The Place of God's Disfavor

The problem with hell is not simply the absence of God in terms of the absence of His graciousness. It is the presence of God that is so difficult because in hell God is present as He is omnipresent. He is there in His judgment.

He is there in His punitive wrath. There are so many misconceptions when it comes to hell, both within the church and outside of it. In fact, there are just as many misconceptions when it comes to heaven. Not just what it will be like, but how someone gets there. So I'm glad you're joining us this week on Renewing Your Mind, as we'll spend the next few days considering the sobering reality of hell, and the indescribable blessing of heaven.

This week's messages come from two series from R.C. Sproul, a five-part study of hell and a five-part study of heaven. And for your donation of any amount, we'll unlock lifetime digital access to both series, the Heavens Study Guide, and we'll send you two books from Dr. Sproul, saved from what and what comes after this life. Simply make your request with your donation at renewingyourmind.org. So is hell the absence of God's presence, or is it the place of God's disfavor?

Here's Dr. Sproul. I don't suppose there's any topic in Christian theology more difficult to deal with, particularly to deal with emotionally, than the doctrine of hell. In fact, the doctrine has been so controversial that in the modern era it's almost never referred to. We've turned against the old-fashioned revival preaching that was characterized by the idea of hell, fire, and brimstone preaching. The frontier preachers used to emphasize that motif. We think back to the Great Awakening in the eighteenth century and to the ministry of Jonathan Edwards, who, by the way, we have a mural in our recording studio in the back of the studio that features a large portrait of Jonathan Edwards, as well as a replication of his parish church in Northampton, Massachusetts. And I suppose there's a reason why this mural has been hung right in front of my eyes, particularly as we initiate this brief series on the study of hell, because no theologian and no preacher is more associated with the concept of hell than Jonathan Edwards. I once read a textbook in college in psychology where Edwards was used as an illustration of somebody who was sadistic because he seemed to preach so often on the subject of hell. And that bothered me at the time, doing psychoanalysis from a distance of a couple of centuries, because as anyone reads Edwards deeply, they will soon discover that Edwards certainly believed in the reality of hell, and he certainly had a passionate concern for the spiritual well-being of his people, of his congregation. Now, if a man believed in hell and didn't love his people, he would, of course, being sadistic, do everything in his power to persuade the people that there was no such place as hell.

But the sadistic person takes some kind of delight or glee out of contemplating another person's torment or torture, and that was certainly not true of Edwards. But from the vantage point of the twentieth century, we have this allergy against any serious discussion of the doctrine of hell. In fact, there's probably been no time in the history of the church where more people have challenged the doctrine than in our own day. Liberal theologians, of course, completely dismiss it as part of the mythological worldview of primitive people, a concept unworthy of the love of God and the love of Jesus. Others, even within the professing evangelical camp, in recent years have created quite a stir by suggesting the doctrine of annihilationism, which says that the ultimate judgment of the sinner is not some kind of ongoing eternal punishment in a place called hell, but it is simply the annihilation of the person's existence and that the great punishment or the great loss that is consonant with annihilation is the loss of the happiness promised to those promised to those who will live eternally in heaven. And so, we have moved away from looking very seriously at the concept of hell, and we look back at Edwards and the frontier preachers as being scare theologians who tried to scare people into the kingdom of God by holding out the threat of hell. But when we come to the doctrine itself, we understand, I hope, that the concept of hell was not invented by Jonathan Edwards or by John Wesley or by any of the frontier revival preachers, nor was it invented by the Reformers of the sixteenth century or by Thomas Aquinas or by St. Augustine. Almost everything that we learn biblically about hell comes to us, oddly enough, from the lips of Jesus Himself. And it's because Jesus spoke so frequently about hell that the church takes the concept so seriously, or at least should take the concept seriously. I remember Dr. John Gerstner's giving a series of lectures on hell, which you probably wouldn't want to order because they would drive you to despair, I'm afraid.

But Gerstner made this comment in that series. He said the whole idea of hell that involves some kind of eternal punishment at the hands of a just and holy God is so profoundly difficult for us to handle emotionally that Gerstner surmised that the only person who would have authority enough to convince us of the reality of such a place would be Jesus Himself. Now, whenever we enter into discussions about the doctrine of hell, people always ask me, R.C., do you believe that the New Testament portrait of hell is to be interpreted literally? Well, when we look at some of the statements that are made about hell in the New Testament, we read, for example, in some cases that hell is called a place of torment, that is called the pit or the abyss in the book of Revelation.

It is called the place of eternal fire, the place of outer darkness. And so people ask me, do you take these images that the New Testament uses, particularly that Jesus Himself used to describe hell, do you take them literally? And I usually respond to that question by saying, no, I don't interpret those images literally. There are several reasons for that, which I'll get into in a moment. But when I say I don't take them literally and refer to them as symbols or figures or metaphors or images, people breathe a deep sigh of relief.

