What is hell?

Question 10056.

Hell is the final place of conscious, righteous punishment for those who die apart from Christ, the lake of fire into which the unsaved are cast after the last judgment. I do not enjoy teaching on hell, and any preacher who does has something wrong with him, but I dare not soften what Jesus Himself spoke of more often than anyone else in Scripture. It is real, and love for people demands that I tell them the truth about it rather than flatter them with silence. So let me set out plainly what the Bible teaches, with all the sobriety the subject deserves.

I want to handle this with honesty and with compassion, because hell is not a topic for scoring points or frightening children into good behaviour. It is the settled destiny of the lost, and it should break our hearts even as it steels our resolve to warn people. Understanding what Scripture actually says here, rather than the lurid cartoons or the sentimental denials, is the first step toward taking both the warning and the way of escape with the seriousness they demand.

What Scripture teaches about hell

The clearest teacher on hell is Jesus, which many find surprising. He spoke of a place of outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth, of a fire prepared for the devil and his angels, and of a worm that does not die. The word He most often used was gehenna, drawn from the Valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place of burning refuse that became a vivid picture of final judgment. When the gentle Saviour who wept over Jerusalem warns us this solemnly, I dare not treat the warning as an exaggeration.

Revelation completes the picture with the lake of fire, the second death, into which death and Hades and all whose names are not in the book of life are finally cast. It is essential to see that this final state is distinct from the intermediate one. Hades is the temporary holding place of the unsaved dead between death and judgment, while the lake of fire is their permanent destiny after the Great White Throne, which I examine in my study of the Great White Throne judgment. The one is the waiting, the other is the sentence.

Why this place exists at all

People ask how a loving God could make such a place, and it is a fair question that deserves a careful answer. It exists because God is holy and just, and sin is a real and serious offence against an infinitely worthy God. A judge who shrugged at murder and cruelty and oppression would not be loving but corrupt. The same holiness that makes God glorious makes His judgment of unrepented sin certain. Hell is not a failure of God’s love but the outworking of His justice against evil that has refused every offer of mercy.

It also honours human choice in a sobering way. God does not drag into His presence those who have spent their whole lives refusing Him. In a real sense, it is God finally granting rebels what they insisted upon, an existence apart from Him. C. S. Lewis put it memorably, that the doors of hell are locked on the inside. I would not press that further than Scripture allows, but it captures something true. Hell is the destiny of those who, to the very end, would not have God, and it is terrible precisely because being without Him is the worst thing that can befall a soul.

Is hell eternal and conscious?

I hold, with the historic church, that hell is a place of eternal, conscious punishment, and I do so because I believe that is what Scripture plainly teaches. In Matthew 25:46 Jesus sets eternal punishment and eternal life side by side in a single sentence, using the same word aionios for both. If the life is unending, then so is the punishment, for the same adjective governs both. To make one temporary while keeping the other everlasting does violence to the plain grammar of the verse.

I know this is a hard doctrine, and I do not hold it because it is comfortable but because I find it unavoidable in the text. I develop the case more fully in my study of whether hell is eternal. The rich man in Jesus’ account was conscious, in torment, and able to speak and remember, which tells against the idea that the lost simply cease to exist. I take no pleasure in this, but faithfulness to Jesus will not let me trim His words to suit the tastes of the age.

What it is not

It helps to clear away some false pictures. This place is not one where the devil rules and torments people, for Satan is himself a prisoner there, awaiting his own judgment in the lake of fire. Nor is it a purgatory from which souls eventually graduate to heaven, for Scripture gives no hint of a second chance beyond the grave. And it is not annihilation, the mere snuffing out of existence, a view I address in my study of annihilationism. The biblical picture is neither cartoonish nor sentimental, but sober, personal, and final.

Above all, hell is not a subject God delights in. He declares plainly that He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they would turn and live. The cross itself is the measure of how far God went to keep sinners out of that place, giving His own Son to bear the judgment they deserved. A God who would suffer that to save us is not a God who consigns anyone to hell carelessly. The doctrine of hell, rightly held, magnifies the mercy of the cross rather than diminishing the love of God.

How anyone may escape hell

The whole reason I teach on hell is to see people kept out of it, and, wonderfully, no one need ever go there. Jesus bore in Himself the judgment our sins deserved, drinking the cup of wrath to its dregs so that all who trust Him will never taste it. To turn from sin and rest in Him is to pass from death to life, out of all danger of the second death and into eternal life. The escape is not earned by our goodness but received as a gift, purchased entirely by His blood.

That is why the message of hell is finally a message of mercy. It exists in Scripture not to torment the anxious but to warn the careless while there is still time to flee. The door of grace stands open now, and the same Jesus who warned of gehenna more than anyone stands ready to save all who come to Him. I would far rather warn you plainly today than have you discover the truth of it too late. Mercy is being held out to you, and the only sane response is to take it.

The warning and the mercy together

I never preach on this subject without setting the warning firmly inside the mercy of God, because that is exactly where Scripture itself sets it. The same Jesus who spoke so often of judgment is the One who wept over Jerusalem and went willingly to a cross to save sinners. In 2 Peter 3:9 we read that the Lord is patient toward us, not wishing that any should perish but that all should reach repentance. The very existence of the warning is itself an act of great kindness, a lighthouse set upon the rocks to keep us safely off them before it is ever too late.

So I flatly refuse to let this doctrine harden me or turn me morbid and gloomy. It is meant to send me running to Christ, and pleading with others to run to Him too, and never to leave me superior or afraid. The judgment is fearfully real, but so is the open door of grace, and that door still stands wide open today. The One who told us most plainly about the danger is the very One who bore it in our place, and I would far rather warn you tenderly now than leave you to learn the truth of it when it is too late to flee.

So, now what?

Hell is real, but it is not your necessary destiny, and that is the heart of what I want you to hear. The question is not whether you deserve judgment, for we all do, but whether you will let Jesus bear it in your place. He has already done everything needed to save you. All that remains is for you to trust Him and be forgiven, and the fear of that place is taken from you for ever.

So do not put this off, and do not let the seriousness of the subject drive you into despair, for despair is not what God intends by it. Turn to the Saviour today, while His mercy is freely offered, and rest in the One who bore the fire so that you never will. Where will you spend eternity, and have you settled it with the only One who can?

And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Matthew 25:46 (ESV)