Doubt and Faith about Heaven and Hell - Tough Theology Week 6

(First read Matthew 25.)

After today, I hope you have two things: more doubt and more faith.
I hope you have more doubt about that are not true, more doubt about issues on which the Bible is not clear. More doubt about things you SHOULD doubt.
And I hope you have more faith in things you SHOULD have faith in. I hope you have more faith in a few things the Bible is very clear about. But most importantly, I hope you have more faith in God.

Next, let’s start with a few surprising truths.

• There is no required belief about hell to be a Christian.
• God is not going to say, Because you didn’t believe in hell, you’re going to hell.
• God is not going to say, Because you didn’t believe the right things about hell, you’re going to hell.
• God is not going to say, I won’t forgive you if unless you believe in hell.
• God is not going to say, You can’t get into heaven unless you believe in hell.

Let me say it again. Believing in hell is not a requirement to go to heaven or to be a Christian. It’s important that we say that because a lot of people have walked away from Jesus simply because they cannot believe in hell.
Don’t get me wrong. The Bible does talk about hell, and if we are loyal to the Bible, we will have some concept of hell. BUT - and this is the important part - we don’t all have to have the same concept of hell. The Bible gives us a few basic points about heaven and hell, but beyond that Christians are free to disagree about most of the details. We need to be clear about what is clear in the Bible and clearly state that some things are NOT clear in the Bible.

OK, enough prologue. I said there are a few points that are clear in the Bible, and by “a few,” I actually meant seven. So here we go.

1. Resurrection. In John 5, Jesus says: “the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son, and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgment” (5:28-29). So, all people who have ever lived will experience a resurrection.
And Paul says in 1 Corinthians: “Our earthly bodies are planted [like seeds] in the ground when we die, but they will be raised to live forever... They are buried as natural human bodies, but they will be raised as spiritual bodies” (15:42, 44).
At the resurrection, we will have all new bodies - actual bodies. They will be something like the bodies we have now but also somehow different.

2. Judgment. Paul - the apostle of grace - gives us a sobering account of Judgment Day: “For we must all stand before Christ to be judged. We will each receive whatever we deserve for the good or evil we have done in this earthly body.” (2 Corinthians 5:10). We all have things we wish we could hide forever, but Hebrews 4 says: “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes, and he is the one to whom we are accountable” (4:13). God’s judgement will be perfect (without fault), total (taking everything into account), and universal (including all people who have ever lived).
We don’t like the sound of this judgment, but we need it. Our world is classically unjust. Greedy oppressors prosper and live in rich houses and avoid punishment for their crimes. Loving mothers struggle to overcome poverty and disease just to give their children a chance at life. This life in this world is unfair. If there is any justice, there must be a final Judgment Day when everyone everywhere is called to account.

3. Criteria. The Bible gives lots of different criteria for the judgment. In Matthew 25, Jesus gives three different metaphors of the criteria: (a) being ready when Jesus comes back, (b) good use of God’s gifts, and (c) showing compassion to the poor and needy. When someone asked Jesus how to get eternal life, Jesus said, “keep the commandments” (Matthew 19:17). In John 3, Jesus famously tells Nicodemus that he must be “born again.” In Luke 20, Jesus says the key factor is whether you are “worthy.” In Matthew 6, Jesus says that if we don’t forgive others, God won’t forgive us. But Paul is famous for saying, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast” (Ephesians 2:8-9). James counters, “Faith by itself isn’t enough. Unless it produces good deeds, it is dead and useless” (2:17). Then Paul really complicates things in Romans 2 when he talks about people outside Judaism and Christianity:
Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. They demonstrate that God’s law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right. And this is the message I proclaim - that the day is coming when God, through Christ Jesus, will judge everyone’s secret life.

When we wrap all this together and try to make sense out it all, what do we get? God is always working at all times through every means possible to save every person in the whole world. In theological terms, this is called prevenient grace. In the end, we will be judged based on our response to God’s gracious action in our lives. When God worked in our lives from the outside (with preaching or the Bible or anything else), how did we respond? When God worked in our lives from the inside (with the voice of our conscience or heart), how did we respond? In the end, the question is: How did we respond to God’s grace, however and whenever we received it?1 As far as I know, that’s as clear as it gets.
Now, you might say, what about Jesus’ saying, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (John 14:6)? Or what about Peter’s sermon about Jesus: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12)?
Here is the most common Christian answer. If anyone is saved, they are saved through Jesus, but they might not necessarily have put faith in Jesus while in their earthly life. Before you freak out, think about this. What about all the good people in the Old Testament? Is Moses in hell? Are babies in hell? What about people who are mentally handicapped? None of those people would be able to put conscious faith in Jesus, but most Christians believe that all of these people will go to heaven. Somehow in the divine mystery, Jesus’ grace still covers them. So then, we are saved or not - based on how we responded to God’s grace which has come to us through Jesus - even if we don’t know or can’t say the word Jesus.
The key point here is that each of us ultimately chooses where we go. God doesn’t send people to heaven or hell. He lets us go to the place we’ve chosen. If we respond to God’s grace and truth (however we find it), then we get more of it - in heaven. If we walk away from God’s grace and truth (however we find it) and choose selfishness, then we God let’s us become completely self-centered - in hell.