They say, oh, I'm so glad to hear that you don't take that literally. Now, let me just say a couple of things about taking these images literally. One of the reasons why classical orthodox theology has tended not to take these images in exact literal terms is because if you do, you have a very difficult time making them agree with one another. If the place of hell is a burning fire on the one hand and on the other hand is a place of outer darkness, that's difficult to reconcile, because usually where there's fire, there's light, and it's not total darkness.

You can't have fire in a total darkness. And so you see then that there is kind of a collision of images there. Now, the second thing I want to say is that before we breathe too deep a sigh of relief, if we take the position that hell, that hell, as it's described in the New Testament, is described in symbolic language, we have to ask ourselves, what is the function of a symbol? The function of figurative language, metaphorical language, that sort of thing that we encounter in Scripture is to demonstrate a likeness to a reality. A symbol is not the reality itself. The symbol points beyond itself to something else. Now, the question always is, does this something else or the reality toward which the symbol points, is that reality less intense or more intense than the symbol?

And the assumption is that there's always more to the reality than what is pointed to by the symbol, which makes me think that instead of taking comfort that these images of the New Testament may indeed be symbolic, that makes me think that the reality toward which these symbols point is all the more ghastly than if we took the images themselves literally. And I heard one theologian say one time that the sinner in hell would do everything that he could and give everything that he had to be in a lake of fire rather than to be where he actually is. So, what I'm saying is, we don't know exactly where hell is, how hell operates, what are the aspects engaged in it, aspects engaged in it, but all of the imagery that our Lord uses suggests that it is a place we don't want to go.

It is a place of unspeakable pain and torment. Again, the question is raised historically whether the pain or the punishment that people endure in hell is physical punishment. Since the Scriptures speak about the resurrection of the body not only for the believer, but also for the unbeliever, and that the person in hell ultimately after the last judgment will be in a resurrected body suited for his punishment, and because so much of the language of hell in the New Testament speaks about corporeal punishment, many have drawn the conclusion that hell does involve a relentless, endless physical kind of suffering. Well, that may be the case, but other theologians have suggested that the essence of the torment is found in the torment of the soul, of the person whose soul has been cut off from the blessedness of the presence of God and from His grace. And even to carry around that spiritual distress within a resurrected body would be torment enough.

But again, those are issues that we can only speculate about in the final analysis. But let's look for a moment at some of the passages in the New Testament that speak of this place called hell. In Matthew, the twenty-fifth chapter, Jesus tells the parable of the talents, and towards the end of this chapter beginning in verse 29, this is chapter 25 of Matthew beginning at verse 29, Jesus says these words, "'For to everyone who has, more will be given, and he will have abundance. But from him who does not have, even what he has will be taken away. And cast the unprofitable servant into the outer darkness, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.'"

Now here, Jesus uses two images. One, the image of outer darkness. Now let's take a couple of minutes to explore that. Again, one of the questions that people ask me is, do you think that hell is separation from God? And I usually give a kind of enigmatic reply to that. I'll say yes and no.

I'll say, let's start with the yes. Yes, hell is a separation from God. And again, people breathe a sigh of relief when I say that. They say, oh, is that all? That means simply that hell is a place where God is completely absent from it, and therefore hell is not necessarily a lake of fire. It's just people gathered in a place such as in the imagery of Jean-Paul Sartre's little play, No Exit, where they are confined and condemned to a miserable existence dealing with each other without the presence of God. And again, I stop people short and say, before you breathe a sigh of relief that hell represents the absence of God. Let's think about that for a moment. I see in the normal language of our culture today frequent allusions and references to hell.

You've heard them. Somebody comes back from being in the military, and they use the expression, war is hell. Or somebody may have endured a great physical suffering, and the person may say, I went through hell in that experience.

But those kinds of statements must be understood as hyperbole, that is, as obvious exaggerations. If we look at it this way, if we could try to find the person, whoever that person may be in this world today who is presently alive that could be described as the most miserable person in the world, that is, the person who is experiencing suffering at the worst possible level in this world, that person still derives certain benefits from the presence of God. Because God's graciousness, God's love of benevolence, what we call His common grace that He gives to all people, is not totally removed from any individual during this lifetime. But in hell, it is removed from them. And so to be in a place where the blessings and the grace of God are absent utterly and completely would be far worse than anything we could possibly imagine that could befall us in this world. And so I don't take a whole lot of comfort in thinking that hell is the absence of God. But remember I said, if somebody asked me, is hell the absence of God, I would answer by saying yes and no. I would say yes in the sense that it's the absence of God's benefits.

