Reverend Jonathan Waits
Sermon: Is Hell Real? (2 Thessalonians 1:3-12)
Date: November 26, 2023
Almost 20 years ago, former Vice President Al Gore released a documentary movie about climate change whose title introduced a phrase into the public lexicon that has never left since. The film was called, An Inconvenient Truth. The idea was that Gore was presenting the public with a whole bunch of information about the state of the climate that was true even if we didn’t want it to be. Whether you happen to agree with anything he said or not, the movie undeniably made a huge impact on western culture. (It also made Gore exceedingly wealthy.) Also, whether you happen to agree with his position on that particular issue or not, it is nonetheless the case that there are some things that are true whether or not we want them to be true.
For instance, I will never dunk a basketball on a 10-foot goal. Now, I can dominate on an 8-foot goal, but a 10-foot goal isn’t happening. How about another: If you are under the age of 40, you are never going to leave the Earth’s atmosphere. Here’s a fun one: Try as you might, you are never going to make everyone happy. Some of you needed to come today just to hear that. This one hits pretty close to home for me: The Kansas City Royals are terrible. But don’t you worry. I’m not alone in the world of sporting misery because the Carolina Panthers are terrible. How about one more? There will one day be a place we currently call Hell where anyone who ultimately chooses to reject God’s offer of eternal life through Jesus Christ will spend the rest of eternity.
On that happy thought, this morning, we are in the final installment of our series, Confident in the Face of Hard Questions. For the last six weeks now and running parallel with the teaching series our adult Sunday school classes have been working through, we have been asking and seeking to answer some of the hardest questions that get asked about the Christian faith. Along the way, we have indeed wrestled our way through some incredibly thorny challenges ranging from the nature of truth itself to what the existence of suffering says about God to just who Heaven is really for anyway. These are the kinds of issues for which most of us don’t spare a whole lot of careful thought on the average day, but which can suddenly and unexpectedly throw us completely off track in our efforts to follow Jesus faithfully and well and to encourage those around us to do the same. The goal of this series has been to give all of us a chance to think through some of these questions together in the hopes of making sure we are prepared to give an answer should they ever come up.
Well, last week we stood face to face with one of the tougher questions of the bunch. We took on the culturally popular idea that ultimately everyone is going to go to Heaven. This is related to the common cultural belief that good people go to Heaven. The thinking here is that since good people go to Heaven and since everyone is basically good, then everyone goes to Heaven. The response to that idea from guys like Paul is that no one is good. In fact, Paul makes that rather inconvenient truth explicit in Romans 3. Because of this, and in light of what we learned from Jesus’ best friend John a couple of weeks ago, the only way for anyone to get into a relationship with God which will gain us access to Heaven is through a relationship with Jesus. The hard reality on this matter, as we discovered in Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount last week, is that not everyone is going to accept a relationship with Him which means that, no, not everyone is going to go to Heaven in the end.
That particular answer isn’t an easy one to stomach. We acknowledged that together last week. It’s hard. But when we start to allow ourselves to see the world through the lens of the Scriptures, we find that it is good. It is also highly motivating for we who have accepted a relationship with Jesus and His offer of eternal life. Because Heaven is for everyone, and because not everyone is going to get there, we want to do everything we can to make sure that none of the people we know and love are included in the group that is going to choose to miss out on the party. The other thing Jesus’ answer to this question did for us, though, was to set a follow up question before us. If not everyone is ultimately going to go to Heaven, where will they go? Or perhaps, to put that another way, is Hell real? As we wrap up our series this morning, we have saved what is perhaps the hardest question of the bunch for the end.
Serving as our guide this morning is going to be something the apostle Paul wrote in his second letter to the believers in an ancient Greek city called Thessalonica. This was a group of believers who spent a lot of time thinking about what the New Testament authors called “the day of the Lord,” and which we call the return of Christ to claim His kingdom. Some of their thinking was off the mark. Paul corrected some of this in his first letter to them, but some other wrong thinking spread soon after that, and so he wrote them again to correct even more of it. Specifically, the Thessalonian church members were worried that Jesus had already returned, that they’d missed it, and they weren’t sure what this meant for all the persecution they were experiencing in their efforts to remain faithful. If you have a copy of the Scriptures handy this morning, find your way to 2 Thessalonians. We’ll start looking at what Paul had to say right near the beginning of the letter in v. 3.
