Hell No, We Won’t Go!

Matthew 18:8-9: And if your hand or your foot causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life maimed or lame than with two hands or two feet to be thrown into the eternal fire. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out and throw it away; it is better for you to enter life with one eye than with two eyes to be thrown into the hell of fire.


I suppose it is possible to read these verses, as well as other similar passages, and to still think "the hell of fire”, "or eternal fire" are simple hyperbole referring to utter destruction, rather than eternal torment. Would that it were so! At least initially, I suppose, many of us are troubled to think that God has made a hell to which some people are sent for ever. If I am honest I must admit to thinking it cruel that someone could be tormented forever, without any possibility of relief. I may be tempted to ask if God can really contemplate such a thing and still be a loving God.

But this is humanism talking. The true effect of the whole question is to undermine the Word of God and to doubt His character. It is to be man sitting in judgement on his Creator. It is that self-same topsy-turvy turnabout so characteristic of the father of lies. Instead of looking at the horror of my own sin, my responsibility in it and the just ending to my own rebellion, I am caught calling God’s upright judgements unfair or unjust. My eye is distracted from my own condition. It is my sin that causes my separation from God - and separation from God is hell, apart from any grace He deigns to shed while I yet live in this world.

In the next stage of existence God will remove the common grace, the unmerited mercies by which He has been restraining Satan and fallen men from the utter and inevitable results of their evil. But, being a just God, He will set limits upon a person's torments according to their deeds in this life. They that have lived by the law, or by conscience, or philosophy or reason, by ethics, morals or religious observance shall be judged by their own standards and condemned accordingly - with an eternal disposition appropriate to their own degree of hypocrisy or shortcoming.

Not one person who did not prefer hell to God’s grace will enter into that forsaken place. God did not abandon men – men forsook Him; every one of them, without exception. Such is God’s holiness – and such His meekness – that He has consigned all rebels to an eternity of their own choice and making – all, that is, except those whom He is saving by grace.

In today’s liberal pulpits it is a rare thing indeed to hear any preaching about hell. Why make people feel uncomfortable? Isn’t the church supposed to be a welcoming place? Won’t we drive people away from the very gospel that can save them if we dwell on the negative, instead of accentuating the positive? It is so reasonable, so loving, so very civilized in this age of grace to propagate only the warm fuzzies of salvation and to ignore the stark terror of the manslayer’s pursuer. Yet all who are being, or who will be, saved need both staff and rod to bring and to keep them on the pathway.

Liberals will even claim that it works to preach the gospel of love without the accompanying truth about judgement. But I would say that God works despite their omissions, not because of them. Note that I say God works. It is always and only ever God who saves. We point, His sheep look and God saves. And a part of the gospel is to preach what we are being saved from; we are being saved from the absolute corruption of our entire nature – mind, heart, intellect and will – and from the just and righteous judgement of God upon our willing sin.

Before I knew the light I lived in darkness and I would not come to the light to be healed. I actually believed that the darkness in me was light. Now that the light has shone in my darkness I am able to see the chaos upon the face of my own deep. But I only recognize it as chaos because the Word of God was preached to me telling me how corrupt I was. And the Spirit of God working in me made that word of truth come alive in me.

I did not want to be called a sinner but that did not stop faithful men of God from preaching the truth. I do not want to know what the end of sin is – but that should not stop faithful men of God from preaching it, in love. The Holy Spirit will take the whole truth of God, unvarnished and unedited by man, and make it into living bread within those who are hungry in spirit because they have been prepared for harvest by our God.

Let us be obedient creatures rather than clever or “sensitive” humanists. Let us yield to His ways rather than interposing our own. Let us preach the whole gospel of grace, rather than just the bits that do not offend the world or, God forbid, the world in us.