Megan Collins
April 14, 2024
I became a Christian in the 1990s. In the 90s Christians talked a lot about heaven and hell, all of the time. One time in college I was walking to class and a preacher was standing in the middle of the courtyard. He was yelling loudly about where you would go when you died, heaven or hell. I tried to pretend I didn’t see him (which is honestly still what I do when I see someone yelling about the gospel in the middle of the street). But he pointed at me and said
“You! Yes, you! Do you know where you are going?”
I said “Ummmmm….. Calculus?”
Christianity in the 1990s was all about eternity. In fact, a lot of the outreach of Christians in the 90s went something like:
“Hey, do you know Jesus? Because if you do, when you die you get to go to a place with clouds and babies playing violins and as much cake as you want. But if you don’t, they’ll be a lot of fire. So, do you want to know more about Jesus?
To be honest, it was pretty effective. People like clouds and cake more than lakes of fire.
But times changed, and so has evangelism and what we talk about when we talk about Jesus. This weekend I was walking on the beach, and a man approached me with his hand out, to give me a fist bump. He bumped my fist and said “You know what? Jesus loves you, so much” Then he walked away. I do like his message better. But . . what have we lost as we changed, as we have refined our message to more encompass the whole gospel, and we no longer talk about death? I am certainly not suggesting we go back to turn or burn as a strategy for sharing our faith. I do not think we should reduce the message of Jesus to heaven, or scare people into faith by talking about hell. But dying and what happens after we die is something all of us think about, at least every so often.
What does happen when we die? What does Jesus really teach about all of it? Maybe you think about these things theoretically. Maybe death for you right now is very real with the death of someone you love, or your own health. Either way, it’s important. We’ll spend the next five weeks talking about this, everything Jesus taught about heaven. Here’s a sneak peek: it’s likely not at all what you think. Most of our images of heaven come not from what Jesus talked about but from movies and pop culture and mythology. We find ourselves creating a mashup of images from like the Good Place or Ghost. But what Jesus teaches about heaven is so, so much more than we think it is. Over the next few weeks we’ll talk about what Jesus does say about the time right after we die. We’ll focus even more the bigger idea of resurrection. Heaven is not just about you and your loved ones and what happens when we die. It’s about this huge thing God is doing and inviting you to be a part of too, but not just after you die. Some of it is happening now. We’ll get into all of that later as we talk about heaven.
For today, let’s talk about something else we get questions about. Today, let’s talk about hell.
Before we jump into the Scripture passages, and really this whole series, one last thing. A lot of the passages we will look at have a lot more imagery and metaphors than concrete information. All of this will be our best attempt, together, to understand what Jesus is trying to teach us. But we may end up with just as many questions (even if they’re new ones) than we do answers. That’s why this series isn’t called “everything you ever wanted to know about heaven.” It’s what Jesus did (and didn’t) say.
Back to hell.
Hell isn’t something Jesus, or really the New Testament in general, talks much about. The word hell does show up 15 times in the English NASB translation. 15 times sounds like a lot. But compare it to these other words:
Money: 43 times.
Death: 150 times
Love: 233 times
Heaven: 257 times
Sin: 403 times
But hell? Hell gets just 15 mentions. This is especially interesting when you see how much sin and death come up. If Jesus’ biggest concern was connecting sin and death with where we would spend eternity, wouldn’t he have mentioned it more? So what did Jesus teach when he talked about hell? Let’s take a look:
Matthew 5:22
“But I say to you that if you are angry with a brother or sister, you will be liable to judgment; and if you insult a brother or sister, you will be liable to the council; and if you say, ‘You fool,’ you will be liable to the hell of fire.”
Mark 9:43-48
“If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell.,”
Matthew 5:27-30
You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart. If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell.
Let’s stop for a minute and talk about two things about these passages.
The first is the word Jesus is using for hell here. The word in the greek is Gehenna. Gehenna wasn’t some new spiritual word Jesus was using, it was an actual place. In Jesus time, Gehenna was a valley on the south west side of Jerusalem. In the valley, people threw all kinds of garbage. Sometimes there were even bodies in there. It was always on fire because they were constantly burning the trash. There were animals who lurked around, fighting over scraps. Their teeth made a knashing sound. That’s where we get the idea of “weeping and gnashing of teeth”. When Jesus talks about hell here, the people listening to him wouldn’t think about some place of eternal damnation in the underworld. They would think of the actual garbage dump outside of town. They would imagine the overwhelming stench of garbage and smoke. Think about how well this would make Jesus’ point. Better to get the sin out of your life now than to have your whole life end up in that smelly, fiery, trash heap over there.