“We ought to thank God always for you, brothers and sisters, and rightly so, since your faith is flourishing and the love each one of you has for one another is increasing.” Paul started by encouraging them with the fact that they were getting a lot of things right in their pursuit of the path of Christ. Because of this, Paul and his traveling companions were able to boast about them in the various places they visited. “Therefore, we ourselves boast about you among God’s churches—about your perseverance and faith in all the persecutions and afflictions that you are enduring.” Note carefully what Paul boasts about here so there’s no confusion. Paul didn’t boast in himself that he had planted such a great church. He boasted about—that is, told the story of—the Thessalonian believers’ willingness to keep on pursuing the path of Christ in spite of the persecution they were facing for such a commitment. They kept getting knocked down by the world around them, and yet like Captain America, they just kept getting back up and asserting that in Christ they could do this all day.
Next, Paul says something about their persecutions that should get our attention. Look at this in v. 5 now. “It is clear evidence of God’s righteous judgment that you will be counted worthy of God’s kingdom, for which you also are suffering…” In other words, the presence of this persecution in their lives, far from being an indicator that something was wrong, is actually evidence that God has counted them worthy of His kingdom. Wait a second. How does that work? I thought only Jesus gained us access to God’s kingdom. Isn’t that what we’ve been talking about for the last couple of weeks? Absolutely, and that still holds. Their faith in Christ is what led to their being persecuted. The persecution was evidence of their faith. Without that faith and its being publicly worked out in the world around them where the people around them could see it and react negatively to it they wouldn’t have been receiving the persecution. Listen: as our culture continues in a direction in which tolerance for faithful expressions of the Christian worldview grows thinner and thinner, this is a perspective we need to work to develop in our own lives.
That part of what Paul says is pretty encouraging. The next part is uncomfortable. Paul says their persecutions are evidence of God’s favor, but that He’s not going to simply overlook the persecution or the ones inflicting it on them. Continue with me in v. 6: “…since it is just for God to repay with affliction those who afflict you and to give relief to you who are afflicted, along with us.” Are you with Paul here? When you are in a place of suffering for your commitment to Christ, you can face it with faithful boldness and gentle confidence because God has your back. He is going to deal with those who are coming after you. He is going to “repay with affliction those who afflict you.” Hold on another minute. That sounds like vengeance. I thought we weren’t supposed to seek vengeance against those who hurt us. We aren’t. But God is. That’s His job. He’s claimed it for Himself. And indeed He will.
Now, this kind of language may be uncomfortable for you. Our culture has taught us to really not like the idea of God’s punishing sinners for their sin. He’s so big and powerful. It’s just not fair that He would do something like that. If you are in that kind of a headspace, though, I’m going to venture a guess that you haven’t ever really experienced any kind of meaningful persecution. You don’t know what it’s like to be hated without recourse, powerless to do anything to stop those who are coming after you on grounds that are unfair and even irrational. You don’t know what it’s like to long for someone to help bring relief to your awful situation. For believers around the world who have experienced that or who are currently experiencing that, the assurance that God is going to eventually make right the injustices that have been dealt to them is a powerfully encouraging one. Because God is good, He will bring justice when the time is right. If you are in need of justice, that is a very good thing. We have to be careful not to assume we are somehow more morally enlightened than the guys who were inspired to write the Scriptures simply because our cultural situation is different from the one they faced.
In any event, Paul assures the Thessalonian believers that God does indeed have their back. He would reward their faithfulness and punish those who were persecuting them. Put yourself in their sandals for a minute, though. Being told this kind of relief is coming and actually experiencing it are two very different things. Their natural question in response to Paul’s encouragement here would have been to ask when. When was this going to happen? The short answer is that it was going to happen at just the right time. The longer answer we find here in the text. Pick back up with me in the second half of v. 7.
