If you want to put a Christian in a bad spot, just ask them: Why hell? If they give even a vaguely biblical answer, the lost world’s response is often, “Yeah, that’s what we thought. You hate anybody who’s not a Christian. Only Christians are going to heaven, and everyone else is going to hell.”
But I’m finding that today’s Christians more often don’t face these accusations, because they rarely evangelize in the first place. Instead, we are under-enthused about Jesus, his gospel, and witnessing because hell is the forgotten doctrine of the Bible.
The most common questions about hell are:
How is it fair to sin for eighty years but have to spend an eternity suffering for those sins? If God is great and God is good, is it right and just for him to punish someone to infinity for finite crimes?
If hell is real, how is it right for preachers never to talk about it? We have a “don’t ask-don’t tell” policy about this unforgettable doctrine, and this makes people think hell is a made-up religious manipulation.
If God’s love is unconditional, how come it is not big enough to extend to all who have ever lived? Is our God so small that he has to punish people who will not believe by assigning them to an eternal hell?
God passionately loves you and longs for you to live in relationship to him as his child.
I have no need for anyone of any religion to be condemned. And if anybody should go to hell, I should be the first one in! Preaching about hell is not a matter of human-originated condemnation, but rather a matter of heeding the words of the Word. Jesus talked about hell in his Sermon on the Mount (Mat 5:22-30). He called the religious hypocrites children of hell (Mat 23:5). And Jesus was very clear: God can and will cast people into hell (Mat 10:28).
But the unignorable backstory to any study on hell is how God passionately loves you and longs for you to live in relationship to him as his child. He’s not dying to send the wicked to hell; instead, he died to keep us from going there.
The conversations Jesus had about hell in the Gospels were not with people we typically put in the scenario. We always ask about the Hindu in India, the Buddhist in China, the animist in Africa. But the conversations Jesus had were with the religious zealots. The conversation is with us who have the opportunity to livestream preachers on TV, yet ignore him. Jesus is not interested in sending anybody to hell except you, if you hide the corrosive center of your soul from him and use it to manipulate and control others.
Why hell?
Hell in the New Testament is the Greek word Gehenna, also the place name of the Valley of Hinnom south of Jerusalem where filth was dumped and burned to make the city secure and inhabitable. The worst offense committed in that place was lighting their children on fire and burning them alive as an offering to a foreign idol.
Jeremiah 7:31 And they have built the high places of Tophet, which is in the valley of the son of Hinnom, to burn their sons and their daughters in the fire; which I commanded them not, neither came it into my heart.
So when Jesus says the world hell, those who hear it immediately understand it as a place to consume that kind of corruption, to cleanse the city and make it inhabitable for God’s children.
Before I started full time ministry, I was as an engineering aide for Kansas City. One of my assignments was in the Pollution Control Department. Sometimes we were sent down to the sewerage treatment plant.
The Blue River plant treats 85 million gallons of waste a day. It uses biological facilities, meaning good bacteria, to eat the bad bacteria and waste, to prepare the water for more filtering. But what is left over from the biological treatment is sludge, and the only way to dispose of sludge is to incinerate it.
That’s why when you take I-435 across the Missouri River to Worlds of Fun you accuse your car companion of doing something naughty. It takes that type of scorching to make things sanitary. So again: Why hell?
1. Unless there is a place for refuse to be eaten by worms and then burned, everyone will catch its disease
If we know we need this in our physical municipalities, why are you judging God for confirming it has to exist in the universe as a whole?
2. You cannot have a moral universe without having a place to quarantine contamination caused by deadly corruption
Without arguing about how much of Jesus’s discussion of hell is metaphor and what is reality, we can at least be clear about this. If contamination spreads (and it does), there must be a place to destroy it. Jesus lets us know very clearly that,
3. There is a place in the universe which is the environment of a wasted life
Jesus begins his ministry with the Sermon on the Mount by telling us eight types of people who are blessed. Then he ends his ministry after three and a half years with eight woes, because these people were not willing to be blessed. So if anybody understands unrequited love, it is Jesus. This leads us to see that,
4. Hell is not a statement that God does not love you; it is a declaration that God will not force you to love him
The reality of hell is that God loves all of us, but not all of us love God back. Not all of us accept his love, and God will not force that love upon us, because love is not love if it is coerced.
