Hell Should Unsettle Christians
Hell is supposed to make us uncomfortable. This side of heaven, it is not a sign of spiritual health to be untroubled by the horrors of hell — that humans like us, made in God’s image for fullness of joy, will spend eternity under the righteous frown of his omnipotent justice. As theologian Wayne Grudem writes, not only is “the doctrine of eternal conscious punishment . . . so foreign to the thought patterns of our culture,” but it also offends “on a deeper level . . . our instinctive and God-given sense of love and desire for redemption for every human being created in God’s image.”
Last August, as our family visited Manhattan, we had the joy of seeing The Lion King on Broadway. And in that urban, sophisticated, and apparently progressive setting, the play’s climactic moment struck me as especially memorable, and poignant. The crowd went wild at the destruction of Scar.
Among all the educated and psychologically informed members of the audience, I didn’t observe any who expressed concern about the villain’s feelings. No one objected or stood in protest as a self-proclaimed advocate for Scar. None demanded our empathy for the misunderstood scapegoat.
Deep down, we all want the wicked to receive their due. We all have our cries for justice. Even Broadway audiences cheer the destruction of the manifest monster. Without controversy, we consign Hitler to damnation. We know great evil demands cosmic justice.
Yet we have a harder time imagining ourselves, or our beloved friends and family, as the wicked, as those justly deserving what Jesus called hell.
These Overwhelming Doctrines
There, I said it — “the crude monosyllable,” as C.S. Lewis calls it in his essay on “Learning in War-Time.”
To a Christian the true tragedy of Nero must be not that he fiddled while the city was on fire but that he fiddled on the brink of hell. You must forgive me for the crude monosyllable. I know that many wiser and better Christians than I in these days do not like to mention Heaven and hell even in a pulpit. (48)
Now, Lewis’s “these days” were nearly ninety years ago, at the start of World War II. Perhaps hell was permitted to make a brief comeback in polite conversation after such a war, but surely it’s no more socially accepted today than it was in 1939. Lewis continues,
I know, too, that nearly all the references to this subject in the New Testament come from a single source. But then that source is Our Lord Himself. People will tell you it is St. Paul, but that is untrue. These overwhelming doctrines are dominical. They are not really removable from the teaching of Christ or of His Church. If we do not believe them, our presence in this church is great tom-foolery. If we do, we must sometime overcome our spiritual prudery and mention them. (48)
Note two unnerving claims here, well-spoken in 1939, and still strikingly relevant. First, Jesus indeed did teach on hell more than anyone else: “These overwhelming doctrines are dominical.” For instance, the Greek gehenna, which we translate hell, occurs twelve times in the New Testament, with eleven on the lips of Jesus. Hell comes from the mouth of our Lord himself — the one man who is also divine, preeminently holy enough to speak to such a subject, and for none who genuinely claim his name to second-guess him. It really would be profound folly to think you could have Jesus and not have, with him, his clear and pronounced teaching on hell.
Second, the paths diverge in Lewis’s double “if” statements: “If we do not believe them [the dominical doctrines], our presence in this church is great tom-foolery. If we do, we must sometime overcome our spiritual prudery and mention them.” In other words, Lewis puts the question to us, as Elijah put the question to those limping between Baal and the true God: Will you be faithful to the clear teaching of the one you call Lord, or will you be the liar or lunatic?
Hell Is Supposed to Horrify
However much we might wrestle theologically with “the problem of evil” — and with it, “the problem of hell” — it really is the existential problems of evil and hell that unsettle us the most. College students might express (and even enjoy) theoretical questions in safe, scholastic settings, but these challenges pale in comparison to losing a loved one to cancer, or murder or a freak accident, and pondering whether your beloved might spend eternity apart from Jesus and under the penalties of divine justice.
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Talking with Kids about Gender Issues: Give Them Biblical Vocabulary
The Bible gives the true diagnosis and solution for any gender-related sin and/or suffering: heart transformation through Christ’s forgiveness and resurrection power in His Spirit, which enables our minds and beliefs to be renewed by truth, our broken hearts and distress to be healed, our gender struggles to be brought under God’s care, and ultimately completely eradicated in the life to come. Christ alone bore our shame and sin in His body on the cross.
One of the ways we disciple kids so that in everything, God may be glorified through Jesus Christ (1 Pet. 4:10-12) is by speaking God’s truth about gender issues with clarity. Discipling your kids to have biblical words and concepts planted in their hearts and minds is a foundational way to equip them to think and discern wisely as they face personal struggles and false teaching.[1]
Two Types of Conversations to Have
As you seek to make deposits in your kids’ hearts and minds slowly yet steadily, there are two conversational pathways to keep in mind.
First, pray about being ready to engage in “As You Go” talks about gender. Just like it sounds, these conversations can spring up in the normal flow of daily life. Basically, take notice of what you (and they) see and hear online, what is happening with their friends, gender-neutral clothes, words and phrases they hear like genderqueer, non-binary, etc.
These brief, in-the-moment interactions are a way to follow the exhortation of God’s Word, “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. You shall teach them to your children, talking of them when you are sitting in your house, and when you are walking by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise” (Deut. 11:18-19).
The other category is “Intentional Topical Conversations.” These age-appropriate conversations are planned, brief, and focused on specific gender-related issues—not a deep dive into the entirety of what it means to be male and female image bearers, the differences between men and women, or all the nuances of transgenderism.
