Sermons
A Message by the Rev. Harvey G. Throop
Palisades Presbyterian Church
San Diego, California
November 15 , 2009
What About Heaven & Hell?
(1 Corinthians 15:50-57)
“For this perishable body must put on imperishability, and this mortal body must put on immortality.”
(1 Corinthians 15:53)
This morning, I am concluding this brief series of messages on “Faith Questions” by focusing on what scripture tells us about heaven and hell. This, of course, is not an easy topic upon which to speak because the Bible does not have a whole lot to say about what happens to us when we die.
Christian theologian and author, Reinhold Niebuhr, is said to have once quipped that the Bible has a whole lot less to say about death than the preachers who “seem to know everything there is to know about the furniture of heaven, the temperature of hell, and the guest list of both places.”
Perhaps the Bible is wise to leave this matter of what happens to us when we die to faith: a sense that if it were all crystal clear, something of the joy, meaning and purpose of life would be lost. The focus of the Bible is more on life, and how to treasure it, love it and live it fully.
Yet, I believe our destiny is an appropriate subject because, for whatever reason, whenever there is a death, one of the fashionable comments we hear people make is, “Well, so-and-so is now in a better place.” We say that, I think, because we have accumulatively and selectively lifted from scripture such comforting words as, “In my father's house there are many dwelling places” (see John 14:2) and “He (God) will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more” (see Revelation 21:4). We hear these often read at memorial services and we love to stand beneath the assurance they give.
So – what do you think? Do you believe in heaven? How about hell? If you believe in heaven, how would you define it? If you believe in hell, how would you define that? If you believe in both, do you believe that heaven and hell are primarily characteristics of our lives here on earth, or do you believe that they are realms to which one's soul is consigned upon death? Does your belief in heaven and hell affect in any sense the way you live? Do you ever give any thought to them?
I think I am safe in saying that we, today, are not like former generations. We have searched the universe and beyond with space rockets and telescopes. We have found no immortal spirits inhabiting the skies. We have probed the depths of the earth and found no unrepentant sinners writhing in lakes of volcanic fire. So, our beliefs about these realms are neither as easy nor as simplistic as, perhaps, those of former generations.
Still, however, it does not surprise us that many Christians have some strange ideas about heaven and hell that they never find in scripture.
The story is told about how one young man fell into a coma and was thought to be dead. To the surprise and relief of all, however, he regained consciousness. Later, one of his friends asked him what it felt like to be dead. “Dead,” he asked? “I knew I wasn't dead because my feet were cold and I was hungry.” “But how did that make you so sure,” he was asked. “Well,” he replied, “I knew if I were in heaven, I wouldn't be hungry and if I was in hell, my feet wouldn't be cold.” Yes, people do have interesting ideas about heaven and hell.
Insisting on justice, many people believe that there is a great difference between the hope of good people and the doom of evil folks. Some people insist that there must be a hell because they want to consign their enemies there. Many of us tend to want those who have wronged us or who have committed terrible evils to get what we think they have coming to them. While many folks want to think of heaven as a place of future reward for good deeds, they refuse to consider hell where there is punishment for evil deeds done and good deeds left undone. As some might put it, “Why would the God who gave his Son for the world's salvation will that any person should burn forever?”
Most all of us have a curiosity about heaven and hell. If we believe in the Bible's word that we will be resurrected and have an on-going conscious life, we can't help but to wonder where and how we will live. Since most of us – in this life anyway – prepare for any place we are planning to go and spend some time, doesn't it follow that we should plan and make preparation for where we hope to spend eternity?
Of course, there are a number of folks who believe their heaven or hell are here on earth. Many who think they are suffering their hell here hope that death will be their deliverance.
People unfamiliar with the Bible have some interesting opinions of their own making. They have heard something of the symbolic language of scripture and think that the threats of fire and brimstone hell were simply ways of scaring the devil out of the people of former unenlightened generations so they would be good. Others who are unfamiliar with the Bible think of God as a loving, doting grandparent who wouldn't be able to stand by and see any of his children or children's children go to such a place as hell.
When Jesus spoke of hell, he spoke of it as separation from God and he took his symbol of this state of life from the valley of Hinnon or Gehenna. Gehenna was a little valley southwest of Jerusalem. It was there where Ahaz had introduced into Israel the fire worship to a heathen god (Molech) to whom little children were sacrificed in fire (see Jeremiah 7:31-33).
Later, the reforming king, Josiah, put a stop to this pagan practice and made the valley a condemned place (see 2 Kings 23:10). In time, it would become the public dumpsite for Jerusalem. There was always a smoldering fire there and its smell of burning garbage hung over the city. In time, Gehenna became identified with all that is filthy and evil, and so it was probably inevitable that it became a natural synonym and image for hell.
The more we come to understand the scripture's symbolic language, the better we realize that hell is not a piece of geography “down beneath the earth's surface” – nor is it a place of eternal combustion. All of the picturesque language referring to hell is primarily the attempt to communicate what it is like to be separated from God, who created us to live in a family relationship with him.
When the disciples gathered to elect a successor to Judas Iscariot, who had betrayed Jesus, they spoke of Judas we one who had “turned aside to go to his own place” (see Acts 1:25). Interestingly, that expression may just be the most accurate definition of hell to be found in scripture. After all, you and I were made by God for God. God has a purpose and a place for each of us. When we sinned and separated ourselves from him, he cared enough to give us Christ to die for us and reconcile us to himself.
Jesus said he was going ahead to prepare a place for each of us who will believe and follow him, and he would come again and welcome us into his Father's house, so that where he lives, we may live also (see John 14:2-3). But Judas turned away from Jesus and all that God had prepared for him and he went to “his own place.”
