Is hell real? What is it like? Is it really eternal? What does Jesus teach about hell? This article answers these questions and more, discussing the doctrine of hell from the Scriptures.

2008. 8 pages. Transcribed by Diana Bouwman. Transcription started at .

What about Hell? Heaven Series: Part Seven

Read Luke 16:19-31

One has said very recently these words about the concept of hell:

I consider the concept of hell as endless torment in body and mind an outrageous doctrine, a theological and moral enormity, a bad doctrine of the tradition which needs to be changed. How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon his creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God. Clark Pinnock, The Destruction of the Finally Impenitent, 1992

Does hell exist? Is it somehow incompatible with our understanding of the love of God and the justice of God? Is it somehow a monstrosity and enormity doctrine which is an embarrassment to us? Is it a hindrance to our mission in the world? Is it a hindrance to our being salt and light? Is it a hindrance as we seek to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ, and we have this elephant in the room that is in the corner, and we do not really want to speak about it? Is it there? Does it exist? Is it real? And if so, what is it like? What is it not like? How should we respond to it? How should we use it or how should we not use it?

This writer, a modern evangelical, considers (and many have considered in the last several decades more and more, as we live in a pluralistic society and we live in a very tolerant age) the doctrine of hell as one doctrine that we can very easily get rid of. After all, it is explained in metaphors, as we see here, and parables and non-literal language and stories. After all, it somehow is a hindrance. We are embarrassed by it. It is an affront to our neighbours. Eternal punishment only because I temporarily live a life that was not pleasing to God? Now I am going to reap an eternal punishment? And what about this language of everlasting fire? What about this language of the worm that never dies? What about this language of outer darkness, this great chasm that exists? Is that real? And if it is, how do we explain that? How do we understand that? How is it true that someone can burn forever and not be consumed? How is it true and how can it be real that a worm can eat our flesh like a dead corpse but never eat us completely (Isaiah 66:24)?

How is it that the person is in everlasting, outer darkness, but yet is desiring the one who he sees beyond this chasm? He calls out to Abraham. [How can he] look over that great gulf, and the rich man sees Lazarus and Abraham there, if it is outer darkness? “The Bible really is just contradictory. It is really using words that do not make much sense. It is really not of much use for the Church of Jesus Christ” is what this writer says and as he goes on to describe in this book.

So what do we think about hell then? We want to think about it, obviously, very seriously. It is a doctrine we do not hear much about, at least explicitly. It is a doctrine that might seem to be offensive and might be embarrassing. It is a doctrine that is somehow hidden from us and somehow we are unaware of it. We have a very difficult challenge ahead of us in terms of understanding it. But we also need to confront our own misconceptions about what hell is as we seek to communicate it in a right way. So thinking about hell, the question of our sermon is: If heaven exists, what about hell?

Hell Exists🔗

We have already established that heaven does exist. We saw that in various texts, such as Ecclesiastes 3: God has placed in the heart of all mankind eternity. There is something beyond the grave. And we understand and describe that something and that someplace and that experience and that realm and that existence in terms of heaven and of hell. There is something beyond the grave for those who are beloved of God (we call that heaven), and there is a place that exists for those who are not loved by God and who do not love God in return (we call that hell). If heaven exists, what about it? Well, like heaven, hell does exist.

Jesus Teaches that Hell Exists🔗

If you read the Gospel stories yourselves, you find that Jesus preaches more about hell than he ever preached about heaven. There are more narratives and stories and parables and chapters and verses where Jesus describes hell and the torments of it than he ever describes the doctrine of the love of God. “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16): We turned that text into the very central core of Jesus’ preaching. We put the love of God against the justice and the wrath and the anger and the jealousy of God! We somehow think (and we have been taught and ingrained to believe) that God has a wonderful plan for our lives. We say that and we put it on bumper stickers and we invite people to gatherings with that hope, not really understanding that the question should be, “Does God have a wonderful plan for your life?” That is how Jesus would have approached such a topic!

The love of God and the justice of God must go together. And we see that in Jesus' life. We see that in his ministry. Not only does he gather to himself the outcast, the lame, the stranger, the weirdo, the weak, the Gentile, the sinner, but he rebukes and he proclaims hell to the self-righteous. He condemns those who would find salvation in themselves. He shows his ire and his wrath in overturning the money changers. He did not go to them saying, “Do you understand that God loves you and has a plan for you? Do you not understand the enormity and the immensity of the love of God?” No, he goes to them and he condemns them! He reveals God's love and he reveals God's justice both. But I challenge you and I encourage you to read the Gospels—what an edifying challenge that is! Simply put two columns on a piece of paper, and on the one side put “heaven” and on the other side put “hell.” And just mark down the stories, the verses, the chapters, the parables, all the strange sayings of Jesus about heaven and of hell. I guarantee you will find much, much, much more about hell.