Jesus’ words are pretty strong here. This whole pluck out your eye and cut off your hand image is graphic. We clearly haven’t taken him literally (I see a lot of intact limbs and eyes in this room and I know there’s more sin than that in here). Jesus doesn’t want you to cut off a limb, but he is trying to get your attention with his language. Your life can end up in hell, not just later, but now. Little sins lead to big sins which destroy whole lives. It’s not just about your eternity. Looking at someone with lust may seem harmless to you. But lust can lead to adultery and we have all seen how an affair can make life hell for everyone involved. We all have anger from time to time. But left unchecked anger spills into hatred and hatred into violence. We’ve all seen the hell on earth that violence has brought. Jesus is being clear: Nip that sin in the bud, whatever it takes, with these small sins or your whole life ends up in Gehenna, and before you make hell on earth for the people in your life.
Most of the other times Jesus talks about hell, it’s this same word, Gehenna. It’s a powerful image, but not necessarily what we thought it was. Then there are the times when Jesus doesn’t say the word hell explicitly, but does talk about punishment.
In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a story about sitting on the throne. And as everyone comes before him, he separates them into two groups - sheep and goats. The sheep are the ones who gave food to the hungry, drink to the thirsty, welcome to the stranger. The goats did not. And the passage ends by saying:
"Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment but the righteous into eternal life.”
People should just do the right thing (and we’ll talk more about that in a minute). But, haven’t you and I also not done these things? Haven’t we neglected the poor too? Are we going to be sent to hell? The word here for eternal punishment, again in the greek, can be translated as exactly that, eternal punishment. But it can also be translated as an “age of correction.” It can have a connotation of a period of pruning, which you do to correct a plant so it can grow, not to kill the plant, or torture it for eternity. We won’t do more with this today for sake of time, but it’s something to dig into later.
One more teaching from Jesus. This one is interesting because he doesn’t use that city dump word like the others. It comes from Luke 16. Jesus tells a story about a rich man who has fancy clothes and tons of food. At the gate of his house there is this poor man named Lazarus. Jesus says he is so poor that dogs come and lick his sores. This is quite an image from Jesus. The poor man dies and goes to heaven. The rich man dies and Jesus says he goes to “Hades where he was being tormented.” In the story, the rich man looks up and sees Lazarus next to Abraham and he says this: (luke 16:24)
“Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.”
This passage is fascinating. Not only is this a different word than we usually see, with Hades instead of Gehenna. But look at what we learn about the man in Hades. In life, he was convinced he was more important than other people, that he deserved to be rich and Lazarus wasn’t deserving of his help. But the story Jesus tells show us his heart hasn’t changed. He asks for Abraham to make Lazarus to come and put water on his tongue, to be his servant. Even in death, the man believes he is better than the poor. So did God put him in Hades? Or is this man refusing to let God’s love change him?
There isn’t a lot more Jesus says about hell.
One more question we may have is if God wants to save everyone, if God really does love everyone, then does anyone really go to hell, if there is such a place?
Jesus doesn’t give us specific answers on this. And, as is often the case, when we don’t know for sure, there is a lot of conversation about it.
Some would say people choose to go to hell.
Others would say people are sent there for eternity.
Others say there is no hell at all, or that those who reject the love of God simply cease to exist, like an annihiliationism.
Ultimately, we can only do our best to draw conclusions based on what we have in the Bible. Again, Jesus doesn’t give us all of the answers we want. I know we’re leaving a lot of questions on the table still.
Maybe you worry about hell because someone you love seems like they are headed in that direction. One thing I read that I found interesting was a comment on the picture of the redeemed world at the very end of the Bible in Revelation. There are gates there in Revelation chapter 21, just like the gates we imagine in movies when we think about heaven. Maybe they’re pearly, it doesn’t say. But the book of Revelation says the gates are never, never shut. Some have theorized that perhaps this is because there is always a chance for people to choose to come into the goodness of God, to enter into the resurrection life, when they are ready.