It's the absence of God's love of benevolence, His graciousness, and so on. But again, I think if the people in hell could take a vote or have a referendum to depose or deport one person from their midst, that is to expel one person from hell, I think that the universal vote would be given to God because the person who is most unwelcome in hell is God Himself. And it would be wonderful for the people in hell if God would desert them altogether. The problem with hell is not simply the absence of God in terms of the absence of His graciousness. It is the presence of God that is so difficult because in hell God is present as He is omnipresent.

As the psalmist declares, where can I flee from Thy Spirit if I ascend into heaven? Thou art there if I make my bed in Sheol. Behold, Thou art there. If God is everywhere in His being, then certainly He is in hell as much as He is anywhere else.

And so the problem is what He's doing there. He is there in His judgment. He is there in His punitive wrath.

He is present in hell as the One who executes His justice upon those who are there. And that's why I say anyone who is in hell would want God more than anyone else to leave because this is our fundamental nature as sinners to be fugitives from the presence of God. The very first sin evoked the response in Adam and Eve of fleeing from the presence of God and hiding themselves from Him. And the last thing they wanted after they experienced guilt and shame was for God to be present.

And that, if you can multiply it infinitely, is the experience of those who are in hell. Now, Jesus says here in this Matthew passage that I read a moment ago that this is the place of outer darkness. Now, to understand the force of that, we have to think of it in light of the Old Testament imagery about the outer places and the outer darkness. We remember that for the Jews, God described two alternatives to those who received His law. To those who would keep the law, He promised blessedness. And for those who renounced or rejected or disobeyed His law, they were to be visited with the curse of God and the whole concept of curse in the Old Testament was articulated within the imagery of darkness and of an outer darkness, that is, the darkness that was outside the commonwealth of Israel, that was outside the camp, the darkness that came upon Jerusalem when Christ went to the cross.

And conversely, the presence of God was described as a place of light, where the glory of God radiated all around. And so, when Jesus warns about the outer darkness here, He's warning about the place of the curse, the place where the light and radiance of God's countenance does not shine. We look briefly today at chapter 25 of Matthew where Jesus spoke of those who would be cast into the outer darkness, and He added this further description of their plight. He said, there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.

Again, this is a concrete image that any Jew would understand, and I think we can all readily understand. There's different kinds of weeping. There is the weeping of those who mourn. There is the weeping of those who are in pain. And yet there is the weeping of those who are deliriously happy.

Sometimes we cry for joy. But when we add to this notion of weeping a gnashing of teeth, it is obvious what Jesus is saying here is not a description of a pleasant circumstance. Jesus is talking about a deep, deep mournful kind of wailing, and yet the gnashing of teeth, if we examine that image in the New Testament, it is most often associated with hatred. Remember when the crowd rose in fury to martyr Stephen, that after they heard him proclaim the Word of God, they gnashed their teeth in fury. And that's the thing about hell that we should understand, that the more people spend time in hell, it's not that they improve in their relationship to God, but there is always room for deprovement. The person goes to hell in the first place because that person is hostile towards God, and when God sends them into the outer darkness where they weep in pain, they also grit their teeth and gnash their teeth in even greater hatred of their Maker. A sobering message today on Renewing Your Mind, and I pray that none of you visit hell, and instead this side of eternity cling to Christ for salvation. If you desire to know more about the good news of the Gospel, the good news that Jesus is the Savior of sinners, download the free ebook from Dr. Sproul simply titled, What is the Gospel?, at renewingyourmind.org slash gospel.

Even though we might not like it, we must talk about hell. Yes, it's in the Bible, but Jesus also spoke about it frequently, and with all of the misunderstandings and confusion, some of which Dr. Sproul addressed today, it's a good exercise for us as believers to take the time to consider this subject deeply and seriously. One way that you can do that is by requesting this week's resource package. It contains digital access to this series, digital access to another series on heaven along with its study guide, plus we'll send you two books from Dr. Sproul, What Comes After This Life, and Saved From What. Visit renewingyourmind.org or call us at 800-435-4343 and we'll get these resources to you. That's two series and two books along with a study guide when you donate at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes, and if you live outside of the US or Canada, we have digital access to all of these resources for you when you donate at renewingyourmind.org global.

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So search for Ligonier in your favorite app store or visit ligonier.org slash app. And don't forget to log in or create an account to unlock and access some bonus gifts. Hell isn't separation from God, but there will be a great separation. Here's a preview of tomorrow's episode. Think of the worst crisis you've ever had to go through and compare that with the idea of appearing in a heavenly courtroom and standing before a perfectly holy judge. Don't miss tomorrow's episode here on Renewing Your Mind. Thank you.