“This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels…” In other words, should our Lord tarry in His return—which we can safely say that from their perspective He has indeed tarried in His return—it wasn’t going to happen in their lifetime. If they were hoping for some kind of an immediate relief, Paul did not promise them that. As a matter of fact, we never find that kind of promise in the New Testament. God doesn’t operate like that for reasons we have talked about before. While He certainly restrains some sin, He can’t pick and choose which sin He’s going to deal now with based on our convenience. When He comes to deal with sin for the last time, He’s going to deal with all sin for all time. And if our perspective is limited to our current situation, that’s not very encouraging news. When we take on the lens of eternity, though, that guys like Paul actively commended to us, the temporary delay is made more bearable.
Paul here is talking about this final dealing with sin that will come when Jesus returns. Look at what He says about it. “This will take place at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels, when he takes vengeance with flaming fire on those who don’t know God and on those who don’t obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will pay the penalty of eternal destruction from the Lord’s presence and from his glorious strength on that day when he comes to be glorified by his saints and to be marveled at by all those who have believed, because our testimony among you was believed.”
Shall we come up for a breath of air for a minute? That’s some pretty strong language there. If you thought that last part was uncomfortable to think about, this part might have you squirming in your seat. What are we supposed to do with this? Well, let’s take it at face value. There is a day coming when Jesus is going to return. And when He does, one of the things He’s going to do is to sort out who’s going where. For folks who have chosen other than Him as a way to get to God (which, as we have talked about, means they chose themselves instead of God), they’re going to get what they want. They’ll be separated from God and be all by themselves. And although we go through this life where God’s common grace keeps things from being but so bad for most people in most places, when that day comes, that common grace is going to be gone. It’s not going to be basically like here, but without all the happiness. All of the things that make life worth living are going to be gone, but death won’t be any kind of an escape because you’re already there. It’s going to be Hell. Literally. Hell is real, and it will be where those folks who choose not to accept God’s invitation into His eternal kingdom will spend eternity instead.
Okay, but again, why the aggressive language here? Why does there seem to be almost a twisted delight at the thought that some folks are going to be separated from God and sent to a place of “eternal destruction”? Once again, remember the situation of Paul’s audience. They were persecuted mercilessly by the world around them. The thought of Jesus’ coming one day and decisively gaining the victory they could never win for themselves was a huge encouragement for them to keep going. They weren’t taking any kind of a sadistic pleasure in this promise of judgment. Instead, they glorified God for His justice and His taking up their cause when they could not. And that, friends, is the real feature here. The strong language was to encourage a struggling people. The point is that Hell is an application of God’s justice. God will one day deal with sin. And for those people who have committed themselves to a path of sin instead of His path of righteousness, they will face the consequences of their choices. If you have been the victim of one of those choices, that assurance of justice will be pretty important for you, especially if you are finding the attaining of justice in this life an impossible task.
Look at where Paul lands this in the next couple of verses with me, and then we’ll come back around to talk about this whole thing from a bigger picture for a minute. Starting in v. 11, Paul gives us the point of what he’s saying here. “In view of this, we always pray for you that our God will make you worthy of his calling, and by his power fulfill your every desire to do good and your work produced by faith, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified by you, and you by him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.”
Got all that? Paul is saying that in light of God’s promise of justice and the reality of Hell, and in light of the fact that the persecution they are facing is a powerful indicator of God’s favor and reception of them into His eternal kingdom, they are to live worthy of this reception. To perhaps put that another way, because God has made you His, live like you’re His to His glory. But this isn’t something that comes simply by effort. We manage this only with His abiding help. It is His power that makes us able. Everything we do is in response to what He has already done in Christ and through His Holy Spirit. He’s the initiator. We’re the reactor.
This last part is more important than it might seem. That stuff about the reality of Hell there in the middle of these verses is hard. There’s no getting around that. We can and should glorify God for His commitment to justice and His promise to right the wrongs dealt to us who follow Him because of our pursuit of Him, but the thought that anyone might wind up spending eternity separated from God should not give us any kind of satisfaction. We glorify God for it, but we would much rather prefer that everyone accepted His offer of eternal life so that it didn’t have to be true. Hell is a decidedly inconvenient truth.
