How to Explain Hell & Sin - Not Your Mama's Religion

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Face to Face: Sharing Your Faith

How to Explain Hell & Sin

February 18, 2009 • By

From Pastor Tim Keller, of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in NYC, for magazine Christianity Today:

In contrast to the traditionalist, the postmodern person is hostile to the very idea of hell. People with more secular and postmodern mindsets tend to have (a) only a vague belief in the divine, if at all, and (b) little sense of moral absolutes, but rather a sense they need to be true to their dreams.

When preaching hell to people of this mindset, I've found I must make four arguments.

1. Sin is slavery.

I do not define sin as just breaking the rules, but also as "making something besides God our ultimate value and worth." These good things, which become gods, will drive us relentlessly, enslaving us mentally and spiritually, even to hell forever if we let them.

I say, "You are actually being religious, though you don't know it—you are trying to find salvation through worshiping things that end up controlling you in a destructive way." Slavery is the choice-worshiper's horror.

2. Hell is less exclusive than so-called tolerance.

Nothing is more characteristic of the modern mindset than the statement: "I think Christ is fine, but I believe a devout Muslim or Buddhist or even a good atheist will certainly find God." A slightly different version is: "I don't think God would send a person who lives a good life to hell just for holding the wrong belief." This approach is seen as more inclusive.

In preaching about hell, then, I need to counter this argument:

In short, to say a good person, not just Christians, can find God is to say good works are enough to find God.

"The gospel says, 'The people who know they aren't good can find God, and the people who think they are good do not.'

"The gospel's is the more inclusive exclusivity. It says joyfully, 'It doesn't matter who you are or what you've done. It doesn't matter if you've been at the gates of hell. You can be welcomed and embraced fully and instantly through Christ.' "

3. Christianity's view of hell is more personal than the alternative view.

Fairly often, I meet people who say, "I have a personal relationship with a loving God, and yet I don't believe in Jesus Christ at all."

"Why?" I ask.

They reply, "My God is too loving to pour out infinite suffering on anyone for sin."

But then a question remains: "What did it cost this kind of God to love us and embrace us? What did he endure in order to receive us? Where did this God agonize, cry out? Where were his nails and thorns?"

The only answer is: "I don't think that was necessary."

How ironic. In our effort to make God more loving, we have made God less loving. His love, in the end, needed to take no action. It was sentimentality, not love at all. The worship of a God like this will be impersonal, cognitive, ethical. There will be no joyful self-abandonment, no humble boldness, no constant sense of wonder. We would not sing to such a being, "Love so amazing, so divine, demands my soul, my life, my all."

4. There is no love without wrath.

"People ask, 'What kind of loving God is filled with wrath?' But any loving person is often filled with wrath.

In Hope Has Its Reasons, Becky Pippert writes, 'Think how we feel when we see someone we love ravaged by unwise actions or relationships. Do we respond with benign tolerance as we might toward strangers? Far from it. … Anger isn't the opposite of love. Hate is, and the final form of hate is indifference.'

"Pippert then quotes E. H. Gifford, 'Human love here offers a true analogy: the more a father loves his son, the more he hates in him the drunkard, the liar, the traitor.'

"She concludes: 'If I, a flawed narcissistic sinful woman, can feel this much pain and anger over someone's condition, how much more a morally perfect God who made them? God's wrath is not a cranky explosion, but his settled opposition to the cancer of sin which is eating out the insides of the human race he loves with his whole being.' "

It is only because of the doctrine of judgment and hell that Jesus' proclamation of grace and love are so brilliant and astounding.

Visitor Comments (13)

Anger

Posted By RRDJ71 on March 21, 2009

It makes me happy to know that there really is a difference between anger and hate if it is a righteous anger. I never really looked at it that way. I assumed I wasn't "supposed to" get angry EVER. Quite and impossible task. Now I realize that, for example,I get upset when people don't accept Christ and I can't understand it. Yet I get angry because I care, so I'm not really angry at the sinner, just the sin. After all, how can someone not love the Author of love? Wrath belongs to God but he put emotions in us so that we may feel as long as those emotions don't take over us.

