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February 22 - April 8, 2023
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. There
The skeleton in God’s closet? Hell is an underground torture chamber. Its location (underground), purpose (torture), and construction (chamber) all speak to a particular storyline where God is maligned as a vicious and vindictive villain. Is this the way the Bible talks about hell?
In the next few chapters, we will confront this caricature. As we explore the New Testament, we will find that (a) hell’s location is not underground, (b) its purpose is not torture, and (c) its construction is not a chamber. These characteristics are not only a little bit off; they are in many ways completely backward.
In the next few chapters, we will confront this caricature. As we explore the New Testament, we will find that (a) hell’s location is not underground, (b) its purpose is not torture, and (c) its construction is not a chamber. These characteristics are not only a little bit off; they are in many ways completely backward.
The point? 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. If we want to confront the caricature of hell and reclaim the photograph, we must reframe it back within this biblical story of heaven and earth. We should first ask, “What is the biblical story of heaven and earth?” And as we shall see in the pages to come, when this broader story is in place, the logic of hell begins to arise as a smaller subplot in a broader story that proclaims loudly and clearly the
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The third and final observation from Genesis’ introduction: hell is mentioned nowhere. It is not part of God’s creation. Genesis does not say, “God created heaven and earth . . . and hell.” God created heaven and earth, a good creation, a glorious world. Hell does not show up on the scene until later. We shall see in later chapters that sin, death, and hell, when they do enter the story, are presented not as good things created by God but rather as invasive intruders into God’s good world.
Together, they constitute an “anti-creation” force, not as substantive things in themselves so much as parasites that prey upon the good creation God has made in an attempt to devour it and destroy it, to drag creation back down into the nothingness, the darkness, the void from which it came. But this is jumping ahead.
Destined for Reconciliation This brings us to the third and final movement of the gospel story’s plotline: heaven and earth are destined for reconciliation. Jesus went to the cross, Colossians tells us, to reconcile heaven and earth: God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in [Jesus], and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross.
God’s purpose is not to get us out of earth and into heaven; it’s to reconcile heaven and earth.
Notice the direction of movement. God is not bringing us up out of earth into heaven. He is bringing heaven “down” into earth, through his holy city. God’s purpose is to redeem the earth, not to abandon it. His goal is to heal the rupture, not to let it win. God’s promise is not to whisk us out of earth into heaven, but rather to usher in his heavenly kingdom to reign on earth with us forever.
God is on a mission to get the hell out of earth. Ironically, this phrase can be applied to both of the stories, but within each story it means something dramatically different.
God is grieved by the sin, death, and power of hell that afflicts his world, and is sacrificially involved in the removal of all that destroys and alienates his world from himself.
In the gospel story, heaven and earth are currently torn by sin. Our world is being ravaged by the destructive power of hell. Sin has unleashed it into God’s good world, and God is on a mission to get it out, to reconcile heaven and earth from hell’s evil influence to himself through the reconciling life of Christ. The time is coming when God’s heavenly kingdom will come down to reign on earth forever, when Jesus will cast out the corrosive powers of sin, death, and hell that have tormented his world for so long. This is the right story.
This gospel story begins to give rise to some radical contrasts with the caricature. As we will see in the coming chapters, God is not the one who unleashes hell’s destruction; we are (chapter 2). Hell’s location is not “underground” but rather “outside the kingdom” (chapter 3). Hell is not a place God creates to torture people, but a power God excludes to protect the flourishing of the new creation (chapter 4). Its construction is not a chamber God locks from the outside, but a coffin we latch from the inside through our desire for freedom from God (chapters 5 and 6).
WHAT IS THE BIGGER STORY HELL FITS INTO? God’s mission is not to get us out of earth and into heaven or hell, but rather to reconcile heaven and earth from the destructive power of sin, death, and hell. This gives rise to a radically different understanding of hell from the caricature.
It was heart-crushing to meet some of these girls who had been rescued and imagine what they had been through. The horror of the trauma inflicted upon them still haunts me today. And they were but a few survivors affected by a much bigger problem: the United Nations estimates nearly two million children are enslaved in the sex trade today.1 The power of hell is indeed alive and well in our world.
But the seed of a realization was growing inside me: there are some things I want out of God’s world forever.
We are the ones, not God, who unleash the destructive power of hell in the world.
When my coworker gossips in the neighboring cubicle, she is more than being annoying, she is breathing hell into the office.
Our sin, if left unchecked, can burn up the world. And James tells us the origin of this fire is hell. 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.
In the Gospels, Jesus relates the power of hell to three primary issues: lust, violence, and religious hypocrisy.
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.
But it is much easier to not steal food when you are well fed, to not covet your neighbor’s cow when you have two cars, and to maintain the appearance of respectability when you are the beneficiary of a wealthy society that enjoys relative stability. 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.
Raising the Bar Jesus’ doctrine of hell is good news not because he is less serious about sin, but because he is more. Jesus doesn’t lower the bar; he raises it—and reveals that despite my résumé, I am a cruel, lascivious con artist. In so doing, Jesus paves the way for grace.
Our own sin has left a trail of tears through our tragic and traumatized history. We have brought all the horror of hell to planet Earth. And Jesus is going to kick it out.
I have met other Christians who are passionately active in ending sex trafficking on a social level while being womanizers and greedy consumers in their personal lives. This does not fly with Jesus.
WHERE DOES THE POWER OF HELL COME FROM? We are the ones, not God, who unleash the destructive power of hell in the world.