4. Heaven. First of all, almost all Christians agree that the word “heaven” is used several different ways in the Bible.

• Sometimes it is another way to refer to God. Mark and Luke say, “Kingdom of God.” Matthew follows the Jewish custom of rarely using the name of God, so he says “Kingdom of Heaven” instead.
• Sometimes “heaven” means that end of the world paradise or utopia - where God restores everything and makes everything right. Heaven is the place where we experience the fullness of God’s love with the people of God. Some scholars think this will happen here on a renewed earth. Others think heaven will be something completely different.
• Sometimes in the Bible, “heaven” and “eternal life” invade this world and this life. Jesus said to pray: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” Jesus says eternal life is to know him (John 17:3). At least five times in the book of John, Jesus says that people who believe in him already have the eternal life now.

When people talk about “going to heaven,” they are mostly talking about that second meaning - paradise with God forever. What will that be like? OK, here’s the only Rob Bell quote I’m going to give you today: “I’ve heard pastors [say], ‘[Heaven] will be unlike anything we can comprehend, like a church service that goes on forever,’ causing some people to think, ‘That sounds more like hell.’”
Surprisingly, the Bible us very earthy images of heaven:

• In the last days, ... They will hammer their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks (Isaiah 2:1, 4). Farming in heaven?
• In Jerusalem, the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will spread a wonderful feast for all the people of the world. It will be a delicious banquet with clear, well-aged wine and choice meat (Isaiah 25:6). Wine and steaks in heaven?
• In that day ... The time will come ... when the grain and grapes will grow faster than they can be harvested. Then the terraced vineyards on the hills of Israel will drip with sweet wine (Amos 9:11-14). Grapes so thick the wine pours down the hills?
• In Revelation, Heaven is the New Jerusalem, which is a magnificent city made of jewels. In the center of the city is a river, and on each side is a tree of life, bearing twelve crops of fruit, with a fresh crop each month. The leaves were used for medicine to heal the nations (Revelation 21-22). Heaven is a city, with a tree that makes medicine?

So what does all of this mean about heaven? I’m not sure. It could be that the Biblical writers had a limited vocabulary. Being people of earth, they used earth to describe heaven. Or it could mean that God is going to restore this broken creation and thoroughly soak this world - our world - with God’s life and light, so that everything become completely transformed into something more glorious and beautiful.
Essentially, heaven will be an unbroken experience of God’s presence and the life that God always intended for us. We don’t know exactly what that will be, but we know that it will be better than the best thing we can imagine.

5. Hell. OK. Here is where it gets hard. Before we talk about the disagreements, let’s note the points where almost all Christians agree.

• First, hell is for people who fail the test, people who don’t pass the criteria of a faithful response to God’s grace.
• Second, the point of hell is to put an end to evil. Hell is God’s final NO! to everything that opposes his love.
• Third, hell is separation from God. People who push God away, get their way. If they don’t want God, God finally quits trying and lets them be completely separated.
• Fourth, hell is really, really, really bad - all kinds of bad. The Bible’s descriptions of hell are metaphors: darkness, fire, a pit, a lake, a place of punishment, a place of total destruction, out, down, prison, torture, etc. How can it be full of fire and dark at the same time?3 These are metaphors not literal descriptions, but these images describe an awful reality that is - literally - real.

Most Christians agree on all of these points. But we can see some of our disagreements by looking at hell’s most common metaphor - fire.
(a) Some people say that the point of hell’s fire is destruction. Hell is God’s final destruction and elimination of evil. Lots of places in the Bible talk about fire as a way to destroy evil. For example, John the Baptist said Jesus will “clean up the threshing area, gathering the wheat into his barn but burning the chaff with never-ending fire” (Matthew 3:12). Chaff is the waste product that is eliminated.
If the fires of hell destroy, then people who go into hell are burned up like chaff. They are completely destroyed in the fires of hell. They cease to be. They no longer exist. They don’t suffer forever; they are gone forever.
This makes sense logically. God is the source of all being. Everything that exists exists in God. If hell is total and final separation from God, then that would mean separation from existence. I’m not sure it’s right, but it makes sense with human logic.