Weak arguments

Posted By BLAIX on April 13, 2009

To "Weak arguments"

Posted By BELIEVER on July 21, 2009

To weak arguments:

I am a sinner. You are a sinner. Your mother and father are sinners. Your brothers and sisters are sinners. Any relative either near or far of yours is a sinner. Any friend you have ever had in your life is a sinner.

Adam and Eve were sinners. This is where sin started. It came as no surprise to God, having created every single one of us, knowing how many hairs are on our head at any given time, being all-knowing, all-present, everywhere at all times.

Your parents absolutely love you with all their heart and raised you as best as they knew how. However, THEY ARE STILL SINNERS. Just because you have parents who love you does not guarantee they are directing you the right way as far as your salvation. Jesus himself said "I am the way, the truth and the light and no man cometh to the father but through me." That is a statement of fact from God's son, our savior.

Do not trust ANYONE for your salvation except for Jesus Christ. "He who loves mother or father is not worthy of me" is another thing that Jesus said. "Pick up your cross and follow me."

It is very, very hard to go against your loved ones, especially if you were raised in a different religion or even no religion at all.

There is ONE WAY TO GOD. ONE WAY. ONE WAY. ONE WAY. And his name is Jesus. Follow him, not your parents.

That is the absolute truth from Jesus himself. Please find out for yourself. We're talking about a fight for your soul for eternity. Search...dig....question...pray....
seek the truth. He will show it to you. He does not wish anyone to perish, but to have everlasting life with him. There is a heaven and there is a hell. If you died tomorrow, are you 100% sure you know where you will wake up? Seek the truth. Your parents love you, but they are human and are sinners and are flawed. Seek God through Jesus. He is not flawed.

RE: Weak arguments

Posted By BELIEVER on July 21, 2009

To Weak arguments:

Wow...that should have been "he who loves father or mother MORE THAN ME....is not worthy of me. Definitely a typo there. Meaning of course there will be conflict sometimes in a family when you do what you are told and "take up your cross" and follow Jesus.

MORE THAN ME... key words here!!

To "Believer"

Posted By BLAIX on July 22, 2009

Just to be clear, my parents happen to be Christian who feel the way you do. I was just giving an example of one of the reasons I don't believe in Hell or that you need to accept Jesus to avoid it.

But this is precisely my point. Lets go back to pretending you are making this argument to a child of two devout Jewish parents. You are saying this is something they are telling him, versus something Jesus is telling him, but it's not. This is something his parents are telling him, versus something _you_ are telling him that Jesus is telling him (or you are telling him Jesus is telling him via the Bible, which you are telling him is the actual word of God). You'd want him to pray about it, but this is basically asking him to meditate on the idea that you told him his eternal soul is in jeopardy. Of course he is going to feel compelled to believe you. Is this God? Is this how God works? If it is, I don't like that God at all.

Even the Bible, whether you believe it was inspired by God or not, was ultimately written by men. I may choose to believe it, all of it, or some of it. But I would never say that someone else HAS to believe it or they will spend an ETERNITY in Hell. This seems crazy to me.

Anyway, the main point of my previous comment was to say that these specific arguments are in fact weak arguments to make to someone who doesn't believe in Hell. I still believe that. The counterpoints I listed in my previous comment are the reasons why.

MY GOD.

Posted By REBORN=) on October 13, 2009

I respect the point that you are trying to make. It's incredibly easy to have compassion on the "Jewish boy" or even, in my case, my good friend who's Hindu or my best friend from my childhood who's a non-believer. What you fail to address, however, is the fact that the influence that parents have on non-believers?? This is influence from the World. In the grand scheme of things, that's equivalent to the influence of the media, peers, the government...

It seems as if you've taken God out of the entire equation... The Jewish boy goes back home and tells his parents about this "Jesus character"... and then the parents say, "This isn't true. You're to believe what you've been taught". But realize that THEN, God has the opportunity to work in this boy's life. We underestimate how powerful God is, all the time. The decision to believe in Christ is between YOU and GOD. Other things of this world may try to hold you back a little bit, but don't think for a second that they're greater than our God.

