I’ve been working on this short series that discusses the holiness of God and the existence of hell. I am looking at what happens when the holy God comes into contact with human sin. Yesterday I showed that God may react to sin with just wrath. Today I want to show that God may also respond with patient mercy. I went to the story of Uzzah to provide a display of God’s just wrath; God’s mercy is displayed in many places in the Bible, but let’s focus on Exodus 32, the familiar story of the golden calf.

God has delivered his people from slavery and Moses has now gone up Mount Sinai to meet with God and receive instruction on how this people must now serve their God. While Moses is there the people grow tired of waiting for him, and decide to make a new god. The whole nation comes together in this plan, bringing all the gold they plundered from Egypt, and with it Aaron makes a golden calf. He sets it up there before all the people and they begin to pay allegiance to it, saying, “This is the God that brought us out of Egypt. This is the one that did all these amazing deeds for us.” They worship this God, they bring their offerings before it and break out in a great celebration.

God sees this and he tells Moses about it, and says to him, “This is the last straw. I am going to wipe them all out and I will then make a nation out of you!” In a fascinating exchange, Moses pleads with God. He brings a case to God and says, “I’ll give you two reasons that shouldn’t do this. First, the Egyptians will say, ‘Ha! Look at this God! He brought them out of our land and then destroyed them all in the wilderness.’ Think what that would do for your reputation.” And second, “Don’t forget the covenant promises you made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob that their descendants would come into their inheritance. Don’t forget your promises! Don’t forget who you are.”

And in verse 14 we read, “And the Lord relented from the disaster that he had spoken of bringing on his people.” God decided not to bring justice against this nation right now. God could have put every one of them to death and he would have been perfectly just to do that. Instead, he shows mercy.

What is mercy? Mercy is God acting patient. It is God extending patience to those who deserve to be punished. Mercy is not something God owes to us--by definition mercy cannot be owed--but is something God extends in kindness and grace to those who do not deserve it. God does not owe you or anyone else his mercy. In the aftermath of the golden calf God says to Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy.” Later in Romans we read, “God will have mercy on whomever he wills.” God does not owe anyone mercy, but will give it when it suits his great purposes. The mercy he shows in the face of our sin is holding off the judgment of justice to a later time. 

Yesterday I began a short series on the holiness of God and the existence of hell. In a day when hell is under attack, I want to show that any question of the existence of hell is not at heart a discussion of whether or not a place exists, but a question of the character of God. Yesterday I said that there are two ways God may react to human sin: with just wrath or with patient mercy.

Today I want to show that when the holy God comes into contact with human sin, he may react with just wrath. I want to look at the story of Uzzah (2 Samuel 6:1-7) to help us understand God’s justice. Let me give a bit of context: Many years ago the ark of the covenant had been captured and taken away. God’s people had broken covenant with God and he had given them over to their enemies. When he did that, the Phillistines attacked them, pillaged them, and captured the ark. When they captured the ark it was not just that they were taking away a religious icon. Instead, they were taking away the presence of God from among the Israelites and the Israelites understood that this meant that God had abandoned them and was no longer there in the midst of his people. Their sin was so great, so offensive to God, that God had turned his back on them for a time.

But that time lasted just a few months. After just a few months the ark was returned to the nation of Israel, but not to the tabernacle. Instead it sat for many years in the house of a man named Abinadab. And now, finally, as we come to 2 Samuel, King David has determined that he needs to return the ark to its home in Jerusalem. This is more than moving a box from one place to another. This is returning God to his central place in the hearts and minds of the people. It is a meaningful act that demonstrates the hearts of the people returning to God.

And so they load the ark on a brand new cart and as it goes down the road, there is dancing and singing and rejoicing. The people are celebrating the Lord’s return. God will once again dwell in the midst of his people. This is a great day! And then, suddenly, right in in the middle of all of the celebrating, everything goes silent. A man has fallen down beside the cart. He falls to the ground and is pronounced dead.

What has happened? As the cart is trundling along, the oxen suddenly stumble and for just a moment it seems like the ark might tip over. A man named Uzzah sees this happening. He puts his hand out to steady the ark, to keep it from falling to the mud. And in the instant he touches that ark, God strikes him dead.

