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-- Anne Jones, April 2008

Legacy of Death

To start with let me state what I know for certain. Our God is Holy and Just. Loving and Merciful. A Good and Jealous God. Whatever happens to anyone after death is not going to violate any of these attributes. Should hell with its full horror of eternal conscious torment be a true and real place somehow our good and loving God will be more upset by that then I am and it that I rest. However, for the two following reasons I think it prudent to consider whether this is in actuality what the bible teaches. First if it is a wrong doctrine than we are doing God a huge injustice to continue to declare it. And secondly I wonder how many stumble over this doctrine in their search for God. That a loving God would consign people to a state of torture forever seems irreconcilable and may keep them from ever knowing that God for themselves.

So we start in the beginning. Adam and Eve sin and as promised the consequence is death. And yet that death is not immediate, in fact they continue to live for some 900 years. But a curious thing happens at the end of chapter three. God banishes them from the garden. Growing up I had always been taught or assumed that this was part of the punishment. But it is clearly not. The punishment, first for the snake and then the woman and then the man, happens before this. Once the curses have been pronounced that conversation ends and a couple things happen. Adam names Eve and God makes them both some clothes THEN God turns and says “The man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil. He must not be allowed to reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life and eat, and live forever.” This is not a punishment. This is mercy. God knew that to live forever in the guilt of our sin would in fact be hell. And this He was not willing for us to endure. Until He was able to provide a way for us to have eternal life with our sin and guilt taken care of, He ensured that we would not in fact life forever. Without eating of the fruit of the tree of life we simply return to the dust from which he created us.

Mortality of Man

Just three verses earlier He said this very thing to Adam “...until you return to the ground, since from it you were taken; for dust you are and to dust you will return.” There is no promise of further punishment or further life. We are dust and we are sustained in our present life by the breath – the Spirit – of God. He breathed into Adam to give him life and turned the dust into the gloriousness of an image bearer. But when the Spirit of God departs, the image bearer is no longer, and becomes again what he is in himself – dust. Hence God says in Gen 6:3 “My Spirit will not contend with man forever, for he is mortal; his days will be a hundred and twenty years.” Without the Spirit of God 'contending' with us we cease. Colossians makes this point as well “...in him all things hold together” (Col 1:17). Without Jesus we could no longer be held together. It is difficult to understand how hell can exist since at its most fundamental level it can be defined as “A place where God is not.” So one would conclude that not only things, but more especially people, would no longer be held together should they find them themselves in a place without Jesus. How long can one exist when not held together?

Going back, Gen 6:3 makes another interesting point. Man is mortal. Nowhere does the bible ever claim that any part of us is immortal. Immortality is an attribute of God not man. Here it is declared clearly and unambiguously by the Lord God himself - “he [man] is mortal”. We are mortal beings. We do not go on forever. Unless, and here is the gift, unless we accept the life we are offered in Jesus Christ. What a miracle! In one almighty act Jesus provided not only the payment for the sin of which we are guilty but the gift of life eternal. There is no other way to receive eternal life, the way to the tree is barred – Praise God !– we are offered life on His terms, in His way, in His timing because He loves us, He is merciful and He is Just.

Destruction not Torture

Eternal conscious torment is just bad eternal life instead of good, but this is not the alternative offered. The gift of eternal life is contrasted with death not with punishment. As two of the most famous verses makes clear.

John 3 :16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

Rom 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

Again and again God's word proclaims this alternative:

Psalms 37 :18 +20, 36-38 “The days of the blameless are known to the LORD, and their inheritance will endure forever.... But the wicked will perish: The LORD's enemies will be like the beauty of the fields, they will vanish—vanish like smoke... But he [the wicked] soon passed away and was no more; though I looked for him, he could not be found. Consider the blameless, observe the upright; there is a future for the man of peace. But all sinners will be destroyed; the future of the wicked will be cut off.

Psalm 103: 14-17, “for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass, he flourishes like a flower of the field; the wind blows over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But from everlasting to everlasting the LORD's love is with those who fear him.”

Note the blameless linked with enduring forever and having a future, while the wicked perish, vanish like smoke, are no more, their future is cut off.

James 1:11+12 “For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant; its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed. In the same way, the rich man will fade away even while he goes about his business. Blessed is the man who perseveres under trial, because when he has stood the test, he will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.”

The life here is short and soon fades and the promise for more life of any kind is only to the one who loves God, and he receives a crown of life.

Life on Offer

We have to be born again of something that will not perish, will not die, we need to become imperishable, immortal. Only through Jesus' triumph over death do we have that, otherwise we remain part of the mortal, perishable man who live under the curse of death and mortality.

1 Peter 1:23 “For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God.”

I Cor 15: 50-57 “I declare to you, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed— in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true:

"Death has been swallowed up in victory."

"Where, O death, is your victory?

Where, O death, is your sting?"

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

This is the promise, the joy, the audacity of the resurrection. That we become what we are not and we are offered life. Over and over Jesus tells he came to offer us life, abundant life, eternal life, full life. He is the life. As Paul sums up in Rom 8:11, 13 “And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you... for if you live according to the sinful nature, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live.”

Great, but....

So this is all very persuasive except that there are all those other verses that talk of a lake of fire and hell. Most of them are parables which can be understood in their contexts and often could be referring to the literal hell - Gehenna (Jerusalem's garbage dump which lay just outside the city wall). Again much of the language used in referring hell is the language of destruction not torment (eternal or otherwise). For instance:

Matt 10:28 “Do not be afraid of those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather, be afraid of the One who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”

The verse I find most difficult to reconcile is in the story of the sheep and the goat.

Matt 25:46 “Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life.”

Two things I will note first that in verse 41, Jesus says that “the eternal fire [was] prepared for the devil and his angels” Hell is not for humans, even if they do end up there. Secondly, this is the punishment for those who do not give a glass of water, or a plate of food, or a coat,or a encouraging visit to those who need it. And conversely eternal life is offered to those who do. If our salvation message is based on these verses it is a salvation based on works only. I don't know all what Jesus meant in here but I suspect that his main point was not to teach about how to be saved or not be saved but rather how important helping the helpless is to Him.

Holding Loosely

There is more to say, more verses to show how this idea fits with what the rest of the Bible says. And more verses that maybe need some fresh perspective to understand more rightly. But for now I will end by admitting that this idea cannot be the whole picture. I don't think we can really get the whole picture while on this side of the grave, God is too big to be fully understood by mere humans. But I know for sure that there is some piece missing because of the following verses.

“If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake the dust off your feet when you leave that home or town. I tell you the truth, it will be more bearable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day of judgment than for that town.” Matt 10:14+15

Somehow there is a degree to the punishment meated out on the day of judgment. Some homes and towns have it worse than other homes or towns. If everyone who dies without accepting eternal life from Jesus simply ceases to exist upon death, how do you account for this range in “bearability”. In defense I can say that traditional views on hell do not account for this varying degree of suffering either but more than that I cannot say. What happens to those who do not choose to receive Jesus' offer of eternal life I cannot claim to know for sure, and I hold these views on the hell of the lack thereof, loosely. I hope I am willing to lay them down or change them, if better answers for the facts laid out through the whole Bible are presented.

(c) Anne Jones, 2008