The Idols Are Cruel Idolatry and injustice are interconnected in the Valley of Hinnom, not two separate realities. Forsaking God resulted not in a more peaceful society, but in a more brutal one. As Israel turned away from God, she turned in upon herself. God doesn’t just have a problem with the infamous valley because he’s personally offended; he has a problem because he loves the world its powers seek to destroy.
If so, then inside Jerusalem’s walls were light and life; outside the city walls were the smoldering fires of the local dump, burning the rubble as the sun went down into the night. If this tradition is right, then when Jesus says God is coming to cast sin outside his city and into the Valley of Hinnom, he is saying God will take sin out with the rest of the trash. Even if this tradition is not right, however, the same general implications apply from its Old Testament history.
God excludes sin from his kingdom because of his goodness, not in opposition to or in spite of it.
The kingdom is reestablished in the land. Those who flee outside the city do so, for the most part, of their own accord. They realize their glory days are over. That life under the new order of things is not for them. Their character stands opposed to the justice and righteousness that mark the life of the new kingdom. Yet there are some who try to stay. The unjust governor and his cohorts seek to work out a bargain, a compromise, with the good king.
Inside is intimacy with God given graciously; outside is the self-inflicted darkness of his absence.
Sin will not be content until it has destroyed the world. Rage seeks after a person to cut down. Greed hunts for resources to devour. Lust is on the lookout for a body to objectify. Pride is on the prowl for an opportunity at self-exaltation. Imperial ambition preys upon the peace of the neighborhood.
Peace treaties don’t work. As was true with Nazi Germany in World World II, attempts at appeasement are doomed by the very logic of evil’s imperial intentions. Ground that is given merely feeds its insatiable lust for further dominion. Sin is an aggressor that continually thirsts after more and will deceive to get its way. If hell had its way, it would consume all of heaven and earth; it would devour and destroy until there was nothing left but the chaotic oblivion of its own self-determined annihilation.
Herein lies the chief irony of sin: it wants distance from God, it desires autonomy from the Creator, but in this dist...
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Hell is not a place God creates to torture people, but a power that God contains to protect the overflowing life of his new creation.
It is easier to see how God is motivated by mercy in redemption. God does not have to redeem his world, but he does. The Creator is under no obligation or requirement: he could be good in and of himself and leave us to our own devices. But he doesn’t. Redemption is an act of glorious goodness, of gracious generosity, of undeserved mercy and kindness. “While we were yet sinners, Christ died for
God in His mercy made The fixèd pains of Hell. That misery might be stayed, God in His mercy made Eternal bounds and bade Its waves no further swell. God in His mercy made The fixèd pains of Hell.14
Hell is not a place God creates to torture sinners, but a power God excludes to protect the robust vitality of his kingdom. God’s purpose of containment, in radical contrast to the caricature, reveals a motive of mercy.
Along these lines, some have found God’s most merciful option to be a universalism in which God sends unrepentant rebels to hell to purge them of their sin until all are eventually redeemed into his kingdom. Once again, however, there is a major common-sense problem with this. It is like God saying, “Marry me or I’ll lock you in the basement until you learn to love me.” We know from common courtesy and everyday experience that the most mature response to a rejected marriage proposal is not to abduct the unrequited lover and lock her in your basement, but simply to let her go her own way.
Universalism
WHY DOES HELL EXIST? God’s purpose is not torture, but protection: God contains the destructive power of sin to protect the flourishing of his new creation.
DOES JESUS’ PARABLE OF LAZARUS AND THE RICH MAN DEPICT THE “UNDERGROUND TORTURE CHAMBER”? No, it depicts God’s coming Great Reversal for the world and confronts the destructive power of our sin.
HOW DOES HELL WORK? Hell is not a chamber God locks from the outside against our repentant will, but a closet we latch from the inside through our unrepentant will, in our desire for freedom from God, freedom from others, and freedom from the self—the nature of sin.
The caricature of the “underground torture chamber” is grounded in a storyline and a proclamation that are both heresy.
A Brood of Vipers Jesus declared to the political and religious leaders of his day that if one of them caused a child to stumble, “it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea”1 because of God’s coming judgment against them. I don’t know that I have a firmer picture in my mind of causing a child to stumble than ripping him from his family, forcibly chopping off part of his genitals, cutting out his grandfather’s tongue, raping him, and murdering his fiancée.
Religious hypocrisy is one of the primary things Jesus associates with the power of hell. And God is going to kick it outside his city when he returns.
Jesus says God’s arrival will be a day of astonishment and reversals.11 The first become last and the last first.12 Many who call Jesus “Lord” and did great things in his name are told he never knew them, and many who never recognized him are told that he’s known them all along.13 Many who thought they were in are cast outside, and many who didn’t seem to recognize there was an in or an out to begin with are welcomed with open arms.
We need God’s judgment because we have a hard time seeing beneath the surface to the way things really are. “People look at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”
Jeremiah’s people have endured a trail of broken treaties, frequently seeing their lands strip-mined, their forests uprooted, and their waters polluted. Practically all nuclear dumping in the United States is done on reservations—with accompanying elevated cancer rates. Native Americans and other minority populations endure the brunt of industrial pollution in impoverished urban neighborhoods, causing asthma, rashes, and the like—especially among children and the elderly.21
Creation is in bondage; but salvation is coming. God’s good blessing and sin’s destructive pull are the tension we live in today.
