Jesus We Talk About Death Or Torment?
Dear Thomas,
Your eighth question was, “Christians say that I along with everyone else who doesn’t accept Jesus Christ as Savior deserve to die. What have I done that is so bad that your God is going to give me the death penalty? And is this really the death penalty, or is it an eternal torture penalty? Is God, because of my doubts about Jesus Christ, going to send me to hell, where I will be tortured forever because I made some mistakes and didn’t believe things correctly while I was here on earth? Is that what a loving God does?”
Let me again summarize a bit of my answer to your first question. As heirs and descendants of Adam, we are all born with the sin problem (being out of relationship with God). Therefore, we are all destined to reap the same consequence because of that inheritance. That inheritance, that consequence is death. The wages, earnings, or results of sin bring about our ultimate death (see Rom. 6:23).
The Bible speaks of our natural inclination toward sin as well as our missing the mark of righteous living. It also speaks of our outright rebellion, choosing wrong instead of doing what we know to be right.
Sin is an attitude of rebellion, an attitude of lawlessness that has been inherent in each human being since the fall. The sin problem has made its home within us.
Again this is what salvation or the rescue is all about (see Rom. 7:24-23). And the one true and overarching sin that leads to all sinning is the decision not to be in a relationship with God.
Therefore, not choosing to be in a relationship with God, not choosing a new birth, a new inheritance, or a new life in Jesus Christ, we are stuck with our old, natural inheritance.
God does not want that. However, He can’t do anything for us unless by our free will we choose otherwise because He is a holy and just God. But if we choose Him, then He can do everything about it! Once we choose to believe, listen to, and follow Jesus Christ, we have a new beginning.
“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting men’s sins against them” (2 Cor. 5:17-19).
In regards to what you think you have done that is bad enough for the death penalty, I can only repeat Romans 3:23, which says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”
And that glory “is like a consuming fire” (Deut. 4:24), with its full expression shown in Revelation 20:14-15, which says, “Then death and Hades [or Sheol, the place of the dead] were thrown into the lake of fire.
The destruction in the lake of fire is the second death. If anyone’s name was not found written in the Book of life [symbolic for God’s full reconciling knowledge of us as having been enlivened with His Spirit], he was thrown into the lake of fire.”
Without our willing acceptance of a new heritage in Jesus Christ, we are doomed. Again this is not performance stuff. There is nothing we can perform through good works or righteous living to eliminate the consequence of our being sinful human beings.
This is a realization of who we are by nature. Our natural thoughts and motives lead to actions derived from that nature. As the apostle Paul says in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” The answer is in the next verse: “Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
How does God through Jesus Christ as Savior rescue us? Let me explain by using an illustration. The apostle Paul uses the phrase you in Christ throughout his letters to the young churches.
The “you in Christ” or “you hidden in Christ” could be compared to putting furniture into a recreational vehicle, Jesus Christ being the vehicle and we the furniture. Wherever the vehicle goes, the furniture goes.
Whatever happens to the vehicle happens to the furniture. The furniture can be said to be hidden in the vehicle. If the vehicle travels to a place of earthly beauty, so does the furniture.
But the furniture has no power or ability of its own to get there; it is totally dependent on the vehicle. The vehicle, however, possesses all the necessary power and ability to reach any destination.
It is never about the furniture’s work or ability but the vehicle’s. Likewise, it is not our work but Christ’s work within us that accomplishes anything of merit.
We are merely the furniture on board, and as such, we now have the opportunity to enjoy many wonderful experiences with the movement of the vehicle.
The operator of the vehicle, the Holy Spirit, guides it and takes care of the furniture within it. I hope that I have not stretched my illustration too far here!
