The Skeletons in God's Closet: The Mercy of Hell, the Surprise of Judgment, the Hope of Holy War

by Joshua Ryan Butler

The gospel story revolves around God’s redemptive work in the world. The God who calls for our complete submission to his reign is not an abstract, arbitrary, ambiguous god; he is our world’s redeeming King. Our obedience is framed as a worshipping response to the experience of God’s redemptive love.

God’s purpose is not to get us out of earth and into heaven; it’s to reconcile heaven and earth.

For the world to be reconciled to God, it must be reconciled from the divisive and destructive powers that have caused the problem in the first place. It must be rescued from hell.

To long for the dawning of the light is to long for the casting out of darkness. To hope for the resurrection of life is to hope for the banishment of death. To dream for the healing of the body is to dream for the excising of the disease.

Hell gains entrance into God’s good world through us. We are the agents of destruction, the architects of demolition. God is not the architect of hell, the creator of its soul-destroying power; we are. We unleash its wildfire flame into God’s good world.

By locating the vices of hell in the human heart, Jesus has leveled the playing field and identified our need not first and foremost as better behavior, but rather as reconciliation with God.

We should beware of being too self-congratulatory. Our implicit moral applause can mask and cover over the sin that lives inside us. It can deceive us from recognizing the power of hell that has its savage hold on our “civilized” hearts.