Now, as I read scripture, I do not find evidence of an endless hell. I know someone will say, “What about Matthew 25:41, where Jesus says, “…depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” I believe that Jesus, here, was employing a figure of speech common to his audience in order to make this point.
The whole of scripture, as I read it, tells us that any punishment by God is never to destroy us but to save us and redeem us. The purpose of punishment is always remedial. As New Testament commentator William Barclay has put it, “Its aim is to get the good separated from the evil and to attract it into the communion of blessedness” (Barclay, A Spiritual Autobiography , Eerdmans [Grand Rapids, 1975], p. 59).
Why does God punish anyone, according to the Bible? God judges us out of love to make a wrongdoer into a right-doer (see Hebrews 12:5-11). Punishment always hurts. In a way, punishment is like surgery. Its purpose is to bring healing. To consign sinners permanently to hell would be to shut off their chances of believing and behaving differently.
There is no biblical evidence that the destiny of a soul is settled at the death of the body. If we are all resurrected, we are resurrected from death to life. And life always means a chance to growth. If there is resurrection, there must be ongoing opportunity to turn to God and grow spiritually.
Now, I suppose there must be the possibility of resurrected persons continuing indefinitely to say “no” to God. If so, maybe hell would be forever for that person. It may be that a person ceases to be a soul and that is what the Bible calls the “second death” (see Revelation 2:11). And yet, for that to happen would seem to be the defeat of Jesus' mission to save every one of us (see 1 Timothy 2:4).
Is our heavenly Father's love to be ultimately defeated by anyone's sin or indifference? From what I read in the Bible, God is the ceaseless seeker of souls, and I don't believe that God is going to sit contentedly on his throne in glory so long as there is even one of his own children wandering astray.
To speak of eternal punishment is not keeping with Christ and his Gospel. A place of eternal punishment would leave the sinner hopeless; yet Christ gives us a hope that goes beyond this present life. Whatever hell may suggest to us, we are not to think of it in terms of a punishment meted out by an angry God. Rather, we must see it as the consequence of living sinfully in a moral universe in which laws operate just as they do in the physical universe.
Think of it this way: if a person by not watching where he or she is going trips over an object and breaks a leg, we do not say, ‘What a terrible punishment an angry god has given him/her.” Instead, we say, “Why didn't so-and-so watch where they were going?”
In the same manner, hell is a state reached by our not looking where we are going spiritually. So, if one goes to hell, it is by that person's own doing and not by the doing of God, who wills that not a one of his children should perish (see Matthew 18:14).
I believe that hell is both present tense and future tense. The experience of feeling separated from God, with whom we have been created to live in the closest intimacy, can only be described by such picturesque expressions as “unquenchable fire,” “worms that don't die,” “fire and brimstone,” “outer darkness” and “weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Now, just as Jesus spoke little of hell, he also spoke little of heaven. Just as he didn't want people frightened into the kingdom, he didn't want them bribed into the kingdom, either.
Heaven might be defined as “togetherness with God.” It is also both present and future tense. More than a place, it is a quality of life. While Jesus said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” we are not to think of that as a geographical spot up in the sky.
Jesus pictures heaven as the Father's house, spacious enough for all his children. Heaven is no house built with hands but an “at-home-ness” and an “at-one-ment” with the Father.
The Apostle Paul tells of an experience he had one time. He speaks of being caught up to “the third heaven” (see 2 Corinthians 12:2). It is a way of saying his spirit rose to an ecstasy and a nearness to God that was beyond surpassing. He writes of being “caught up into paradise” (2 Corinthians 12:3).
Now, just as all the symbolic language employed to describe the torment of separation from God cannot be taken literally, so that figures of speech describing heaven cannot be taken literally either. “Pearly gates”, “crystal foundations”, “streets of gold” or “Jasper walls” are only the best efforts of human writers trying to do the impossible – namely, describe the joy of being in our Lord's presence.
What we believe about heaven and hell greatly affect the ways many people live. Ridicule the fact of hell and you belittle morality. Deny the reality of heaven and you deny the resurrection and the hope of eternal life. Accept the reality of heaven and hell and you realize that everything you do in this present life has eternal meaning, because everything fits into the scheme of eternity.
All I can do, really, I to share with you my own faith. I believe that when we are finished with our earthly bodies, we will go through the experience we call “death.”
I believe that death is not the end of life, but only a transition into that realm and life that are eternal.
It's unfortunate that in the Apostles Creed , there is the phrase “I believe … in the resurrection of the body.” Since the Greek language has no word for personality , the phrase “resurrection of the body” is used. But that phrase actually means “the survival of the personality” (Op cit, Barclay, p. 62). I wish there could be a New Revised Standard Version of the Apostles Creed so that adjustment in its actual meaning could be made. What is means to say is that we continue on.
I believe that death holds no power except that that which has been given it by our loving and gracious heavenly Father.
I believe in the promise of Jesus who said, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die” (John 11:25,26a).
But I go beyond strict orthodoxy. I believe it is wrong to set limits to the grace of God. Jesus said, “And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:32).
As William Barclay has put it, “God has eternity to work in. It is not a question of God, as it were, rushing us into heaven. It is a question of God using an eternity of persuasion and appeal until the hardest heart breaks down and the most stubborn sinner repents” (Op cit, Barclay, p. 61).
The Apostle Paul put it this way in his Letter to the Romans, “For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all” (Romans 11:32).
Trusting in this, I can hold contentedly to the promises of Christ and of scripture. I need not know the specifics. They are unimportant. Instead, with the Apostle Paul, I can trust that “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, (is) what God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
