Online House Church Community

We don’t enjoy what the Bible says about hell and the wrath of God. We find it a hard and painful teaching—but it does seem clear to us that it is a biblical teaching. It would seem very strange to us that the Lord Jesus himself would warn us so often about it, if it weren’t a real possibility. Here is a miscellaneous list, by no means complete, of references to the New Testament’s teachings on hell and the wrath of God.

Jesus’s teachings:

Mt. 3.7; 5.21, 22; 5.29-30; 7.13, 14; 8.12; 10.28; 13.40-42 & 49-50; 18.8-9; 18.34-35; 22.13; 23.33; 25.30; 25.41, 46;

Mk 9.43-48; 16.16;

Luke 3.7-9, 17; 9.24-25/Mt. 16.26/Mk. 8.36; Luke 12.5; 13.3; 16.23-28;

John 3.16-18 & 36, 5.29

 Other NT teachings:

Romans 2.5; 11.22;

1 Cor. 6.9-10;

Gal 5.19-21; 6.8;

Eph. 5.5-6;

Phil. 3.18-19;

Col. 3.5-6;

1 Thess. 1.10; 5.3;

2 Thess. 1.6-10; 2. 8-12;

Heb. 10.27-31;

Jas. 5.1-3;

1 Peter. 4.17-18;

2 Peter 2.9, 12;

1 John 3.15

Jude 5-13

Rev. 2.11; 6.16-17; 11.18; Rev. 14.9-11, 19.15; 19.20 & 20.10; 20.15; 21.8

It seems to us that we who love the Lord Jesus have a responsibility to our neighbors to tell the truth about God. True compassion seems to us to include warning them that the Bible speaks of a coming wrath of God—not in a hateful, stand-on-the-street-corner-with-a-mean-sign kind of way, by any means, but warning them nonetheless. But all the people who’ve put The Shack on Amazon’s best-sellers list certainly aren’t hearing it here, and could well come away with the impression that there is no wrath to come.

We have a solemn responsibility to God, as well, to try to get to know the God who is actually there, and to tell the truth about him as fully as we can. It’s easy for us to grab onto one aspect of God and just camp there. But part of growing from little children to adult sons and daughters involves realizing that God is not just a super-sized human being, and learning to hold apparently contradictory aspects of his nature in tension in our minds, accepting them both and waiting for more understanding. –Though, indeed, as philosopher Peter Kreeft points out, hell and God’s love aren’t contradictory truths. Our Father doesn’t desire that any should perish, but because he truly loves us, he allows us the freedom to choose his presence or reject it. Because we are not automatons beyond freedom and dignity, because we do have a real choice and that choice really means something, turning away from him is possible. And that place of turning away we call hell. We can’t just toss the Bible’s solemn warnings about hell over our shoulders without tossing as well a heartfelt understanding of the absoluteness of God’s holiness, the enormity of our sin, and the weighty significance of the real moral freedom he has given us.