Even if its not exactly during altar call, or while the Gospel is being shared to you... God provides the moment where it is just you and Him. YOU and only YOU make the decision to listen to him and accept Christ.

re: MY GOD

Posted By BLAIX on October 14, 2009

I still stand by my original counterpoints in my first comment, but regarding the hypothetical Jewish boy: do you see how awful of an internal conflict that is for this child? Or anyone like him? Does he turn his back on his family, everything he's been taught, or spend an eternity in hell?

You say it's easy to have compassion for him. How much more compassion should his creator have for him? To accept someone even if they turn their back on you seems to me the ultimate compassion.

I know that our way is not God's way. But that is precisely my point. I can't understand a God that would work this way. That I'm not meant to is not a good enough answer for me. If this is the way God works, I can't believe in him.

Response to Jewish Boy Analogy

Posted By ALY on November 9, 2009

I personally don't believe in Hell, and I don't think these arguments would be very good to convince a person like me. Here's why (and I am paraphrasing your arguments as best I can):

1. Sin is slavery:

Using this argument is basically suggesting that we should trade many slave masters (anything that isn't God) for one slave master (God).

**My response: We were made by Him, through Him, FOR Him. We were slavery to sin, now we are servants of God, and will be with Him eternally in Heaven. If that's what it means to be a slave to the Lord instead of a slave to the world, then I'm clinging on to His Word with all my life.

2. Non-Christians go to hell. Since anyone can accept Christ and become Christian, this is the most inclusive viewpoint.

This is an even weaker argument. How can you say that "anyone who accepts Jesus" is more inclusive than "anyone who accepts Jesus, and also devout Muslims or Buddhists or good atheists or anyone who as lived a good life"? The latter seems much more inclusive to me.

**Yeah I agree that is a pretty weak logical argument.

3. Chrisianity's view of Hell is more personal, since God sacrificed and Jesus suffered:

A counterargument to this would be a mother's love for her child. Is that not a deep personal love? You could argue that childbirth is the suffering that makes it personal, but what of adoptions? Grandparent's love for their grandchildren? How much greater should a creator's love for his creation be? Why does this require a human sacrifice to become personal?

**Propitiation. There was a righteousness requirement that needed to be fulfilled. If you were God and you created these little people like us, came down, we rejected you and you still endured the suffering and abuse and crucifixion to show us what God's love is? Would you have done it? I know I wouldn't. That's why God is God and I'm not God.

4. God gets angry with us because he loves us, just as you'd get angry with a loved one who is ravaged by unwise actions or relationships:

This is a good argument for the general sense of "God's wrath", but if you point to specifics in the Bible, the argument breaks down.

You may be angry with a loved one, but you would never cast them out of your home for disobeying you once (Genesis 3), drown them (Genesis 6-7), or kill them because they looked back at their former home that you were destroying (Genesis 19). And that's just in the first book.

I'd like to add that I used to believe in Hell. I grew up in a Christian home and believed in hell for most of my adolescent life. As I got older, I realized that I could no longer remain a Christian if I held those beliefs.

My main conflicts with Hell are mostly scenarios like this:

Lets say I am Jewish boy who's parents are very religious. They've raised me in the Jewish faith and I trust them with all my heart.

Someone comes to me one day and preaches the "good news" that we are all sinners and fall short of the glory of God. This means we are all bound for Hell. Thankfully, God sent his son to die on the cross as payment for those sins, and all I have to do is repent, accept that payment, and thereby become a Christian, and I will avoid the fires of Hell and live eternally with Jesus Christ in Heaven.

I go to my parents, my main guidance in life. They tell me otherwise. They explain that person is merely part of a different religion, and we do not believe those things.

At this point I have a decision to make. I have no physical evidence that this other person is right. Nothing except what this person told me. This is a terrifying decision. But ultimately, I decide to trust my parents.