Many years before God had commanded that no one was to touch the ark, ever. He had given very clear rules about how the ark was to be transported and taken care of. There was a whole family in Israel, the sons of Kohath, who were dedicated to this one task of transporting the ark and the other holy objects. Uzzah was from this family and the very first thing he would have learned about his task was this: Do not touch. You aren’t ever to touch it and you aren’t to put it on a cart. Uzzah and Abinadab and David know this. They are without excuse.

The ark was a holy object. It was the place of his presence, an earthly representation of his holiness, that no one was ever to touch. By reaching out his hand and touching the ark, Uzzah was acting as if God was not holy at all, as if he and God were peers. He was treating God with contempt.

One of the great questions that faces the church today concerns the existence and the nature of hell. Hell is under attack from outside the visible church and from inside. The question each one of us must answer is this: Does hell exist? Is it, as Christians have long claimed, a place of eternal, conscious punishment, a real place where real people will go for real time and face the real wrath of a real God?

Such a question may be a little bit misleading. To ask whether hell exists is not really a question about a place, like when you ask, “Does the city of Philadelphia actually exist?” or “Was there really a city called Jericho?” It is not a question of world geography, but of Divine character. The question of hell is first and foremost a question about the character of God. Here’s the thing: If there is a hell, we know that it cannot exist outside of the knowledge and the will of God. If God is who he says he is, if he really is all-knowing and all-powerful, then people cannot be there outside of his decree. And so any question about the existence of hell is really a question about God himself.

In a brief series of articles, I want to explore the relationship of God’s holiness to human sin and ask this question: What happens when human sin collides with God’s holiness? I will need to presuppose that you have some understanding of God’s holiness and that you know that God’s holiness is one of his most fundamental attributes. God’s holiness is his quality of being set apart, of being completely unlike anything or anyone else. His holiness pervades all he is and all he does. There is a sense in which his holiness modifies his other attributes, so that his love is a holy love and his justice is a holy justice.

In some way all sin is a violation of the holiness of God. God tells us, “Be holy as I am holy.” We are created in the image of the holy God; we are created as holy beings. Yet with every sin we choose unholiness in place of holiness, we choose our way instead of God’s way. With every sin we make light of God’s holiness, we make light of the fact that we are made in God’s image and are told to be like him. Every sin is a statement to God that says, “I choose not to be holy; I choose not to act in your image; I choose my way instead of your way!”

So what is the holy way for the holy God to act in the face of such sin? The Bible shows us that God may respond in two ways--he responds in patient mercy or he responds in just wrath.

In this series I want to go to the Bible to show that we worship a God of mercy and of wrath—a God who is praiseworthy for his mercy and his wrath. In fact, the only God who is worthy of our worship is the God who holds out not only the hope of heaven but also the horror of hell.

Here is how I will divide this up. First we will see that at times the holy God reacts to our sin with just wrath. Then we will see that at times the holy God reacts to our sin with patient mercy. Then, to wrap things up, we will look to the place where wrath and mercy meet. What we will see as we take a deep look at the character of God as it comes into contact with sin is that there is an inexorable connection between God’s holiness and the existence of hell. We will see that hell exists because God is holy—that hell must exist because God must be holy.

That will do by way of introduction. Stay tuned for part two of this series tomorrow.

Randy Alcorn has recently released a book titled We Shall See God (buy it at EPM or at Amazon) in which he has compiled some of the most profound spiritual insights on the topic of eternity from Charles Spurgeon’s sermons and arranged them into an easily-accessible format. He was kind enough to allow me to post one of the devotionals from that book. It is excerpted from a sermon Spurgeon preached on August 6, 1865 titled “No Tears in Heaven” and looking at Luke 16:24-25, 27-31 (the story of the rich man and Lazarus). Alcorn provides a one-sentence introduction and then follows up later with some of his own reflections.

Not one to shy away from difficult topics, Spurgeon tackles two troubling realities in this sermon: first, that some people we don't much care for will be in Heaven and, second, that some people we love will be in Hell.

Spurgeon

Perhaps another source of tears may suggest itself to you, namely sorrow in Heaven for our mistakes, misrepresentations, and unkindness toward other Christian brothers and sisters.

