The title of this blog is, of course, a jab at Rob Bell's new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, but my intent with this article/blog/rambling is to refute this major teaching of the emergent church. I will preface this by saying I have not read this lasted book by Bell, but I am quite familiar with his teachings. He, like so many other leaders in the emergent church, doesn't believe in propositional truths in Scripture and that we can truly know anything about God. Kevin DeYoung and Ted Kluck do a wonderful job of refuting this (along with many others) teaching in their book, Why We're Not Emergent. Bell teaches in one of his previous books, Velvet Elvis, that the Bible is "open-ended" (p. 46) which would mean that there is no absolute way to interpret Scripture. This lends itself to moral relativism and whatever is true for you may not be true for me. I believe Bell is applying this same method to his teaching about hell.
I don't want to spend too much time talking about Bell's new book (you can get a full review of it here) but would rather spend my time stating what I believe to be truth I have found in scripture. Let me just give a quick overview of the teachings I have found in the snippets I have read of Love Wins. Bell appears to claim that there is no physical place called hell, there is no eternal life of torment in separation from God after this life on earth. His take on hell is that it is temporal, taking place in this life, focusing more on what happens to us here than anything that happens in eternity. This kind of teaching is very attractive because it removes any eternal consequences for the way we live our lives. The world would much rather hear about a God who loves, rather than a God of wrath.
The truth is, He is both.
We can't pick out the parts of the Bible that we find attractive and only cling to those truths. This is where many of the teachings of the emergent church lose their credibility as their beliefs don't match up to what they say (they say there are no propositions in scripture and we can't know anything about God, yet they say that we can know that God is love).
We are reminded in Ephesians 2:3 that we were once "children of wrath" when we lived in the "lusts of our flesh." Because we are born into this world sinful, we enter this world under the wrath of God. Some people would want to question why would a God who is so full of love also be full of wrath toward his people the moment they are born into the world. This is the question I want to try to answer here and I will attempt to do that by looking at three points (I'm a preacher, I couldn't resist putting it in points):
1. God's purpose for creating humanity
If we look at the book of Genesis, we can see that God's purpose in creating was for His glory. Everything that has been created, was created for the purpose of giving glory back to God. In Genesis 1, after God has finished creating the heavens and the earth, He declares that "it was good. After creating life on the earth, He declares that "it was good." After creating man, God looks over all his creation and say "it was very good."
This declaration of "good" is not the use of the word that we find most common today. If we say something is good, it usually means we find it acceptable. It wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. I find it hard to believe that is the sentiment God was conveying here when He looked over what He had just created. I believe that God's declared creation being "good" was because it rightly reflected His glory as it is shown through His power and wisdom demonstrated in creation. Which means God's glory was shown in his creation of humanity. His purpose in creating Adam was so that Adam would, in turn, give glory back to God. God's glory was not only to be shown in the creation of Adam but also in the actions and conduct of the life Adam would live.
We all know what happened next, though. Sin came into the world, sin that would be imputed to all mankind. We are all born with a sin nature because of the sin of Adam and Eve. Sin, at its root, is anything that robs God of His glory. Adam and Eve were given expectations on how they were to conduct themselves. One of those expectations was to obey the commands of God. When they chose not to obey God, sin entered the world. Anytime we choose to behave in a way that is contradictory to what God would expect of us, we are robbing God of the glory He deserves and we sin. We have fallen short of what God's purpose for our creation and existence was. This leads us to our second point concerning God's love and wrath:
2. Jesus' purpose for coming to earth
With sin having entered the world, there was now the problem of man having fellowship with God. It is God's plan to have man spend eternity with God in heaven, giving glory to God for all eternity. The problem now lie in the fact that God cannot be in the presence of sin. Because God is holy, He has to punish sin. That punishment was death. Mankind would now experience a physical death. But the penalty was not limited to physical death. Man was created in the image of God and therefore had an eternal soul that would continue to live beyond this earth. With man's soul being sinful it could not be allowed in heaven with God. The punishment of death was extended to the death of the soul which would lead to eternal separation from God.
God is holy and therefore He is righteous and just in punishing sin. The good news is that He is also, as we have already mentioned, love. He desires that man worship Him and give Him glory so He wanted to give us the opportunity to join Him in eternity. So how does a holy God allow sinful man into heaven? Our penalty had to be paid by someone else, someone who was perfect and blameless. God sent his perfect Son to earth to be that punishment for us. This was Jesus' purpose for coming to earth: to bring reconciliation with God and humanity. That is the message of John 3:16, "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life."
There are some, like Bell, who would like to believe that this means all the world will be saved, that's Christ's death covered the sins of the whole world. That is not what that verse means. While the death of Christ was sufficient enough to cover every sin of the entire world throughout all eternity, the condition stated in John 3:16 was that Christ's death is only effectual for those who believe in Him. Those who have repented of their sins and given their lives over in service to Christ will partake in the grace and mercy God offers through the cross.
Sadly, there are those who will not benefit from Christ's death. Those who do not believe in Christ, when death comes, will be judged and cast into hell. There are various scriptures that point to hell being a very real place.
- "Throw out the worthless slave into the outer darkness; in that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." Matthew 25:30
- "'Then He will say to those on the left, 'Depart from Me, accursed ones, into the eternal fire which has been prepared for the devil and his angels.'" Matthew 25:41
- "These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life." Matthew 25:46
Jesus' purpose for coming to earth was to provide salvation for those who would believe in Him. His death on the cross gave glory to God as it was God's act of mercy on His children. Some might say that it doesn't seem very merciful and loving to allow anyone to go hell but we must remember that none of us deserve the love and mercy that God chooses to show. Because God is holy and just, it would have been perfectly fitting for God to cast all of humanity into hell as punishment for sin. It was a tremendous act of mercy that God choose to save even some.
Salvation and judgment are about giving God the glory He deserves. By the salvation of some, God receives glory because He is merciful and loving. By the condemnation of some, God receives glory because He is righteous and just. God would not be holy if He let sin go unpunished. He would also not be holy if He let every person into heaven, whether they had accepted Christ or not. This leads us to our third, and final point:
3. Man's purpose on earth and in eternity
The Westminster Shorter Catechism states that "man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever." As we saw through our first point, God created everything, including humanity, so that He would receive glory. In turn, it is man's purpose while on earth and after death to give glory to God. Our goal should be to live lives that are pleasing to God. That first involves repentance for the sin in our lives and a commitment to follow Christ. From that moment believers are to conduct themselves according to God's Word. In doing so, we continue to give glory to God.
There will come a time, and I don't think anyone would disagree with me on this point, that life will come to end for every person. In that moment, no matter if we are a Christian or not, we will give God glory. Philippians 2:10-11 gives reference to the day of judgment when "every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth, and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."
It makes people feel all warm and toasty inside to only think of God as a loving and merciful God, but to only think of Him that way is to falsely interpret scripture and and what God reveals to us about Himself. As believers it should be our goal to give God glory in every aspect of our life, especially in our teaching and preaching about Him. In order for the lost to start glorifying God, they must first be made aware of the impending judgment and wrath they currently face.
We must be diligent to warn others about the reality and the danger of hell because in the end, whether it comes from heaven, earth, or under the earth, glory wins!
SDG
Amen Bro. You sound like a Reformer! Keep up the good stuff, hopefully many will read these truths and be stimulated and challenged to search the Scriptures, and will indeed find these things to be so. God bless.
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