Whoever believes in him (Jesus) is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God…Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God remains on him. John 3:18; 36
Beloved,
Can you finish this sentence “God so loved the world…?” John
3:16 is the most well-known and well-loved Bible verse in all of Scripture, but
it is in the middle of one of the most hated ideas in the Bible: the wrath of
God. The world rejoices in God’s love,
but cringes at God’s wrath. God’s wrath against sin and the sinner will be
fully realized in Hell with conscious torment forever.
And cast the worthless servant into
the outer darkness. In that place there will
be weeping and gnashing of teeth. (Matthew 25:30)
And if your hand causes you to sin,
cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than with two hands to
go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. (Mark 9:43)
The rich man also died and was
buried, and in Hades, being in torment, (Luke 16:22b-23a)
We cannot explain away the doctrine of hell. Hell is a real
place with real suffering forever. If we
lost the biblical doctrine of hell, we also lose the biblical doctrine of
justification. If we lose hell, we lose
heaven. If we lose hell, we lose salvation.
And if we lose hell, we lose the love of Christ. Jesus experienced hell for us on the cross. He was forsaken by God and experienced
separation from the Father and an agony that is far beyond what we can
imagine. We can only truly know the deep
love of Jesus Christ when we recognize the reality of hell. He experienced hell
for us on the cross.
We may bristle at the reality of hell, but rightly
understood, it does not minimize God’s love, but maximizes it. John Lin aptly
says,
The issue is not how God can allow
there to be a Hell if He is a loving God. The issue is that if Jesus Christ
would experience Hell for me, then truly He must be a loving God. It is not why
would God allow hell, but why would God experience hell for me? And yet he did.[1]
Beloved, we cannot truly have God’s love without the
doctrine of hell. God so loved the world
because he experienced hell for us.
Rejoice in God’s real love.
Since, therefore, we have now been
justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from
the wrath of God (Romans 5:9).
God has given us real hope in his real love as he saves us
from a real hell. Rejoice!! I say again,
Rejoice!!
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