Heaven and hell are not about geography, but about relationship. They are not about location, but about love. Hell exists because there has to be a place for those who choose separation from God.
He cannot send you to heaven even though you do not love him, believe in him, or want to be there, because that would make him the stalker God. He will not override your free will, and that implies two things:
First, no one goes to hell who does not deserve it, and no one is sent to heaven who does not want it. No one slips through the cracks and gets sent to hell who will not admit at the Great White Throne judgment that this is exactly what justice demands and what they deserve.
But we are postmodern, so what we want is for God to trick us. We want all choices to really be the same choice, so that there are the same consequences for both choices. We want God to trick us and treat us.
If you choose to ignore God’s call, you have the right to choose that. Your choice is not an illusion, and even though it breaks God’s heart, he allows you to freely choose what you will. Jesus is a gentleman. He does not break down the door of your heart, but he is knocking! (Rev 3:20)
The second implication of free will is that there will be a day when God stops the violence and infallibly judges it, so all things are put right. It would be dishonest to say we live in a righteous world right now. There is neither absolute social nor criminal justice. We live in a very troubled, broken, corrupt, and even cursed world. Which is why God says to the prophet,
Malachi 4:1-3 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven; and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch. But unto you that fear my name shall the Sun of righteousness arise with healing in his wings; and ye shall go forth, and grow up as calves of the stall. And ye shall tread down the wicked; for they shall be ashes under the soles of your feet in the day that I shall do this, saith the LORD of hosts.
And how can you argue with that? The evil of this world demands righteous satisfaction. But if that last verse sounds harsh to you, then we need a moment of honest clarity.
Ted Bundy confessed to 30 murders in seven states over five years, but the true number of young female victims is unknown. Attorney Polly Nelson, a member of his last defense team, said he was "the very definition of heartless evil." He received three death sentences and was executed by the state of Florida. Hundreds of revelers—including 20 off-duty police officers—sang, danced, and set off fireworks in a pasture across the street, then cheered as the white hearse containing his body departed the prison. His corpse was cremated in Gainesville—a much more honorable end than he allowed the bodies of most of his victims.
When you do a survey on hell and attach a name to that doctrine, you are amazed how the percentage of people believing in its justice rises. So one last time: Why hell?
5. There has to be an ultimate authority who will provide equity, even after death, for what is done in life
And it cannot be any one of us, but only the one who sees all and knows every variable. The Bible lets us know that there will come a day when God stops time. Everything will stop and be judged infallibly. There will a day when not one more human being is sold into slavery or drawn into addiction or abused. God sees it and will stop it, because he will infallibly judge it.
Did you catch Malachi’s message? God says, “All the wickedness will stop, and I will let the innocent dance over the grave of the arrogant. The victims will walk over the wicked like ashes, because I refuse to let those who did evil shape my heaven and destroy their eternity."
Why Hell? Because there was a Hitler. Because there was a Columbine. Because there was a Sandy Hook. Because there was a 9/11. But also because there is a me and you, who—absent accepting the provision of Jesus Christ—sin against the Holy Creator God nearly every moment of every day.
There has to be a hell for every person who ever offended the infinite holiness of our absolutely righteous God. And the only way to pay for an infinite offense is through an eternal punishment.
You can choose to be the ashes, or you can choose to be the child who is dancing. Choose life, choose love, choose to believe in Jesus for eternal salvation from wrath. Because then you are born again, and God will make his love prevail!
To hear more on the doctrine of hell, check out this episode of the Postscript podcast.
Alan Shelby is the senior pastor of Harvest Baptist Church in Blue Springs, MO and dean of the Living Faith Bible Institute.