The following five ideas provide an outline for you to study personally and then work through steadily over time with your child. Remember, there is a battle raging, and you are girding them with God’s truth so that they can, “in all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which [they] can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one” (Eph. 6:16).
Five Key Biblical Topics about Gender
1. God created the world and us; we are either male or female by His design.
In Genesis 1:26-27, we learn that He created us, and we are born either of two possible genders: male or female. God’s creation of us gives us an unchangeable identity, value, and purpose.
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The Grammys and Spiritual Warfare
The enemy is real. He is dangerous. And he wants to destroy you. He is operative in the hearts of the ungodly, and we must realize that everything wrong with everything around us is part of the spiritual war. There are children of light and children of darkness. There are children of God and children of the devil. People are enslaved to sin, or they are enslaved to righteousness. We serve God, or we are held captive by the devil to do the devil’s will.
Many people were rightly shocked and outraged after a music awards show this past Sunday night produced a Satanic-themed performance for attendees and viewers. While these emotions are right, it should come as no surprise to Christians that demon-filled adulation and worship is becoming more mainstream as our world and society grows more wicked by the hour.
If anything, performances such as the one on Sunday night should bring us full circle to the fact that our earthly lives that are defined by what is happening and what has happened in the heavenly places. What happens in this world is but a manifestation of what is happening in an unseen world around us, where spiritual battles are underway for the souls of every human being within every world event around us. No one should be oblivious that there is a spiritual war going on or which side will be victorious in the end.
The Bible exhorts us to walk worthy of our calling, seeking to walk with a renewed mind, in love, in light, in wisdom, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Yet, we are confronted by the stark reality that we have spiritual enemies desperately trying to oppose us, to hinder us, and to destroy us. These spiritual forces of wickedness do not want us to be controlled by the Spirit; they do not want us to walk in light or love; and they do not want us to be a display of God’s wisdom as we live as the unified body of Christ.
Christians must understand the reality of spiritual warfare and its implications for us as believers. Understanding this reality is transformative for how you view everything happening in our world today and all the various people involved.
Here’s the reality: we are all in a spiritual war.
The enemy is real. He is dangerous. And he wants to destroy you. He is operative in the hearts of the ungodly, and we must realize that everything wrong with everything around us is part of the spiritual war.
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Raised Through the Blood
One of the greatest assurances of salvation that we can have during our pilgrimage in this world comes from our knowledge of the definitiveness of our redemption in Christ. The fact that Jesus’s death actually atoned for our sins, produces a confidence in believers that nothing will separate them from the love of God. If Jesus died for us, who can undo what Christ has done?
What is the central message of Christianity? This is a subject of timeless importance in a day when many insist that the central message is kindness in interpersonal relations; or that it is justice in its variegated societal implementation. However compelling the case may be made for either of these, the Apostle Paul gave us the divinely inspired center of the Christian message when he wrote, “I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and Him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2).
It is quite clear that the atoning death of Jesus stands at the center of the Christian message. “Christ died for sinners” is, in the words of Geerhadus Vos, “the center of gravity” in Christianity. But, this opens another question, namely, “How then should we view the resurrection?”
As a young Christian, I had a number of impassioned conversations with close friends about this subject. I would insist that the message of the cross was the center of the Gospel. They would insist, with the same emotional forcefulness, that the resurrection stood at the center since it culminated in the new creation. Citing Romans 4:24-25, one friend went so far as to say that the resurrection of Jesus was more important than His death on the cross. A number of years later, several colleagues in ministry encouraged me to read more Richard Gaffin, since he argued more persuasively that the resurrection, rather than the crucifixion of Jesus, was the epicenter of the Christian message. Interestingly, as I read Gaffin, I came across statements that seemed to go against that idea. Reflecting on Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor. 1:18-3:22 and Galatians 6:14, Gaffin makes the following assertion: “Paul’s exclusive and comprehensive epistemic commitment is to the crucified Christ.” This, of course, doesn’t mean that the cross is more important than the resurrection. In fact, I was imbalanced in my own understanding of the central message as a young Christian, because I didn’t yet understand that the saving work of Christ couldn’t be bifurcated without doing damage to the message of Christianity as a whole. This is why the Apostle Paul summarizes the heart of the Christian message in the following way when writing to the church in Corinth:
I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:3).
The wrath-propitiating, sin-atoning, Satan-conquering death of Jesus on the cross, together with His burial and His resurrection form the central message of the Christian faith. When the Apostle Paul said, “I determined not to know anything among you expect Jesus Christ and Him crucified,” he was utilizing a theological synecdoche (i.e. the part for the whole). Apart from the death of Jesus, the resurrection is a legal fiction. Apart from the witness of His resurrection, the death of Jesus is a tragic failure.
One of the greatest assurances of salvation that we can have during our pilgrimage in this world comes from our knowledge of the definitiveness of our redemption in Christ. The fact that Jesus’s death actually atoned for our sins, produces a confidence in believers that nothing will separate them from the love of God. If Jesus died for us, who can undo what Christ has done? Jesus would have to be dethroned and His body put back in the tomb, for His saving work to be emptied of its efficacy. The work of redemption can never be reversed or overthrown because it was accomplished by the infinite and eternal, sinless Son of God whose death on the cross was a perfect sacrifice of infinite and eternal value. The efficacious death of Jesus is captured by the writer of Hebrews in the benediction he pronoucnced over the members of a church that was tempted to turn away from Christ.
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