The work of the Holy Spirit, Christ’s Spirit in the hearts of all men willing to listen to the prompting of that Spirit, is what brings about real change in the lives of those who accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
This is the “Christ in you” theme of many of the letters of the apostle Paul in the New Testament. I guess you could say that it is the means by which the operator of the vehicle remolds or reshapes the furniture inside the vehicle. The apostle Paul says in
Through the Holy Spirit, God does this changing from the inside out. It is not a self-help program that requires us to prove ourselves worthy of God’s acceptance.
We (the furniture) are safe and secure as long as we remain in Christ (the vehicle). But not being in Christ will lead to our ultimate destruction from all the elements of sin (our earthbound conditions outside the vehicle).
So how do we talk about the consequences of sin and what happens at death? How do we talk about hell? I will have to admit and I am also sad to say—that hell, according to many Christians, is a place of unending, conscious torment inflicted on the unsaved or damned. For many Christians, this is the traditional and accepted biblical teaching.
Let me say, however, that if you believe that man has an immortal soul that has life by right and cannot be extinguished, and if that soul can’t go to heaven, then it has to go somewhere—that is, unless you go the route of Universalism.
In that belief system, which has many problems and is more Hindu than Christian in thought, everyone, including Satan and his agents, will ultimately be saved.
However, if the nature of man as body and soul is not immortal, then there is another option for the end of Sin and sinners besides an eternal hell of everlasting torment.
It seems to me that the end of sin and sinners must be consistent with a gracious and loving God. If the understanding is not such and makes God ungracious and unloving, then I think it appropriate to reexamine the understanding.
I am sometimes concerned that if I were to ask some professed Christians whether they like God, they might take pause and answer in the negative—that is if they really faced the question squarely and honestly.
Are there things that some of us think about or believe about God that make us shy away from Him, even fear Him? In the back of our minds, are there questions about God that don’t seem to fit with a God that is gracious, forgiving, and loving?
Furthermore, if by God’s eternal power, “we live, move, and have our being” (Acts 17:28), then hell must be sustained by the Sustainer of all things and is not self-existent.
Thus, hell as eternal torment says more about God than it does about the sinner. And what it says about God does not seem to me to be good news.
In my opinion, the biggest issues that might keep nonbelievers from accepting the tenets of the Christian faith are twofold, First, if God is all-powerful, all-knowing, completely loving, and personal, why does He allow pain and suffering to exist?
Secondly, if God is just, loving, and holy, how can He allow evil to exist and even extend that evil into a place of eternal torment? Is there no end to evil in God’s universe?
Certainly, I find that Scripture validates an ultimate end to sin and sinners (see Rev. 21:1). This is very important. There is an end to sin and sinners!
Those Christians who believe certain commonly held views about evil, pain, and suffering should hold those views to the test of1 John 4:18, which says, “Perfect love drives out fear.”
Throughout Scripture, when man encounters God, God says, “Fear not.” In fact, it is one of the most common comments in all Scripture. It’s been used more than 360 times!
Certainly, the purpose of keeping lost in a state of eternal torment can’t be as a reminder to the saints in heaven of what happens to those who violate God’s precepts. If that were so, then heaven would not be a place of freedom.
The saints would forever relate to God out of fear, and God will not accept a relationship or allegiance based on fear. If we are to maintain a love relationship with God, exercising complete freedom of will, then we cannot have fear as part of the equation. Thus, my answers to all your questions must be in the context of human free will and a loving God.
“He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things?” (Rom.8:32). Neither God nor His Son, Jesus Christ, has held hack anything in His offer of salvation to all who will accept it.
In all that God has done, He has never turned around and looked for ways to condemn us. In fact, Romans S:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” God is anxious, willing, and able to save us.
I’ll be the first to admit that the language used by some in the Christian community over the centuries concerning the results of sin and the future for sinners is frightful indeed. An example would be the descriptions of people being tortured by fire forever, never consumed but always alive, unceasingly feeling the physical and mental pain of total helplessness, having no escape ever.
Is God some kind of psychotic sadist who takes great pleasure in torturing the lost forever? Many Christians have indeed labeled God the initiator and sustainer of eternal torment as the ultimate punishment for those who reject His Son, Jesus Christ.
