the King of redemptive history. He is Lord of all history. He is restoring sinners to Himself in fulfillment of a plan that will fill His heaven with former sinners. This is His ‘glory story’ that will occupy all eternity. By this outpouring of His grace, He is granting mercy to the undeserving, and by this outpouring of mercy, He is glorifying himself (Eph 1 ). Oh the unmeasurable folly of despising this gift, this giving of Himself in Christ Jesus. The unfathomable folly of remaining an enemy of God when the bloody death of His Son was shed in order to bring you into peace and sonship. My hearer, do you not fear God? His wrath and vengeance will be fully let out on that Great Day. He will not hold back. He will destroy His adversaries. His vengeance will be as a furnace, as a consuming fire without termination (Heb 10 Heb 12). His wrath will be poured out on all who have spurned His mercy. If He did not spare His only begotten Son (Rom 8 ), He will not spare those who have trampled His gracious offer of blood-bought mercy. Amen.
CONCLUSION:
The installment of God’s Kingdom at the end of the age will be incredibly violent. During the seven year tribulation period our God of order and peace (1 Cor 14: ) will send tremendous chaos, much like He did in the Genesis flood and in destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. During the tribulation, the lie which animates the rebellion of the human race will reveal itself in the campaign of the beast. All middle ground will have disappeared, those who are of the lie will be clearly manifested. The plagues of the tribulation evoke from the inhabitants of the earth, not repentance or sorrow from sin, but blasphemy. Those who are of the lie will be engaged in a formal rejection of Christ and the gospel. Their hatred of the worship of the one true God will no longer be concealed.
Amidst the severity of the plagues, angels affirm that God’s judgments are absolutely just (o). That affirmation is made in association with the doctrine of eternal hell. If you only knew how seriously God takes His own holiness, you might have an inkling of why your sin is such a weighty matter and why it is against God personally. The god of this world has used human philosophy to contaminate our reasoning processes so that Almighty God is regarded as a toothless, grandfatherly benefactor. But, if in fact you did perceive the weight of your sin, you would begin to grasp that you as the transgressor must be judged and punished if God is to be true to His own holiness (thus true to His Name and true to His own glory and honor).
The error of apologizing for hell is tantamount to apologizing for God Himself who is just and transcendent in holiness. We must know why the doctrine of hell is so closely tied to God’s majesty, honor, and holiness. Humans were created to worship God, and yet in the Garden, the forbidden fruit was an offer to break free from God. Consider that God’s enemy, the devil suggests in the book of Job, that not a single legitimate true worshipper exists on planet earth, only ‘religious mercenaries who attempt to use God’ (Job). The demons, in their darkening agenda and their hatred of God (2 Cor 4: ), have organized the kingdom of darkness to overturn every sacred distinction and institution God has made. The devil, who is a master of redefinition has convinced mankind that our race is but that of advanced animals and not the very image and likeness of God. Lucifer’s motive in so doing is to further mutilate the image of God through idolatry so that men and women no longer fulfill their created purpose as worshippers and reflectors of God.
The evil one has a certain ghoulish glee about populating hell. The reason why is very disturbing. For a human being in perdition has reached that destination for the same reason Lucifer has—through the rejection of his created purpose. Those in hell are idolaters, and therefore do not resemble true worshippers. The image of God in hell is a most terrifying thought, namely that a creature made in God’s moral image has his own conscience as a worm that gnaws him incessantly (Mark 9: ). The scoffer hears this from a faithful preacher and cries foul! “That is unfair, it is cruel, it is an atrocity!” But, in reasoning in this manner, he must first deny the biblical definition of a human being. He must reject the fact that man is made in God’s moral image, and that man’s conscience is an extension of God’s own law and courtroom.
The horror of the image of God in hell defies an adequate description. To be forever fixed in a state in which only sin is possible, is terrible beyond words. All common grace is gone, all restraining grace removed. Sin takes its immutable progressive course producing the ongoing dis-integration of soul. And, because sin is cumulative, fragmentation of the soul continues (W. G. T. Shedd ). As the eons pass, existence becomes but a stream of gnashing madness. No the wonder our Lord has said. “Fear Him who can destroy soul and body in hell.”(Mt 10 ). (Packer, I want to be a Christian ). What is the saint’s response to these truths of eternal punishment? The maturing believer grows ever more cognizant of this fact: to love God is to hate sin, to love sin is to hate God. God be praised for all eternity that the redemption Christ purchased for His people grants to the quickened soul a new principle or holiness—the regenerated child of God loves what he once hated, God and holiness, and hates what he once loved, sin and rebellion.
The impenitent lawless will face the Judge, for all sin is lawlessness (1 Jn 3:4). Our western world has been so fully secularized and psychologized that its citizens believe that everything must be evaluated by whether or not it contributes to, or subtracts from, a sense of personal wellbeing. Therefore, the justice which flows from God’s commitment to His own holiness is an entirely foreign thought to a Westerner. For, what our present modicum of harmony on earth conceals is that God in His great long-suffering and patience is holding back His fury and wrath. Though it is ready at any moment to burst forth in judgment (Rom 2). When was the last time you heard a sermon which thoroughly explained words such as divine fury, wrath, retribution, vengeance, ferocity, and burning anger? (See Jeremiah ). No, we don’t hear messages about these things because our churches wish to apologize for a God whose just nature so heavily impinges upon our sense of worth and wellbeing. We dare not whisper even in hush tones, “Fear God, He kills and damns people.” “He destroys the wicked, punishing them eternally.” “He sentences unbelievers and hypocrites to eternal misery in hell.” These truths cannot be tamed and gentrified for common consumption. They devastate.
The first and foremost command is to love God supremely. To love God is to hate that which opposes God, that is to hate sin for sin is against God; it
opposes who He is. Sin declares war on His very nature and Kingdom, and upon His right to rule and reign absolutely. Therefore, a true believer will not befriend sin because it is such a bitter opponent of God. This present author is concerned that the knowledge of God’s justice flowing from His holiness is being systematically concealed from church-goers today. Pastors pretend to have great valor in the pulpit, they posture as if they are very daring in proclaiming truths that may offend. They verbally joust against unrespectable sins, and leave the remainder unaddressed. They pretend to be the best friend that a church member could have by ‘telling them all they need to know’. But, this is actually is often a cover or sham to guard their own popularity. In reality, they are not warning their hearers about the danger of hellfire and its agony that awaits the apostate and the hypocrite. And, they’re happy to go decades in the pulpit without ever preaching a sermon on hell. But, by not warning their hearers, they infer that those passages that state that God’s wrath is coming upon the sons of disobedience, ‘actually must refer to those who are yet outside the church’.
Scripture is so clear, God has a controversy with the nations (Jer ). Every sinner has a dilemma he cannot solve, a dilemma that will ultimately plunge him into hell if he is not regenerated. Every sinner is in bondage to the disease that will sink him into perdition if he is not healed. The controversy God has with you is that you are an idolator not a true worshipper. Your dilemma is that your sins have separated you from God, and your iniquity has offended His righteous honor. And your disease is that you are polluted in God’s sight, and held in bondage by your iron lusts which you serve. But, like the false prophets at the time of Jeremiah, easy- believe-ism, hyper-grace pastors have pronounced ‘peace’ (cried ‘peace, peace’) before the controversy is settled (Jer ). They have pronounced divine favor and acceptance before the dilemma is solved, before it is removed. And they have pronounced the disease cured before it is healed. We will only by faithful to our Champion and His eternal Word if we do not hold back, but warn (watchman). Only if we declare to them their sins (Is 58).