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

by Joshua Ryan Butler

God is good. That is the central message and driving theme of this book. Not just a little bit good. Not just partially good. Not just sometimes good and sometimes not. But extravagantly, mercifully, gloriously, better-than-we-can-ask-or-imagine good.

Heaven’s primary counterpart in the gospel story is not hell; it is earth. Heaven and earth are threaded throughout the biblical drama of creation, rebellion, and redemption.

Jesus’ word for hell is Gehenna. If you’re reading through the New Testament and you come across the word hell, chances are it’s the Greek word Gehenna translated into English for our modern ears.

If God’s good kingdom is to be established upon the earth, a kingdom characterized by holiness, justice, and love; and if evil is a divisive, aggressive parasite that seeks to do violence to God’s benevolent purposes for his world; then something must be done about evil, for it will not be content to coexist in the New Jerusalem as a disgruntled but quiet roommate. If God is to redeem, evil must be expelled and a boundary placed to protect God’s holy city from evil’s imperial intentions.

On the one hand, the gospel is rooted in a freedom for: freedom for God, freedom for others, and freedom for the self. On the other hand, sin is rooted in a freedom from: freedom from God, from others, and from the self.

We tend to emphasize witness as something individuals do, but in the New Testament the church herself is the primary witness to God’s coming kingdom. Our collective life as the people of God is a witness to the watching world: how we treat each other in community, our neighbors in mission, and, above all, God in worship. This is, first and foremost, the way in which we demonstrate the kingdom of God to the world.

Jesus calls us, in the midst of Babylon, to create ethical businesses that care well not only for investors, but also for employees and the local communities where our products are made. Jesus calls us, in the midst of Babylon, to be conscientious consumers and to pay attention to where our products are coming from.

God’s mission is not to pluck a few folks from a few nations out of the human social body and into an acultural kingdom. It is to heal the human social body by reconciling the nations to himself and through himself to one another in his multicultural, international kingdom.

Resurrection is not a trite, pithy statement on a Hallmark card sent to sugarcoat a suffering world’s terminal wound. Resurrection is the raising of life that sin has destroyed, out of death and into the glorious presence of God. Resurrection is the power of new creation breaking into the destruction of the old. It is the raising of the dead to stand before our world’s Redeemer.