Unlike Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin, Pol Pot, and Saddam Hussein, to name a few well-known men who killed their perceived enemies, God sustains the lives of His enemies.
What a horrible thought! Further, if we believe He is a vengeful God, who inflicts eternal torment, then all of the lost whether our spouses, children, fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, or friends—would experience unbelievable torture, pain, and agony forever.
It is true that many people have come forward to make a confession of faith based on nothing more than the fear of what would happen to them if they did not.
Yet what picture of God does this belief in eternal torment leave for the believer? And after hearing such notions about God’s treatment of sinners, how many other people turn away, declaring they want nothing to do with a God like that?
The concept of everlasting torment has probably produced untold numbers of honest skeptics and unbelievers. Why would anyone want to love and worship a God who allows such a thing to exist forever?
What is the good news about that kind of God, and how can you describe that kind of God as gracious and loving? If God operates His universe on the principles of love, hell as eternal torment just doesn’t fit. It doesn’t make any sense.
Your question, “Is this what a loving God does?” is a very good one. How can a God described as total love provide for, sustain, or even tolerate such a torturous existence?
If Jesus is the expression of the character of God-a God who is truly gracious, kind, loving, and forgiving to those who repent—and at the same time understanding that He condones and perpetuates a place of eternal torment, then the following question arises: How can He be both characters at the same time? To me, this also doesn’t make any sense.
Now let’s suppose there is a place of tormenting hell. Let’s say that a teenager in his formative years is a bit rebellious and does some very dumb things, having no time or use for Jesus Christ even though he had ample opportunity to accept and relate to Jesus as others within his peer group did.
Let’s suppose that this teenager, because of excessive drinking, causes an auto accident and dies along with a couple of his buddies. Prior to this rebellious period, however, the young man was a good kid.
What would you think of a God who would condemn him to eternal torment forever and ever? The mistakes and even crimes don’t seem to match the punishment, do they?
Even in our earthly justice systems, when we sentence people to death or life in prison, there is an eventual end to the punishment. Under the concept of eternal torment, however, there is no end to it.
Would anyone punish a young child who stole a cookie with a life sentence?If so, something would be very wrong with the scale, dimension, and degree of punishment for the crime. But that’s exactly what we accuse God of doing when we propose a place of eternal damnation and torment.
Maybe what bothers me most about the idea of hell as eternal torment is the lack of finality to it. There is no end to the consequence of sin and no end to the sinner who committed the wrong.
Heaven and hell coexist eternally. But realizing the extent to which God went to rescue mankind, the sacrifice He made for man’s redemption, and His promise to make all things new, we can conclude that there must be an end to sin in God’s universe. Otherwise, there is no victory over evil and its consequences.
Belief in a hell of eternal torment implies there is no hope for a reduction of punishment or rehabilitation. So what would be its purpose? Presenting someone with the choice between freedom in a loving environment versus punishment in a place of eternal torment does not seem like much of a free choice.
Depending on how well we describe the eternal torment in all its gory details, the choice is not really free at all. Confessions made in torture chambers certainly lack moral validity.
Comments like “Turn to God or burn in hell” or “Come to Me, or I’ll torture you forever” do not seem to present much of a choice. Vengeance, cruelty, and torture make God anything but gracious and loving. Revelation 21:4 speaks of what heaven and earth will be like when everything is created anew.
Furthermore, if heaven is a place of love, happiness, and tranquility, what happens if those in heaven know that others are suffering eternally in hell? Wouldn’t their happiness and tranquility be lost?
Wouldn’t there be mourning and crying over the loss? Wouldn’t they be cold and uncaring—and thus unloving—if such knowledge had no impact on them? Does God then keep the inhabitants of heaven in a state of ignorance concerning those who are suffering in hell?