By your definition, God is going to punish me for this decision for all eternity. Never ending torture because I trusted my parents.

Any god like that is not a god I want to worship. Is there another argument for Hell that could make me feel otherwise?

**Hell -is- a difficult thing to explain or argue for, because it evokes so many emotions in us, namely fear, anger, confusion, sense of unfairness, etc. But Hell is a warning from God. He is informing us there is such a place. If He wanted to see everyone going to Hell (where we were all headed for anyway since the Fall), why would He die for us? And it took His death on a cross to redeem us. Yet we still walk away.

He said, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, my ways are not you ways." Isaiah 55:8
Nevertheless, questions and struggles are good, they signify oncoming growth. Yes, the Jewish boy may decide to trust His parents. Yet the Jewish boy also has a choice to pray and ask Jesus to reveal the Truth, if Jesus is really the Truth. Do our parents have the absolute say in Truth or does God?

re:

Posted By BLAIX on November 9, 2009

Do our parents have the absolute say in Truth or does God?

** This is the heart of my question regarding the hypothetical Jewish boy. I believe that no one has the absolute say in (capital T) Truth.

No matter what you believe the Truth is, you had to choose to believe that. Do you believe the Bible and what Christians have taught you? Do you believe what your parents teach you to believe (even if that is the same or different)? Or do you make your own decision? I CANNOT accept that this choice could possibly result in myself or anyone else spending eternity being punished for making the wrong decision.

Truth

Posted By ALY on November 10, 2009

Blaix, I totally respect your point of view. I was not raised Christian, I was raised Buddhist, and I struggled with the doctrines of "sin" and "hell" for most of my life. I think it all boils down to: Does God exist?
If the answer is Yes, then it has to be accepted that there is a perfect God who is our source of absolute truth.
If this cannot be accepted, then what logically follows is that anyone can be God, since there is no such thing as "absolute truth", since all truth is personal and subjective and relative.
However, so many sources/religions claim to be the pathway to God.
Jesus says, "I am the Way, the Truth and the Life." Pretty bold statement. He is Truth, we are not. We are not omniscient, we are not all-knowing, we are imperfect, fallen and flawed.
Since we have heard the Gospel of Christ Jesus, then the next crucial step is our response. We may not necessarily agree or disagree immediately, but we can start seeking if this is true.
Christianity is not a legalistic religion, it is a personal relationship with God.

Fairness

Posted By ALY on November 10, 2009

Blaix, reading your previous posts, I think you know a lot about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and I infer that it is the concept of God versus fairness that you are questioning.

Fairness: It is fair for us to go to hell. It is unfair if we do not go to hell. Do you know why? Because we are not the only creation of God, there are angels and dominions and powers that God has created, and we happen to be creation that is FALLEN, wretched, miserable, slaves to sin.
Have you ever lied? White lie? Big fat lie? Once? Ten times? I have. When I come to face-to-face with a perfect Holy God of Truth and Righteousness, I am supposed to face judgment, not have Christ at my side claiming me not guilty! What did I ever do to deserve that? And what is my response following that? Most likely a grateful heart and a change of mind/priorities/lifestyle (as a result of realization of grace).

God being a God of revelation, has shown all creation a new side of Him, which is His Grace. We were created to be a demonstration of God's grace, freely given, for His glory.

Posted By ALY on November 10, 2009

*We happen to be creation that is FALLEN: depraved, rebellious, self-glorifying, wanting to be sufficient apart from God.

Slavation;Eternal Life

Posted By AJORDEN on April 1, 2010

There should be no arguments, viewpoints, or anything because the bible (God's word) will stay the same forever and always. You can have an opinion, but God's word will stay the same. The evidence of you being saved/having salvation is that you have the Holy Spirit, the evidence that you have the Holy spirit is you speaking in tongues. Diverese tongues is a gift and discernment of tongues is another sepereate gift but tongues itself is the evidence that you have the Holy Spirit therefore, salvation;eternal life with God.