How surprised we will be to meet some saints in Heaven whom we did not love on Earth! We would not fellowship with them at the Lord's Table. We would not acknowledge that they were Christians. We looked at them suspiciously if we saw them in the street. We suspected their zeal as being nothing better than a show and an exaggeration, and we looked on their best efforts as having sinister motives at the heart. We said many unkind things and felt a great many more than we said.

It has been almost 4 months since the release of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins. This is a book that has ignited a great debate on the subject of hell. It has also ignited discussion on the way this debate has been handled, and particularly so by those of us who considered this a dangerously unbiblical book. In the past couple of weeks I have had a lot of opportunity to think about Love Wins—about how it appeared on the scene, how we reacted, and some of the lessons we would do well to learn. Let me share a few of my thoughts on all of this.

We Got Gamed

Love Wins was published by HarperOne—a company with an excellent and well-funded marketing department. I am convinced that their marketing plan involved you and me (and let me define “you and me” as conservative and/or Reformed Christians—exactly the kind of people who tend to read this blog). They drew us in and played us perfectly so that we did exactly what they wanted us to. We reacted with horror—very vocal horror—to the book and its implications. The first hint of the book’s content, the video trailer, was carefully crafted to suggest the purpose of the book but not state it explicitly. This generated a lot of buzz not just about the book’s contents, but about what Bell may have meant in the trailer. It was a brilliant marketing move that ignited a massive amount of discussion and controversy. The first people knew of the book was that it was controversial.

Once the fire had ignited, HarperOne quickly battened down the hatches, refusing to send any more pre-release copies of the book—a very rare phenomenon. This means that until the book’s release copies of the manuscript were unusually rare. I take this to mean that the marketing plan was moving along very well and that allowing reviewers to begin writing critical reviews prior to its release date would have been detrimental to sales. A few copies of the manuscript were passed around, but most reviewers had to wait until release day. Until then all people could do was speculate. And we did.

The long and short is that the marketing plan for this book involved you and me and we played our part.

We Responded Immediately & Forcefully

Our response to Love Wins was immediate and furious and began long before the book was released. The earliest responses were based on the video trailer and made some assumptions, which is to say that Justin Taylor’s earliest comments and John Piper’s infamous Farewell Rob Bell tweet assumed some context—that people were familiar with Bell and his steady theological decline. These were essentially insider comments—from one conservative Christian to others—that very quickly ended up going far beyond that demographic. Ripped from their context, many people took them as being self-assured and mean-spirited even though I am convinced they were done out of genuine love and concern for truth. No one guessed that they would go so far, so fast, and that they would draw such urgent and widespread response. These early responses, first Justin’s and then many others, made statements about Bell based on the hints in the trailer rather than the statements in the book. This allowed Bell’s defenders to declare that we were being unfair and too hasty. Social media did its work and soon tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands of people were reading these comments and spreading them through their own networks; people were retweeting and liking and commenting and writing their own blog posts and everything else we do with news today.

Do not hear me criticizing John Piper or Justin Taylor or anyone else here; I think these men would be the first to say that they had no idea of what would happen and that if they had, they would have responded differently (and, in fact, Justin went back and changed his blog post in several ways).

God has put eternity into man’s heart (Ecclesiastes 3:11). The knowledge that there is more to this world than what we see seems to be innate in human nature. it seems God has so wired us that we know there is life beyond the here and now. Every religion acknowledges something beyond, something outside of ourselves. There is something to come. But far more people acknowledge heaven than hell. Though the majority of people believe there is a heaven, very few believe in hell. Even fewer believe they will ever be in hell.

Yet our hearts continue to tell us that there is life and death beyond the grave. Life offers us many hints of what is to come. John Blanchard says, "The judgments of God fall often enough in this world to let us know that God judges, but seldom enough to let us know that there must be a judgment to come." We see God's judgments in this world often enough to know that God does judge sin and that he is provoked against evil. Yet the scarcity of judgment shows us that there must be more. If God is a judge he must judge all sin, not just some sin. And so we know that more judgment is coming. It must come. And really, we want it to come—we just don’t want it to come against us. None of us want Hitler to escape some sort of greater judgment, some kind of greater consequence for what he did before taking his own life. Surely a man cannot do all that Hitler did and then escape judgment. What kind of world would that be?

