Fully Devoted: New CreationSample

Why Hell Is More Loving Than You Think,  Part 3

Review 

Hell is not a torture chamber God installed in His basement. Hell is a graveyard we put outside the city. The biblical story isn’t focused on us avoiding hell and going to heaven. The biblical story is focused on God rescuing and restoring creation. 

Hell is both a future place and a present power. It’s a power that stands in opposition to the Kingdom of God and the place where everything that doesn’t belong in New Creation will be sent to. 

Now, for the next big question. 

How did Jesus talk about hell? Jesus talked about hell more than anyone else in the Bible. While that may or may not be surprising, what often does surprise people is how Jesus talked about hell, and, more specifically, who He talked to about hell. 

The majority of us have probably heard hell talked about as a way to motivate outsiders to become insiders. “If you put your trust in Jesus, then you can go to heaven, and not hell, when you die.” 

But is that how Jesus talked about hell? The short answer: not even close. When Jesus talked about hell, He wasn’t talking to outsiders in an attempt to make them insiders. When Jesus talked about hell, He was challenging insiders to live like insiders. 

Jesus talks about hell seven times in Matthew’s Gospel (5:22,29,30; 10:28; 18:9; 23:15,33), three times in Mark (9:43,45,47) and once in Luke (12:5). 

In every one of those instances, Jesus was talking to His disciples or the Jewish religious leaders, not pagans, gentiles, or nonbelievers. And in every one of those instances, Jesus’ focus wasn’t on what they believed, but how they behaved. 

Don’t miss this: Jesus didn’t use hell as a way to motivate nonbelievers to become believers. Jesus used hell to challenge and confront believers to actually live like what we say we believe is true.

Let’s be clear though, this does not mean that our standing with God is based on us doing the right things. And it does not mean that what we believe doesn’t matter. 

Our standing with God is based on His radical grace, not our good works. And believing the truth absolutely matters. Jesus announced His ministry by telling people to “repent and believe”. What we believe influences how we behave. And faith, if it’s genuine, will move us closer to Jesus and make us more like Jesus. Believing truly and behaving rightly both matter for God’s people. 

As disciples of Jesus, we want to make sure the way we think, speak, and act is shaped by the example of Jesus. And Jesus didn’t talk about hell as a way to threaten outsiders, Jesus talked about hell to challenge and confront insiders. 

Does this mean we ignore sin and never talk about hell? Of course not! As disciples of Jesus, we’re called to be a people of truth. Jesus talked about hell, sin, and judgment. He called people to repent and believe in the gospel He proclaimed. But how He preached truth was always shaped by His love for people. He did not look down on the lost as less than, He saw them as loved. He spent way more time preaching about the goodness of God than He did the horrors of hell. And He understood that the best way to bring people into the Kingdom was not through threats or manipulation, but by a loving and gracious invitation. 

At this point, you may still find yourself asking the question: Okay, but how is a loving God okay with people ending up in hell? Love honors the choices of others. God respects us enough to let us make our own choices. He does not force anyone into a relationship with Him. He asks, He seeks, and He knocks, but we’re the ones who have to decide to let Him in. 

C.S. Lewis said it this way:

There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.” All that are in hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.

But why would anyone ever choose hell? Because we would rather live in independence from God than in submission to God. The idea of submitting our lives to anyone other than ourselves can feel like an attack on our freedom and autonomy. 

The tragedy here lies in the fact that those who reject God will never experience true freedom. Because true freedom doesn’t come from being our own master. True freedom is found in the saving power of the gospel and service to Jesus our King. For some, that cost seems too high. And so they hold on to their independence. 

So what are we supposed to do about all this? We follow Jesus. We live rightly and we love deeply. We give Jesus permission to remove the spark of hell that has taken root inside of us. We step into our calling to partner with the God of heaven to bring His good news to every corner of creation by loving our neighbors, forgiving our enemies, and shining the light of Jesus into every dark place. 

We recognize that life apart from God is so much worse than life with God, in this life and the next. We allow that truth to drive us to live faithfully to Jesus and do everything we can to bring others into a relationship with Him. 

This is the role of the Church. To be an outpost of heaven laying siege to the forces of hell. To be a present picture of God’s future kingdom. To be a witness to the goodness and grace of God so that all people will respond to His loving invitation to be made new. 

Journaling Questions 

• Write down the verse or verses that stuck out to you the most today. Why did they stand out?
• In your own words, explain how Jesus talked about hell. How has what you’ve heard before been consistent or inconsistent with that?
• What questions do you still have? Write them in your journal. Bring them to God. Process them with people you trust. And keep following Jesus. 

Memory Verse

For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. Colossians 1:19-20 NIV