Hell? Yes!

It’s Thanksgiving, and as usual, we are challenged to recount the things we are grateful for. Family, friends, health, prosperity, freedom – these are all worthy of our gratitude. But if Christians are honest, the thing we should be most thankful for is God’s mercy and grace to us. When God grants us mercy, He withholds giving us what we deserve. Because Paul was right to say, “There is none righteous,” we all deserve God’s wrath. Despite what the warm fuzzy teachers like Rob Bell want us to believe, hell is real; God’s wrath is as much a part of His character as His love is. If we look deeply into the message of the Bible, we can see why wrath and love must both exist.

When Adam rebelled, he died. He died immediately to fellowship with God, and he began the gradual decay that would end in physical death. Sadly, the consequences of Adam’s sin were passed on to all his descendants. “In Adam all die,” says the Apostle Paul. This is also why he says we are subject to God’s judgment for our own sin. “And you, although you were dead in your trespasses and sins…. were children of wrath by nature, as also the rest of them were.” Fortunately, as the next verse assures us, “God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, and we being dead in trespasses, he made us alive together with Christ.”

We rejoice with thanksgiving that God made us alive, but what about “the rest” as Paul calls them? The judgment issued at the time of Adam’s rebellion still stands. Paul based God’s authority as judge on His position as creator. God made us; therefore, He owns us. He told the idol worshippers at Lystra, “Turn from these worthless things to the living God who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all the things that are in them, who in generations that are past permitted all the nations to go their own ways.” Adam chose to do things his own way, and God allowed Adam’s descendants to follow the same path.

Speaking to the philosophers in Athens, Paul made the same point. “The God who made the world and everything in it—he is Lord of heaven and earth—does not live in shrines made by hands…. From one man [Adam] he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth and has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live.” Anyone who has read the Bible knows this is true of Israel, God’s chosen nation, but few realize that the Sovereign designated the “times and boundaries” of every nation on earth. We shouldn’t be surprised since we know He used the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, and Persians to further His redemption plan.

God did not totally abandon the nations. As Paul told the people at Lystra, “He did not leave himself without a witness, since he did what is good by giving you rain from heaven and fruitful seasons and filling you with food and your hearts with joy.” In Athens, Paul suggested God’s purpose was to make Himself known: “So that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us.  For in him we live and move and have our being.” His word to the Romans was similar, “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all impiety and unrighteousness of people, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what can be known about God is evident among them, for God made it clear to them.”

Paul asserts that God treated other nations differently from Israel by His own choice. While He let the other nations go their own way, He lovingly shepherded Israel into fulfilling His redemption plan. It is made plain during the conquest of Canaan that the nations followed “gods” who were enemies of Israel’s God. This is why God commanded the annihilation of the Canaanites. (See Defending the Wrath of God.) The difference between Israel and the nations was removed at the cross. This is the long-standing mystery Paul refers to in his letters especially to the Ephesians.

One might still ask if God’s wrath against sin is necessary. As I wrote in The Goodness of Wrath, “Someone has said that we only appreciate light because we know darkness. If God did not pour out His wrath against sin, His merciful love would be meaningless. Because He does judge the wicked, His love of the redeemed is more significant.” There is room for honest debate about the means of God’s sovereign election of His people, but there can be no doubt that love and wrath coexist in the heart of God. Referring to the unrighteous acts of unbelievers Paul wrote, “Now we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who do such things. But do you think this, O man who passes judgment on those who do such things, and who does the same things, that you will escape the judgment of God?”

On this Thanksgiving, I am grateful that God has delivered me from wrath and assured my eternity with Him through the blood of Christ. I am also thankful that I have been granted the privilege to live in a country that for over two hundred years has attempted (though imperfectly) to support Judeo-Christian values. With the increasing secularization (perhaps paganization is a better word) of Western society, the blessings those values have provided are being seriously eroded.

In Defending the Wrath of God I wrote, “Getting queasy about the wrath of God is a corollary to ignoring the spiritual battle that we all participate in. If we honestly regarded the faces of evil we encounter in our daily lives, I don’t think we would despise the wrath of God that is due His enemy. We are soft on sin, and we deny the depth to which it has pervaded our society. My woke neighbors will hate me for saying this, but when political correctness becomes a cloak for evil, we have surrendered the field without firing a shot.” Being thankful for our salvation does not eliminate the need to be on the offensive. In fact, the reality of God’s mercy in our lives should motivate us to share the good news with others: God’s love has overcome His wrath through faith in His Son. Spread the Word.