In the aftermath of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins there has been a lot of discussion about hell. I believe in hell—a hell of judgment and torment. But through all of this discussion I have been convicted that I do not believe in this hell strongly enough. It seems unavoidable to me that if I truly believe in this hell, it will have a greater impact on my life and faith. A hell of conscious eternal torment is not the kind of doctrine I can believe in and then just go on my way unaffected. Either I genuinely believe it and it will deeply affect my life, or I pay lip service to it and allow it to make very little difference to me. I don’t see how I can believe it deeply and not have it radically impact my life.

I have been helped in understanding life after death by reading Edward Donnelly’s aptly-titled book Biblical Teaching on the Doctrines of Heaven and Hell. The first half of the book discusses hell in all its horror; the second part turns to heaven with all its glory. The first half is difficult to read and weighs heavily on the soul; the second is like a sip of cool water on a hot day. The first terrifies; the second elevates. Donnelly is not given to hyperbole or imagination. He does not present a fictionalized vision of hell that owes more to horror movies or medieval art and imaginings than to the Bible. Rather, he simply relates what the Bible tells us, both explicitly and implicitly, about this awful place. He does so under four alliterated headings: Absolute Poverty, Agonizing Pain, Angry Presence and Appalling Prospect.

A couple of months ago Crossway released Don’t Call it a Comeback: The Old Faith for a New Day. I contributed a chapter to that book titled “Jesus Christ: The Only Way and Our Only Hope.” This chapter deals with religious pluralism, inclusivism and exlusivism, all words and terms that have become hot topics because of Rob Bell’s book Love Wins (my review). Crossway has excerpted that chapter and made it available to you as a free PDF.

You can download it here: Jesus Christ: The Only Way and Our Only Hope.

Alternatively, if you would like to read it in your browser using Issuu, click here.

Here is how the chapter begins…

We live within a pluralistic culture of many faiths. Most often, the faiths coexist peacefully. This is good. Living in multicultural Toronto, a city in which over 50 percent of the population was born in another country, I have seen this religious diversity firsthand. As people immigrate to Toronto, they bring with them their religion. My son's best friend at school is Muslim, the neighbor across the road from us is Buddhist, and just down the way is a Hindu from South Africa. Atheists, Roman Catholics, universalists, Mormons--all of them are within a stone's throw of my front door. Look closely and you can even find the occasional evangelical. Within just our small neighborhood is a virtual pantheon.

While we regret the necessity of this pluralism, wishing that all men would be saved and come to a knowledge of Jesus Christ, we are grateful for laws that allow us freedom to worship our Savior. We may not agree with the tenets of other faiths, but if every religion has freedom, we will too. This religious pluralism allows us to worship Jesus Christ in freedom and peace, without fear of interference or persecution. It is a profound blessing.

Questions matter. They can help you to grow deeper in your knowledge of the truth and your love for God--especially when you're dealing with the harder doctrines of the Christian faith. But questions can also be used to obscure the truth. They can be used to lead away just as easily as they can be used to lead toward. Ask Eve.

Enter Rob Bell, a man who has spent much of the last seven years asking questions in his sometimes thought-provoking and often frustrating fashion. And when he's done asking, no matter what answers he puts forward, it seems we're only left with more questions. This trend continues in his new book, Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, where Bell poses what might be his most controversial question yet:

Does a loving God really send people to hell for all eternity?

The questions you probably want answers to as you read this review are these: Is it true that Rob Bell teaches that hell doesn't exist? Is it true that Rob Bell believes no one goes to hell? You'll just need to keep reading because, frankly, the answers aren't that easy to come by.

How he asks the question is just as important as the question itself. "Has God created billions of people over thousands of years only to select a few to go to heaven and everyone else to suffer forever in hell? Is this acceptable to God? How is this 'good news'?" They say that the person who frames the debate is going to win the debate. That is especially true when the debate is framed in this way, through these particular questions. You're damned if you do and damned if you don't. No offense, and no pun intended.

The Toxic Subversion Of Jesus' Message

Bell begins the book with surprising forthrightness: Jesus' story has been hijacked by a number of different stories that Jesus has no interest in telling. "The plot has been lost, and it's time to reclaim it." (Preface, vi)

A staggering number of people have been taught that a select few Christians will spend forever in a peaceful, joyous place called heaven, while the rest of humanity spends forever in torment and punishment in hell with no chance for anything better.... This is misguided and toxic and ultimately subverts the contagious spread of Jesus' message of love, peace, forgiveness, and joy that our world desperately needs to hear. (ibid)

You may want to read that again.