It is the very inconvenience of this truth, though, that allows God’s character to shine here even more brightly. We should not suppose for a second that God Himself delights in the idea of anyone’s being separated from Him for a moment, let alone eternity. He most assuredly does not. He does everything in His power, in fact, to prevent that from happening. He sent Jesus to pave the way to get to Him. He puts people in our paths and shapes our circumstances so that we have both the opportunity and the motivation to come to Him. His Holy Spirit convicts us when we sin so that we don’t want to do it again, but to instead walk a path of righteousness. He does all of this and more because of His profound and deep love for us. God is indeed just, and so Hell is real, but He is also love, and so as far as it depends on Him, no one has to go there.
Listen here because this is the point: if we are going to live worthy of His calling like Paul said there at the end, we have to follow suit in this. When we align ourselves fully with God’s intentions for us, He is going to work through us to keep the people around us from taking the path of death that leads to Hell. Our very lives will be an application of His love. In this sense, Hell is an application of the justice of God that enables us to participate more fully in the love of God. Let me say that again because I want you to remember it. When you think about Hell, or if you ever wind up in a conversation about Hell with another person who’s skeptical of or simply struggling with the idea, this is what I want you to think: Hell is an application of the justice of God that enables us to participate more fully in the love of God. Hear that one more time. Hell is an application of the justice of God that enables us to participate more fully in the love of God.
Okay, but how could it possibly be loving of God to make someone burn for eternity? I mean, that fiery language is all over the New Testament including in these verses right here. How could a loving God make people suffer like that? If you haven’t encountered that particular objection to the Christian doctrine of Hell, you probably haven’t had any real conversations about it with someone who doesn’t follow Jesus. It’s a good question because, again, that fiery language is all over the place. Can I suggest a solution: that kind of language is uniformly hyperbolic. We don’t actually have any idea what Hell will really be like except that it will be a place completely devoid of the presence and power of God. Hell is also occasionally described as a place of darkness. Fire produces light. How could it be fiery and dark at the same time? Because it’s all symbolic language to make a point. And the point is that Hell is going to be worse than we could possibly imagine.
In some of our Sunday school groups this morning, the opening illustration included a quote from Elon Musk when he was asked about Hell. He said that if Hell is real, then he wants to go there since that’s where most of the people will be. The idea there is that while Hell will be bad, it won’t be that bad because at least we’ll have company. That’s wrongheaded thinking. Life-giving relationships like that are a feature of God’s character and won’t be a part of Hell. Jesus and the other New Testament authors needed a way to help their audiences—including us—to understand just how bad Hell will be in order to help us understand just how badly we should want to avoid that fate. I don’t know about you, but I have trouble imagining something worse than burning for eternity. Apparently they couldn’t think of anything much better than that too, so they used that language all the time. Their point is that being totally and permanently apart from God is not a state anyone wants to experience.
So why would He allow it? Because not everyone wants to be with Him. Some people—many people in fact if we take seriously what Jesus said last week—are going to choose not to be with Him and stick with that choice. They convince themselves they really are fine, better even, on their own. They’re wrong, of course, but God never forces Himself on anyone. If they make that choice, and decide to stick with it, He’ll let them. To come around on the backside and force them to be with Him anyway wouldn’t be loving of Him. It would be unjust as well. So He won’t. He will honor the ability He has given us to make meaningful and consequential choices even if those choices come with terrible consequences. Now, this doesn’t mean He’ll let us make them without first warning us against them because He is just. He will actively use yours and my loving them as a way to extend this warning and make a counteroffer. But in His great love for us, He’ll honor the gift He’s given us and our exercise of it. So, once again, Hell is an application of the justice of God that enables us to participate more fully in the love of God.
So then, what do we do with this? Well, for starters, you make sure that you are on the right track with God. You make sure that you have accepted Jesus’ offer of life, joined with His body, the church, and participated in the great symbol of baptism as a public proclamation of that fact. Then, you make sure that you are doing everything you possibly can to see to it that every single one of the people in your sphere of influence have had at least the opportunity to do the same. And if they’ve rejected it once, offer it again. Then, offer it again, and keep right on doing that with gentleness, humility, compassion, and love for as long as they are in your sphere of influence. Hell is real because God is good, not in spite of that fact. But no one has to go there. Hell is an application of the justice of God that enables us to participate more fully in the love of God. Let us make sure that as a church we are living out that love wisely, winsomely, and well and so live worthy of His calling, and by His power fulfill our every desire to do good and faith-produced work in the world around us, so that the name of our Lord Jesus will be glorified according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.