Maybe, on the other hand, you are worried there isn’t as much of a hell as you would like there to be. Frankly, there are some people we would like to see spend time in the hell that we have imagined with fire and agony and torture. Even for those of you uncomfortable with the idea of hell, you may not want to throw it out completely for the truly awful people.
Rob Bell talks about a time he went to visit Rwanda in 2002. During his travel, he saw several children who were missing legs, hands, arms. He learned that during the genocide, people would remove the limbs of children using machetes as a way to humiliate their enemies. Unimaginable. Then he writes this:
“I tell this story because it is absolutely vital that we acknowledge that love, grace and humanity can be rejected. We are terrifyingly free to do as we please. God gives us what we want, and if that’s hell, we can have it. We have that kind of freedom, that kind of choice. We are that free. We can use machetes if we want to. When people say they don’t believe in hell and they don’t like the word sin, my first response is to ask “have you ever sat and and talked with a family who just found out that their child was molested? Repeatedly? Over a number of years? By a relative?” Some words are strong for a reason. We need those words to be that intense, loaded, complex and offensive, because they need to reflect the realities they describe. And that’s what we find in Jesus’ teaching about hell - a volatile mixture of images, pictures, and metaphors that describe the very real experiences and consequences of rejecting our God-given goodness and humanity. Something we are all free to do, anytime, anywhere, with anyone.”
The world has some real darkness in it, some unimaginable brokenness. Jesus doesn’t give us all the answers, but maybe we’re glad that he mentions hell at all. We’ll talk more in later weeks in this series about what God is doing now, on this side of heaven, about all of this darkness in the world, because God is doing something about it.
But for today, what do we do with these teachings we have looked at?
At the very least, we know what hell is not:
Hell is not, based on Jesus teaching, a place where “sinners” go, anymore than heaven is just a place for “good” people. Jesus’ sternest warnings go to people who were super religious and believed themselves to be moral and righteous. We need to remember that.
Hell is not the primary reason to follow Jesus. Following Jesus is about a relationship with the God who loves you, not a ticket to avoid some fiery trash dump and to get into the place with clouds and violins and cake.
Hell is not a guest list we get to make. We don’t get to decide who is “in” and who is “out” if there even is such a thing. Your job, according to the Bible, is to love God and love your neighbor. That’s it. Let God worry about the rest.
Finally, hell is not something we experience exclusively after death. We can know hell on earth, of our own making.
Shirley Guthrie describes hell as “living apart from or in hostility toward God and other people, and therefore denying one’s own true humanity, forever.” That is happening now. Hell exists now when we don’t believe what God has told us about ourselves, and about other people, and about the love of God.
Sometimes you experience hell here, on earth, at the hands of someone else. Those are the kinds of things Rob Bell talked about in the quote we just read. That’s the stuff we will talk about later in the series. For today, know this: God will find you there. The love of God will surround you when the world is trying to break you. God will not stop working until everything is made right.
But sometimes, it is a hell of your own choosing.
It’s the hell you build in believing you don’t need anybody else.
It’s the hell you make when you think sin is harmless.
It’s the hell you bring into other people’s lives when you think you matter more than they do.
It’s the hell you find in chasing everything the world has to offer instead of resting in the love of God
It’s the kind of hell we saw in the story about the rich man and Lazarus.
It’s the kind of hell Jesus talks about with small sin leading to big sin.
But there is still good news in this, even when you are the one causing the problem.
The love of God isn’t afraid of hell. Jesus already went there once. There’s nothing you can do, or that the world can do to you, that God can’t deal with. Jesus walks into the fiery trash dump of your life and is determined to save you. The love of God will come and seek you out, even when you are hell-bent on doing it your way.
We’ll have to stop there for today. There is a lot we don’t know about hell. Jesus doesn’t give us a lot of specifics to go on, which means we shouldn’t spend much more time on it either. That’s why the next four weeks, we’ll talk about the thing he did talk alot about, and that’s heaven.
But we do know this:
Jesus stands at the end of history, to make all things right
And Jesus stands at the end of the life of every person
That is all we really need to know, at least for now.