It exists! Jesus taught about it; he proclaimed it; he spoke of it; he denounced people on the basis of it. Just like heaven exists, there is a hell. It is a place. Remember, we described heaven like a place (again, using this human language to describe something that is beyond our imagination). Heaven is a place. God created it. It is a state of being. It is an existence. It is a realm. However we describe it, it is something. It is there, wherever that place might be. In the same way, God created hell. He created hell (we know from Scripture) for the devil and for his servants. He created heaven for those who are his servants. “Enter into my kingdom…Blessed are those…” he says. And as he welcomes them into his kingdom upon their death: “Enter into the inheritance prepared for you from the foundation of the world.” In the same way, he sends those into outer darkness, into eternal torment, flame and worm, a place prepared for the devil and his servants. Similar terms and similar descriptions.

The Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus🔗

We see it here in our story in Luke 16. Here Jesus speaks in a parable, and we must understand that we cannot take every detail of a parable and somehow apply it one to one to some other physical or some tangible reality. A parable is meant to convey a point. It is meant to be an illustration; it is meant to be a story. But yet what it says is real and true and it is based upon reality. It is not simply a story like we would tell a story, completely made up, but it is meant to convey a main idea.

Here we find that Jesus in this story is speaking to the Pharisees, and in this context of Luke he is alternating between speaking to his disciples and then to the Pharisees. He comforts his disciples and then he condemns the Pharisees. He speaks to those who found their righteousness in Jesus Christ and he condemns those who found their righteousness in the law or themselves. And so it was he gives a story.

There was this rich man. We often call him Dives (that is the Latin term for “rich man”). There is Dives, this rich man, and Lazarus. There is this great chasm between these two places. The one place is called Abraham's bosom; the other place is called Hades. One place is a place of blessing; one place is a place of torment. He is not trying to say to us that there literally is a compartment and that there is a valley in between those two places and there is another compartment, and that people can see each other from the other side, and that there is water in one place and they are just desiring to get a little taste of water because there are so many flames on the other place.

After all, he says that [Lazarus] was in Abraham's bosom. What does that mean? Again it is a parable. It is metaphorical language. He literally was not in Abraham's chest, in his bosom! Saying that somebody was in Abraham's bosom is to describe being close to Abraham, and to be close to Abraham means that you are a friend of Abraham. To be a friend of Abraham means that you are a friend of God. Just like Jesus is described as being in the bosom of the Father in John 1:18, meaning he was near and in intimate, close fellowship in love and in unity from all of eternity with his Father, in the same way, this rich man sees Lazarus who was “reclining” upon Abraham. It is not meant to say literally he was in Abraham's bosom/breast. It is not meant to say that there are these two compartments and there is a great chasm between. It is meant to be an illustration. There are two realms of existence.

One is where Abraham is, and to be where Abraham is is to be a child of God. And one is where there is torment and flame and destruction. That is where those go who reject Christ and his gospel. Jesus, as he illustrates for us using this parable condemning the Pharisees, is saying to the Pharisees, “You must now believe in Christ.” That is why he ends up with that wonderful appeal as Christ speaks in the person of Abraham: “If they do not believe Moses and the prophets, if they do not believe their Old Testament, they will not even believe if someone is raised from the dead!” Even if Lazarus was arisen and went to the five brothers of Dives, even if Christ was raised from the dead, they would not believe.

So Jesus speaks about the existence of a twofold reality beyond the grave: heaven and hell. Read the Bible! Read Paul. Read the Old Testament. You will see this; it is everywhere. And it takes wonderful mental and hermeneutical gymnastics to get out of this. If there is no hell, there is no heaven. If there is no place of punishment in this text, there is no place for Lazarus to go to, because they are on parallel tracks. To speak of one is to speak of the other, and vice versa. To speak of blessedness we must know what condemnation is, and to speak of judgment we must know what mercy and grace is. That is what Jesus is teaching us. Heaven exists; therefore, hell exists.

Hell is Eternal🔗

And like heaven, hell is eternal. Hell will last forever. And just like heaven is a state of conscious existence in the presence of God, so too hell is a state of eternal conscious existence away from God (and I will come back to that in just a moment). But just like there are those who deny the existence of hell on the basis of the love of God, or the justice of God, or the mission of the church, or just in basic terms its offensiveness, there are those who deny the fact that hell is eternal. They teach a doctrine of what is called annihilationism. They say, “Well, we must take the Bible at its word, we must take Jesus at face value, and there is a place of hell…but it is unjust if God eternally condemns and punishes people for temporal, earthly existence and their sins.” So they teach a doctrine of annihilationism.

