Before I begin, I understand there are different views on hell, but I only wish to discuss one....eternal conscious torment. Personally, I have started to break away from this view, but if there is any truth to it I want to discuss it. That said, for those of you who hold to this view, what purpose do you see in the design of such a place? Throughout scripture, for the most part, I can see that God has a method and reason to his laws and punishments. With that in mind, what purpose does burning someone alive in unquenchable fire for all eternity accomplish? Why did God choose fire for the punishment? Why is it forever instead of a finite amount of time? Please be respectful and on point regarding this topic.
If I steal a candy bar from the local convenience store and I get caught, what is the consequence? Thirty years in jail? No. In reflection of the relative triviality of the theft, very little will happen. I may be required to pay for the bar, or return it if possible, and I may be banned from the store or even reported to the police. But I won't see any jail time or endure anything more than some momentary embarrassment and some harsh words from the store owner. If I murder somebody, however, the consequences are far, far more grave. Why? Because the act of murder is a much more serious and terrible crime. Now, if the punishment for a crime is intended to reflect the seriousness, the heinousness, of it, what are we to understand of God's view of our sin when He punishes it with eternal, conscious torment? Clearly, our sin is much greater in its wickedness, in the depth and scope of its evilness, than we think it is. It is so bad, in fact, that it deserves the eternal punishment of Hell.
We are steeped in sin. We live and breathe it. It's all around us and we practice it in one form or another every day. Much of our sin we persist in because it is gratifying in some way and we have come to love it. Our perspective on our sin, then, is very skewed. We cannot see it clearly for the terrible, wicked thing God says it is. Instead, we think God is over-reacting to our sin. We downplay, we diminish, our own wickedness - especially when so much of it we find gratifying - and think either God is cruel and unfair in punishing us so harshly for our sin and/or that there is really no hell to worry about. Both ideas, though, are exactly what one would expect sin-steeped creatures to think.
So, why does our sin deserve the eternal torment of Hell? Well, first and most obviously, because it is a contravention of the will and command of the
God of the Universe. Unfortunately, we humans have the habit of understanding everything from our own frame of reference and/or making everything in our image. Disney is a good example of what I mean. Mice, ducks, dogs, fish, toasters, ships, planes, cars - you name it, they are all made to be like
us. A broom, or candlestick, or lobster has all the wit and sensitivity, and hopes and dreams that you and I do. And we conform our Creator to ourselves in much the same way. We bring Him down to our level; we make Him small enough that we can feel comfortable with Him; we shrink Him down into a neat little human-sized box and then proclaim, "God would never do that!"
But God is not like us. He made and sustains, moment-by-moment, the mind-boggling expanse of the universe and all that is within it. Pondering this takes us quickly beyond the capacities of our very limited comprehension. How can one visualize a star into which several
million of our own sun could fit? And how do we conceptualize the fact that trillions upon trillions of galaxies containing such massive planetary bodies exist in the observable universe? How much more impossible, then, to try to comprehend the One who made and sustains it all? But it is this God to whom we must answer when we contravene His will and commands. And it His terrible, and awesome, and incomprehensible authority and power over the universe that, in part, makes the rebellion of our sin against Him so worthy of the eternal punishment He renders upon it.
"God is light," the Bible says, "and in Him is no darkness at all." (
1Jn 1:5) We can say the words but what it means to be totally and absolutely without sin is beyond any of us. We get some sense, though, a small window in on what it means to be so holy, by seeing how absolutely and deeply God hates sin. And hate it He does! Our sin isn't just "naughty" or "unfortunate" or "mischievous," it is an
abomination to God, a wicked thing with which He can have nothing to do and which He rejects utterly. And so God separates the unrepentant wicked from Himself forever as His perfectly holy character demands.
Perhaps the most significant reason why Hell is an appropriate punishment for our sin is given by the writer of Hebrews:
Hebrews 10:28-31
28 Anyone who has rejected Moses' law dies without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses.
29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
30 For we know Him who said, "Vengeance is Mine, I will repay," says the Lord. And again, "The Lord will judge His people."
31 It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.
Our sin is a deep and awful offense to God because it spurns His undeserved grace and tramples underfoot the incredible sacrifice of Christ on the cross for our sins. Every wicked thing we do cost Jesus. "He was wounded for our iniquities" the prophet Isaiah wrote. Every sin we commit is a sin for which the innocent, sinless Christ suffered the terrible wounds of Golgotha and shed his precious blood. Those who want Hell to disappear are the same people who preach "grace that is greater than all our sin" but neglect to dwell on the horrendous price of our forgiveness. As the writer of the passage above explains, however, much of the great evil of our sin is in how it disdains and insults the great love and mercy shown us by God in the work of Christ at Calvary.
As I consider these things, I am not left wondering why the eternal torment of Hell is a just response of a holy God. It is only when I have diminished - however unconsciously - God, my sin, and the enormity of the sacrifice of Jesus on my behalf that Hell starts to seem unreasonable.
Selah.