Do the memories of our lost loved ones get erased? The stark contrast between a loving, kind, merciful, and forgiving God and a vengeful God who presides over a creation that includes hell as eternal torment is hard to reconcile. How could anyone believe both?
Yes, it is true that God, as expressed in Jesus, does reveal His frustration and righteous anger when an open and free relationship with Him is thwarted.
That is what the cleansing of the temple recorded in Mark 11:15-17 shows us. But when Scripture talks about God’s wrath, it is often followed by the comment that God gave them up, let them go, and gave them over, meaning there was nothing more a righteous God could do. God allowed people to suffer the consequences of their choices and actions.
As mentioned earlier, the concept of eternal torment is either true or not. Hell, as I understand it, is the end of sin and sinners. The scriptural language throughout the Bible expresses an end, a finishing of the problem of sin.
Psalm 37 says that the wicked will be no more, that the wicked will perish, that they will vanish like smoke, and that all sinners will be destroyed. Malachi 4:1 says, “‘Surely the day is coming; it will burn like a furnace.
All the arrogant and every evildoer will be stubble, and that day that is coming will set them on fire,’ says the Lord Almighty. ‘Not a root or a branch will be left to them.’”
Second Thessalonians 1:9 declares, “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power.”
There is also Philippians 3:19, which says, “Their destiny is destruction.” This destruction, this death is an eternal death or “the second death,” as Scripture describes it. It does not refer to our natural or first death (see Rev. 2:11; 20:6, 14-15; 21:8).
We must also examine how language is used in Scripture when the authors are speaking of hell and the end of sin and sinners. Words like forever, everlasting, and eternal, names for hell, such as Sheol, Gehenna, and Hades; and phrases like the smoke of their torment, unquenchable fire, and forever and forever all need proper understanding.
For example, does the word eternal refer to the punishment or the punishment? Is it an ongoing thing or a once-and-for-all event? Is it the result that is eternal, or is it a process?
Once the destruction of the wicked takes place in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14), the outcome will be everlasting, final, and forever. Similarly, Sodom and Gomorrah received a punishment of eternal fire; they were burned to total destruction and annihilation, reduced to mere ashes (Jude 1:7).
Using these two biblical accounts as examples, I feel I can safely say that the effect of the fire—not the fire itself—will last for eternity.
Sheol, translated as hell in the Old Testament, was the place of the dead, righteous and unrighteous alike. It was never described as a place of punishment.
The use of the word Sheol was another way of describing going into the grave, the condition of being in or under the earth, the place where we bury the dead.
Gehenna (or the Valley of Hinnom) was an actual place located southwest of Jerusalem. It was a dry gorge that served as the city dump for dead animals and refuse, things thrown away as rejected and useless.
At this city dump fires burned both day and night, and worms infested the dead carcasses. Jesus used the symbolism of Gehenna to describe the place of final punishment.
It is a picture of total loss, where fire and worms ultimately consume everything. The smoke from Gehenna (symbolic of hell) rose day after day, year after year, century after century, seemingly forever. Jesus said in
Hades was the god of the underworld in Greek mythology. In the translation from Hebrew to Greek, the word Hades was used for the Hebrew Sheol, though the words have quite different meanings and are not equivalent.
However, the Greek god Hades held the souls of the dead in the underworld, so both words refer to the dead as being placed in the earth.
Scripture speaks of death and a second death (Rev. 2:11; 20:14). It also speaks of a consuming fire (see Heb. 12:29). The first death and fire may not mean the total end of someone or something.
But the second death and an all-consuming fire have a finality to their meaning. In other words, those who are among the lost do not exist beyond the second death, and an all-consuming fire will run its course until it has accomplished its full work.
Scripture also uses terms like forever forever and ever. Forever and ever in many cases describe the effect or result of an event that lasts forever, not the event itself.
At times it just means a very long and undetermined time. It can also be hyperbole like Jonah in the whale. Though it may have seemed like forever, he was actually in the whale only three days and nights (Jonah 2:6).
