The New City Catechism #28 reads: “What happens after death to those not united to Christ by faith? Answer: At the day of judgment they will receive the fearful but just sentence of condemnation pronounced against them. They will be cast out from the favorable presence of God, into hell, to be justly and grievously punished, forever.”
Here is how John Lin in The New City Catechism Devotional comments on this subject.
One of the Bible’s
more difficult and often misunderstood teachings is that of hell being a real,
conscious, eternal punishment. And this is understandable. All of us have
people in our midst who don’t know Christ—friends, family members, neighbors,
colleagues—about whom we would rather not think that hell could be their
future. In fact, people have had discomfort about the idea of hell throughout
history, because on the surface it seems inconsistent with everything we read
in the Bible about God’s mercy and love. And yet the Bible’s teaching on hell
as conscious and eternal suffering is unavoidable. Actually, without the
existence of hell, much of what we know about God’s love comes into question.
First, Jesus, the
most loving man who ever lived, spoke about hell more frequently and vividly
than all other biblical authors combined. He described it as Gehenna, which was
a garbage heap where fires burned constantly, or as the outer darkness, where
there’s no illumination but only misery. In the story he tells of the rich man
and Lazarus, hell is a place of conscious and real suffering. Jesus warns us
about hell again and again (Matt. 13:41–42; Mark 9:42–48; Luke 16:19–31).
Second, the existence
of hell helps us to understand the consequences of sin. In some ways hell is
the outworking of what we as sinful people have always wanted: autonomy and
independence from God. In hell we are therefore cut off from God and from
everything that God is. So in hell there’s no love, there’s no friendship,
there’s no joy, there’s no rest, because those are all things that exist only
where God is present.
But most importantly,
until we acknowledge the reality of hell, we cannot truly understand the
meaning of the cross. Put another way, we cannot understand God’s love until we
understand the reality of his wrath. God’s wrath is a settled, controlled
opposition and hatred of anything that is destroying what he loves. God’s wrath
flows from his love for creation. It flows from his justice. He’s angry at
greed, self-centeredness, injustice, and evil because they’re destructive. And
God will not tolerate anything or anyone responsible for destroying the
creation and the people that he loves.
Think of it this way.
Saying, “I know God loves me because he would give up everything for me” is
much different from saying, “I know God loves me because he did give up
everything for me.” One is a loving sentiment; the other is a loving act. And
while we may try to make God more loving by diminishing the reality of hell and
God’s wrath, all we’ve really done is diminish the love of God. Without a real
hell we can’t understand the real price that Jesus paid for our sin. And
without a real price that was paid, there’s no real love, there’s no real
grace, and there’s no real praise for what he has done.
Unless you believe in
hell, you’ll never know how much Jesus loves you and how much he values you.
Jesus experienced hell himself on the cross. Jesus was separated from his
Father. On the cross Jesus cried, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”
(Matt. 27:46). When Jesus lost the eternal love of the Father, he experienced
an agony, a disintegration, an isolation greater than anything anyone of us
would have experienced in eternity in hell. He took the isolation and
disintegration that we deserve upon himself. Unless you believe in hell and see
what Jesus took for you, you will never know how much he loves you.
The real issue is not how a loving God would allow there to be a hell. The issue is, if Jesus Christ would experience hell for me, then, truly, he must be a loving God. It’s not “Why would God allow hell?” It’s “Why would God experience hell for me?” And yet he did.
Delighting In Divine Love With You,
Tom
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