(b) Others say that the point of hell’s fire is purification. Lots of Biblical images view fire as a purifying force. In Zechariah God says, “I will bring that group through the fire and make them pure.  I will refine them like silver and purify them like gold” (13:9). Malachi says the Messiah “will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes. He will sit like a refiner of silver, burning away the dross” (3:2-3).
If the fires of hell purify, then the point is not to destroy the sinner but to destroy the sin. The fire - even in all its brutal pain - has a restorative purpose, to burn away our sin, to refine us so that we can eventually be restored to God’s presence in heaven. Theoretically, people would be in hell only as long as necessary to make them fit for heaven, only long enough to repent and to be purified.
Connected to this view are all those who believe there might be a second chance to repent after death. I don’t know what I think about this view, but lots of Christian leaders throughout history have believed it is at least possible: Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Gregory of Nyssa (the great trinitarian theologian), Eusebius (the great historian), Jerome (who translated the Bible into Latin), Augustine, and even Martin Luther (the great reformer).4 These Christian leaders said that God’s love and the final victory of love demands at least the possibility of release from permanent punishment.

(c) Lastly, some people say the fires of hell are for punishment and the doors are locked forever. In Matthew 25, Jesus said, “Then the King will turn to those on the left and say, ‘Away with you, you cursed ones, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his demons... And they will go away into eternal punishment” (25:41, 46).
In this view, people are just getting what they deserve. People asked for life without God and they’re getting it. Life without God is - simply put - torture.
C.S. Lewis has two interesting variations on this view. As he imagines hell, the pain comes from experiencing the unfiltered light of God’s radiant goodness. That’s only painful for those who have chosen their own darkness. Also, C.S. Lewis imagines that the doors of hell are locked from the inside. People could get out if they wanted, but they don’t want out. They are so bent in on themselves that they don’t want anything to do with God - no matter the cost. Again, this is interesting, but I don’t know if it’s true.

So what is hell? Honestly, I really don’t know. Is hell forever? Is the pain forever? Again, I’m not sure. The essential point about hell is that it’s a really bad place for people who reject God’s grace.

6. Mystery. One of the most important points in the Bible concerning heaven and hell is mystery. This mystery takes shape in three different ways for us.

• Surprise. One of the most common themes of the Bible’s teaching about heaven and hell is that we will all be surprised. The timing of the end will be a surprise: “like a thief in the night” (1 Thessalonians 5:2). And the results of the judgment will be a surprise. Both the sheep and the goats were surprised (Matthew 25). Many very religious people will be surprised when they don’t pass the test (Matthew 7:21-23). The first will be last, and the last will be first (Matthew 20:16). We will all be surprised.
• MYOB. Because we will all be surprised, mind your own business. Paul said, “So don’t make judgments about anyone ahead of time—before the Lord returns. For he will bring our darkest secrets to light and will reveal our private motives. Then God will give to each one whatever praise is due” (1 Corinthians 4:5).
• Supra-rationality. If God is infinite, it makes sense that God is beyond our capacity to fully understand. The way God chooses to do things may not make sense in our little heads. “‘My thoughts are nothing like your thoughts,’ says the Lord. ‘And my ways are far beyond anything you could imagine’” (Isaiah 55:8). If we’re having a hard time understanding how all of this works, that actually makes sense.

7. Justice and Beauty. Finally, at the end of this story and all the debate about heaven and hell, we come to the justice and beauty of God. As Abraham said, “Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?” (Genesis 18:25). We may not understand it all now, for now, “We don't yet see things clearly. We're squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won't be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We'll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us!” (1 Corinthians 13:12)
At that point, no matter what the outcome of all of these debates about heaven and hell, we will see that God does what is right. At the end, no matter what the judgment is for us personally or for others we know or don’t know, we will all say that God’s judgment is just. There will be perfect justice in the end.
Also, another important point is that the end will be beautiful. One of the unmistakable characteristics of the book of Revelation is its beauty. God will conclude the world with justice and beauty. If the end now, we would say, “Ahhhh, such beauty; such justice; such mercy. Thank you God.”

Here is the gospel. God loves everyone everywhere. Even though we have rejected God a thousand times, he still offers us grace through Jesus. Jesus died and experienced a hellish death so that we don’t have to. God wants to give us his heavenly life now and forever. Living for ourselves will destroy us.
Heaven and Hell are real - very real. Choose life. Choose God. Ask God to forgive you and to free you. Entrust your life to Jesus, the Author of Life. Trust Jesus to guide you in this life and the next.