And there are cases where it is literally true like the many places in Scripture where it says, “His [God’s] love endures forever” (1 Chron. 16:34; 2 Chron. 16:41; Psalms 89:1; 106:1; Jer. 33:11).
I think Satan, the Evil One and the Father of Lies, authored the doctrine of eternal torment. If he could get men to believe in eternal torment as God’s punishment for sin, many would find this an appalling view of the nature and character of God, which would result in millions of skeptics, agnostics, and atheists rebelling against such a God.
“You will not surely die,’ the serpent said to the woman” (Gen. 3:4). He still speaks a variation of that same lie. “You may be tortured, you may be thrown into the lake of fire (see Rev. 20 and 21), but you won’t die.”
Our conceptions and understandings of God mold the desire for our spiritual lives. If we think of God as a judgmental, angry, wrathful, and unforgiving tyrant who inflicts eternal torment on sinners with sadistic pleasure, we will likely run away from Him.
Satan often led Israel’s leadership and its people astray. When they didn’t follow God’s directions, Israel then reaped the natural consequences. When they put themselves in the hands of Satan, they reaped the results.
The history of Israel should say something to us. There are natural consequences to what we believe and how we act. Much as Israel did, many in our society today see themselves as victims and look to blame someone else for their problems.
But perhaps they need to remember the words of the prophet Hosea. “You are destroyed, O Israel- your sins have been your downfall” (Hos. 13:9; 14:1). Israel reaped what it had sown, and so too is the case for many today.
Can it be that God destroys no man, referring to man’s free will decisions to be saved or lost? Does man choose his own destruction if he does not respond to God’s love and His promptings for us to be in a relationship with Jesus Christ?
From that relationship, we could say that it is not a matter of “to be or not to be” (as Shakespeare penned) but rather “to love or not to love.” All human beings can follow the path of love irrespective of their belief system, culture, or time in history.
It is Satan’s active work to destroy man’s loving potentiality by whatever means possible. It is God’s active work to seek, find, and heal the lost for the sake of love.
But within the confines of man’s free will, there comes a point where God can do nothing more to awaken and enliven the person’s spirit of love.
Again, if we come to this point, God has no choice but to give us up, to let us go. That is why everyone who is destroyed in the lake of fire (Rev. 20:14-15) will have destroyed themselves.
Many examples from Scripture show us that God allows man to experience the natural consequences of his rebellion. Jeremiah 7:19 says, “‘But am I the one they are provoking?’ declares the Lord. ‘Are they not rather harming themselves?”’ Several verses later Jeremiah 7:29 says, “The Lord has rejected and abandoned this generation that is under his wrath.”
The Lord spoke in Ezekiel 20:25-26 and said, “I also gave them over I let them become.” Micah. 6:16 warns, “Therefore I will give you over to ruin.” Hosea 11:8 says, “‘How can I give you up? How can I hand you over?” Romans 1:18 proclaims, “The wrath of God is being revealed.” Then it goes on to say in verse 24, “Therefore God gave them over.”
Romans 6:23 says, “The wages of sin is death,” and we all reap that at our natural first death and potentially with a second death. This giving us up, letting us go, giving us over, this ultimate separation from God is that second death spoken of in Hebrews 2:9, Romans 5:8, and Revelation 2:11, 20:6, 20:14, and 21:8. It is what the unrepentant sinner will experience in the end.
The second death is what Jesus, our human representative, suffered on the cross on our behalf. Jesus wasn’t killed by God’s wrath. God didn’t throw Him into a lake of fire.
But Jesus did suffer the ultimate consequence of sin, the second death. Jesus willingly died our rightful death as our Savior and substitute. It was the mental agony from being separated from His heavenly Father, His life source, that killed Jesus.
It was the crushing weight and the enormity of sin—your sins, my sins, all humanity’s sins that caused a sense of eternal separation from the Father, the God of love.