Annihilationism🔗

There are two forms of this doctrine. In the first place, there are those who would say that at death itself the person ceases to exist. They are annihilated, and that is hell. There is no more life beyond the grave. “Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die” would be their slogan. On the other hand, there are those who would take it a little more literally and a little more seriously and say there is a place beyond the grave for those who reject the gospel of Jesus Christ, and they suffer and they are punished for a small period of time, and then they are snuffed out and they are annihilated. They cease to exist.

And their main proof is the very language of our text and another text like it, where there is a description of hell/Hades/this place of torment as being a place where there are flames. There is fire. That is why Dives cries out just looking for the smallest drop of water to cool his tongue. It is hot. The Bible describes it using the metaphor of flame. And those who deny the eternal existence of hell would say, “Think about the metaphor of fire.” What is a fire? If we set fire to this building, being mostly wood it would be burned, and the fire would consume all the existing materials. And then once the oxygen was used up and once the materials were utterly destroyed, the flame would smoulder out. Fire consumes. It would consume this building. It would eat up all of the existing fuel. And then it would cease. It is temporary; it does not last forever. It is a punishment they say, but it is not an eternal punishment.

Eternal Fire🔗

But doesn’t the Lord Jesus Christ in very fearful terms (Matthew 18:8 is one example) speak of that fire as eternal fire? It is unlike any fire we have ever seen. He uses the metaphor of fire because it does consume. It is a punishment. But yet it is eternal. It exists then, and it is eternal (and there are many more texts which say the same).

Hell Has Effects🔗

In the third place, like heaven, it has effects. This life leads to something, Jesus is saying to the Pharisees. This life is the cause, and the effect is hell. Something exists beyond. And Dives, this rich man, understands that. He cries out to Abraham, “Just send word somehow to my father's house. There are five more brothers there and they do not believe, and I know that if someone just would go there and tell them, they would believe.” Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees here. They do not believe. They have the law and the prophets! “Pharisee” means to be set apart, to be holy, to be sanctified. They are the experts in the Word of God and the law! Yet they do not believe.

Jesus speaks here about Dives, saying, “Even if he was raised,” but of course, Jesus alludes to his own resurrection. No one will be convinced if someone even rises from the dead. They scoffed and they mocked him. His body was not found and they made up stories, saying, “His disciples took him away!” “He only passed out upon the cross, and he was laid in a tomb and he was covered up in the coolness of the tomb, and they revived him! He swooned.” “He never rose in the first place! He died, and that was the end of it.”

But heaven and hell have effects, because hell exists and because hell is eternal, as I mentioned.

Fire🔗

Jesus speaks about the fires of hell as being eternal fire (Matthew 18:8). That fire consumes its object; it engulfs its object. What that imagery/metaphor of fire is meant to convey to us is that God’s wrath will be surrounding that person. The punishment of God will never be exhausted. It is not meant to say that there are literal flames. The movie that John Hagee made a little while ago and the Left Behind movies where they show people burning in flames—it is not real. It is a symbol; it is a metaphor; it is meant to convey something. Just like fire engulfs and consumes, the wrath of God, which is like fire in the Scripture, engulfs and consumes. But it is never exhausted. That is why it is unlike fire. The fires of hell are eternal because God's wrath is eternal.

Worms🔗

The Scriptures in Mark 9:47-48 describe hell with this metaphor: “A worm that never dies.” A body would be laid in a shallow grave and it would decay, lying there in death, and eventually worms would make their way and insects would eat away, and eventually it would be eaten away. That would be the end of it. Jesus describes hell in more fearful terms. Like a worm that eats and devours human flesh in the grave, hell is like a worm that never ceases. It always is picking and pecking, so to speak.

The point is that God's wrath, his judgment, the suffering, the punishment does not end. That is the point. There will not be literal worms covering people, because after all, how could it be true that there would be fire there and the fire would not consume the worms?

Darkness🔗

And the third effect of hell in the Scriptures is this (Matthew 8): It describes hell as darkness. Now, how could there be eternal flame there but yet it is also described as darkness? How could there be worms there but the worms are not consumed by the fire? The point of all that is to say these are metaphors. God's wrath consumes and never ceases; like the worm, God's punishment of those people never ends; and outer darkness as far away as you can get, Jesus says in Matthew 8. “Send them out!”