It really says that. And it really means what you think it means. Though it takes time for that to become clear.

Everyone is talking about the existence of hell. Is hell a real place? Is it a literal place of literal torment? It seems that this issue snuck up on us a little bit. Just a month ago a book came out titled Don’t Call It a Comeback. In that book several of the “young, restless, Reformed” authors (myself included) penned chapters discussing issues pertinent to the church today: the gospel, the new birth, Scripture, social justice, homosexuality. These are some of the big issues in the church today and tomorrow. But there is no chapter on hell (the index shows only 2 references to it).

And yet here we are with discussion raging on the existence and nature of hell. This weekend, as I thought about this controversy, I allowed myself a little thought experiment. What would I have to deny in order to deny hell? If I am ever to come to the point of denying the existence of hell, what will be the doctrinal cost of getting there? Though I am sure there is much more that could be said, I came up with four denials.

I Will Deny What Jesus Taught

Jesus believed in the literal existence of a literal hell. It is very difficult to read Luke 16 (the story of The Rich Man and Lazarus) and arrive at any other conclusion except that Jesus believed in hell and that he believed in a hell of conscious torment of body and mind.

The poor man died and was carried by the angels to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried, and in Hades, being in torment, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far off and Lazarus at his side. And he called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the end of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in anguish in this flame.'

Jesus also believed in the permanence of hell: “[B]esides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, in order that those who would pass from here to you may not be able, and none may cross from there to us.” In Matthew’s gospel Jesus speaks of hell as the furnace of fire, the place of weeping and gnashing of teeth. He calls it a place of everlasting fire. This would be strange language for a man to use if he believed that hell did not exist and that it was not a place of horrible torment.

If I am going to deny the existence of hell, I will need to outright deny what Jesus teaches and declare that he is wrong, or I will need to obscure what is so plain. I will need to make all of Jesus’ language symbolic and all of the meaning something other than what is clear. I will need to deny what Jesus says.

This week, while reading Richard Sibbes’ The Bruised Reed, I came across a quote I wanted to share with you. Here Sibbes offers a sharp warning against anyone who would resist Christ’s mercy. There are not too many people today who will preach what he teaches here.

There are those who take it on themselves to cast water on those sparks which Christ labors to kindle in them, because they will not be troubled with the light of them. Such must know that the Lamb can be angry, and that they who will not come under his scepter of mercy shall be crushed in pieces by his scepter of power (Psa. 2:9). Though he will graciously tend and maintain the least spark of true grace, yet where he finds not the spark of grace but opposition to his Spirit striving with them, his wrath, once kindled, shall burn to hell. There is no more just provocation than when kindness is churlishly refused.

When God would have cured Babylon, and she would not be cured, then she was given up to destruction (Jer. 51:9). When Jerusalem would not be gathered under the wing of Christ, then their habitation is left desolate (Matt. 23:37,38). When wisdom stretches out her hand and men refuse, then wisdom will laugh at men’s destruction (Prow. 1:26). Salvation itself will not save those that spill the medicine and cast away the plaster. It is a pitiful case, when this merciful Saviour shall delight in destruction; when he that made men shall have no mercy on them (Isa. 27:11).

Oh, say the rebels of the time, God has not made us to damn us. Yes, if you will not meet Christ in the ways of his mercy, it is fitting that you should ‘eat of the fruit of your own way, and be filled with your own devices’ (Prow. 1:31). This will be the hell of hell, when men shall think that they have loved their sins more than their souls; when they shall think what love and mercy has been enforced upon them, and yet they would perish. The more accessory we are in pulling a judgment upon ourselves, the more the conscience will be confounded in itself. Then they shall acknowledge Christ to be without any blame, themselves without any excuse.

If men appeal to their own consciences, they will tell them that the Holy Spirit has often knocked at their hearts, as willing to have kindled some holy desires in them. How else can they be said to resist the Holy Ghost, but that the Spirit was readier to draw them to a further degree of goodness than was consistent with their own wills? Therefore those in the church that are damned are self condemned before. So that here we need not rise to higher causes, when men carry sufficient cause in their own bosoms.

Harsh words? Yes, they are. But necessarily so.