On the way to Gethsemane, Jesus said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death” (Matt. 26:38). Even before He experienced the cross, the weight, sorrow, and horror of sin almost destroyed Christ.
His followers and disciples abandoned Him, and Jesus went through the trial and crucifixion totally alone. On the cross, Jesus cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt. 27:46).
The bond between God the Father and Jesus was broken. His mental agony from the weight of sin drew the life out of Jesus. Jesus, the one who showed us how to love, suffered the consequence of mankind’s nonlove.
Jesus experienced hell from His time in the garden of Gethsemane (see Matt. 26:36—27:50) through His death on the cross.
The pain and agony Jesus endured on the cross were not just a result of the destruction of His physical body. There was also the mental agony of taking on the sins of the world.
As a man, as the second Adam, Jesus suffered the results of sin on our behalf. Jesus was faithful all the way to the cross, never on His own did He decide to use His divinity for self-preservation, but in all ways followed the will of His heavenly Father. He did not exert His divine power to escape.
“God made him who had no sin to be sin for us so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Jesus experienced the wrath of God.
Jesus experienced the full measure of God’s displeasure with sin and its consequences, which caused so much pain, suffering, and brokenness in this world.
God gave Jesus up and let Him go. At Calvary, the Godhead—Father, Son with His humanity, and Holy Spirit—was ripped apart! It was horrible mercy that Jesus’ crucifixion on a Roman cross helped hasten His bodily death.
Yes, the unrepentant sinner will suffer unto death. That death, because of one’s decision not to be in a relationship with God results in the second and final death of the sinner.
The sinner in Anguish will recognize the horror and consequence of sin and rebellion. He will recognize the justice of God not allowing him a place in heaven.
Because of his choices and developed character, the sinner will understand his unfitness and lack of desire for a kingdom based on love.
So what actually destroys those who are lost and experience the second death? Lost, mankind used his free will in such a manner as to destroy himself. During life, God wooed each to choose the path of a loving relationship.
Having chosen otherwise and then experiencing the reality of God’s unshielded power, majesty, and glory, life cannot be endured. As stated a number of times before, it is a glory that is likened to a consuming fire as expressed in Hebrews 12:29, which says, “For our God is a consuming fire.” Just as Jesus’ death was hastened by the cross, the death of lost humanity will be hastened by the lake of fire (see Rev. 20:14-15).
Besides destroying lost humanity, Satan, and his entire evil angelic host, that fire will also destroy every trace of sin as well as purify the earth. All the while God will weep over all those who chose to be lost just as Jesus wept over unrepentant Jerusalem as recorded in Matthew 23:37.
There will be nothing more that God can do but to let them go and give them up. Unrepentant sinners will have destroyed themselves by their own free will choices.
Yes, there is a literal fire in Revelation 20. This consuming fire rids the earth of every trace of sin; the earth is fully purged and purified.
Such is the end of sin and sinners. The great controversy between God’s government based on love and Satan’s government of self-centeredness and unloving rebelliousness thus comes to an end.
We do not love and worship a God who tortures the lost for eternity. We do not love and worship a God who murders the lost in righteous anger.
Rather, we worship a God of love who cries, a God who is grieved and angry at the unnecessary loss of those who choose to walk the path of self-destruction.
In the end sin in all its forms will show the universe its destructive nature and power. Sin will work itself to its own destruction.
After that, sin and death will be no more. Through the incarnation, life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the God of love proves the victory of God’s love forever.
Each human being has free will. Each of us makes choices that determine our eternal destiny. Can I truly love this God, and do I have the desire to be in a relationship with Him through eternal ages? All have an invitation, and all have a choice.
The truth is that even as the evidence shows, God is indeed worthy of our choosing! “The truth [about God and Jesus Christ] will set you free” (John 8:32).
It will set you free to fall totally in love with God. The rescue plan is available and complete. It is your individual choice. You are free to choose. What will your choice be?
Your friend,
Matt