What is darkness? To be in darkness is to be outside of the presence of God—God's merciful, God's gracious presence. “The Lord make his face to shine upon you”—that is the language of blessedness in Scripture. “The light of the nations” we sang. Jesus Christ came to a dark place and enlightened all those who trust in his name. To be in darkness is to be away from God. It is to be far from him. And to describe hell as outer darkness is to say that these people will be so far away from the mercy, the grace and the love of God. There will be no second chance. There will be no opportunity to trust and to believe. There will be no rest. There will be no common grace. There will be nothing to withhold the judgment of God. Because God will be there, but he will be there in wrath. They will never know that there is even the hint of an opportunity to embrace Jesus Christ and his gospel.

It is fearful, beloved. Fire and worms and darkness eternally. It is a place that exists. There is no relief from it. There is no way to get from there to there, Jesus says in this parable. You cannot go back and forth. There is this great chasm between the two. And this life matters! It means something! Understand that.

Hell and Evangelism🔗

How can we use this, then? Hell exists like heaven. We want to understand it in its symbolic metaphorical ways, to understand the wrath, the judgment, the punishment of God that lasts forever, fearfully. How can we use this doctrine to our benefit and to the benefit of our neighbours?

What We Should Not Do🔗

Well, in the first place, we do not want to describe to our neighbours in the ways like Jonathan Edwards or Dante’s Inferno, describing there being literally a flame of fire in a great pit of flame, and people are hanging over that flame like hanging from one spider web. You have probably read the sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. If you haven’t, don’t. There are not literal flames there scorching the behinds of people. It is not like you are hanging over that with a little rope or a spider web or something, as if just one little flame might sear that rope and they might fall in. This is offensive to people! This is what makes us seem like complete idiots! The offense is hell. But we don't want to greaten the offense by describing it in overly literalistic ways that would make us seem like utter fools. The gospel is foolish. Hell is foolish. Let us not increase that foolishness.

In the second place, we should not speak about hell and the punishment and the condemnation that God has there for eternity (remember, the fire never ceases, the worm never dies, it is outer darkness, there is no light, and there is no gospel) [in a way that] conveys the message that somehow God is pleased or God is delighted. Again, these are ways of describing hell that I know Reformed people [use], Edwards being one. That God is pleased and is filled with holy pleasure in the punishing of his wicked people forever. Does not the Scriptures also teach us that God does not desire the death of the sinner? Does not the Scripture say to us that God desires the salvation of all men? Does it not say his patience endures forever? He desires their salvation in some way. We could say, of course, his justice is executed there. We can say that God's wrath is poured out there. And God is God; we cannot divide God into parts and pieces. But yet to speak of God as being delighted and sitting upon his throne with a smile upon burning people forever is offensive, and needlessly so. That is how we should not use it.

What We Should Do🔗

When we understand what hell is, hell should be a source of prayer for those who do not believe. Read Romans 9 and 10. Paul agonized. His countrymen did not believe in Christ Jesus as the Messiah. The Jews did not embrace the gospel. They sought a righteousness of their own, not in Christ. And Paul wept for those people. He was anguished at that. “How can they not see it? It is so clear!” [He thinks that] if he just goes there (as Dives says), they will believe! We know God’s eternal election is one thing, but yet what is revealed to us is that understanding what hell is should cause us to be grateful, of course, but it should cause us to fall upon our knees and pray for the unbelief of those people who live right next door to you.

There should also be a source of sorrow that is related to that. Jesus wept. He was sorrowful, knowing that there would be those who would not allow themselves to be embraced. He cries over Jerusalem like a mother bird, he says, to gather them together, but they would not. It should cause us to be sorrowful. It should cause us to pray.

And it should spur us on to be a witness. Just like there is here the metaphor of a great chasm between these two places, Revelation 22 describes the final ultimate reality of the new heavens and new earth, and then it describes the new heavens and the new earth as having a great wall around it. And just outside that wall are those who are unholy and unbelievers who are perishing. These metaphors, again, describe for us not the fact that there is a literal brick wall there or a wall of gold, but it is meant to convey to us this reality. There is a distinction that is made and that should cause and move us and affect us to do something: to pray, to witness, to do anything that we possibly can to give this message of the gospel. Because there will be no message of the gospel in hell!

May we then, as we think about hell, pray, be diligent, be sorrowful, be compassionate, be filled with tears even for those who are lost. And may we be grateful that God has snatched us out of that fire. That He has redeemed us, and that he will raise us in bodies that are immortal that will not be eaten by that worm. And that he has enlightened our eyes and that we will live in the light of his countenance forever and forever. Because there will be no sun in that place, for the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are the temple, and they are that marvellous light.

Add new comment

(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.
(If you're a human, don't change the following field)
Your first name.

Plain text

  • No HTML tags allowed.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.