War is hell. My life is hell. The ________ from hell. This hurts like hell.

Casual use of the word hell minimizes the enormity of what this term scripturally represents. Surveys show only about 50% of people now believe in the existence of hell. Perhaps shockingly, about 1 in 5 declared evangelical Christians say they don’t believe in hell’s existence or, in the least, they’re not sure it exists. That number doubles in surveys of Roman Catholics and Orthodox. Predictably, over 70 percent of those who identify as “nones,” meaning no religious affiliation including agnostics and atheists, deny hell’s existence.

The Campaign to Eliminate Hell: A new generation of evangelical scholars are challenging the idea that sinners are doomed to eternal torment... (Article Headline, National Geographic, by Mark Strauss, May 13, 2016).

While numbers of those believing in hell continue to fall, the same hasn’t happened with those claiming belief in heaven. It seems more people want to believe eternity is a wonderful place of hope for everyone than any possibility of eternal accountability before Deity.

How can Christians possibly project a deity of such cruelty and vindictiveness whose ways include inflicting everlasting torture upon His creatures, however sinful they may have been? Surely a God who would do such a thing is more nearly like Satan than like God, at least by any ordinary moral standards. ... Surely the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is no fiend; torturing people without end is not what our God does. Does the one who told us to love our enemies intend to wreak vengeance on His own enemies for all eternity? ...

Everlasting torment is intolerable from a moral point of view because it makes God into a bloodthirsty monster who maintains an everlasting Auschwitz for victims whom He does not even allow to die. (Professed evangelical, the late Clark Pinnock, The Destruction of the Finally Impenitent, 1992)

Among those claiming belief in hell, a growing number now redefine it. Here they believe that it’s only temporary. Most hold that in the end God redeems everyone (some believe God’s redemption includes the devil himself). Others believe that after a time of punishment, God obliterates the lost. These twin views of universalism and annihilationism jointly oppose the longstanding widespread biblical understanding of hell. This is an eternal hell, a place of conscious torment.

In theological circles this doctrine is known as Eternal Conscious Torment (ECT). Critics fault it for its lack of proportion. Why would a loving God punish a single lifetime of sin with endless lifetimes of torture? And, among sinners, does an adulterer merit the same punishment as a murderer? And what about the billions of people whose only sin was to follow a different faith? (The Campaign to Eliminate Hell, National Geographic, by Mark Strauss, May 13, 2016).

I argue that understanding biblical heaven requires understanding biblical hell. No one understands either apart from recognizing that an eternal hell is proportional to the offense. Consider two theoretical legal cases to frame this topic of proportionality:

#1. A person without cause strikes a man he meets on the street causing bodily harm. With many witnesses proving the offenders’ guilt, the court afterwards finds this lawbreaker guilty and therefore pronounces sentence.

#2 A person without cause strikes a man he meets on the street. This time, our man on the street is the president of the United States. With many witnesses proving the offenders’ guilt, the court afterwards finds this lawbreaker guilty and therefore pronounces sentence.

Will the court find the severity of these two crimes the same? Will each pronounced sentence be the same? Undeniably, the answer to each question is no. For justice to be served the court considers the latter offense greater because the offended party is greater in stature.

Now, imagine a person without cause violates the greatest authority in existence – their creator and God. With irrefutable evidence of their guilt, what sentence is necessary for justice to be served?

Know this:

Sin against an infinite God is of infinite magnitude.

Sin of infinite magnitude needs punishment of infinite magnitude.

For justice to be served, the offender’s punishment must reflect the stature and importance of the one offended. Do we truly understand the stature, the eminence, of our Lord God?

“Now a sin that is against God is infinite; the higher the person against whom it is committed, the graver the sin – it is more criminal to strike a head of state than a private citizen – and God is of infinite greatness. Therefore an infinite punishment is deserved for a sin committed against him.” (Summa Theologiae, by Thomas Aquinas, written between 1265-1273 AD.)

If you yet haven’t understood the enormity of your sin against an infinite and eternal God, stop right here and search Scripture for all it reveals about our holy God. Meditate on all He is. Meditate on His unchanging greatness and unassailable perfection. Reflect on your arrogance in thinking that any sin and rebellion against your creator is trivial (Romans 9:20; Isaiah 64:8). When you’ve glimpsed the magnitude of spitting in the face of this highest authority, you’re ready to move on as we consider all that hell is.

I don’t intend this brief article to get into technical details about the afterlife, meaning what’s present and what is to come (this I’ve done elsewhere). Here I use the term hell to represent the final, post judgment, state of the lost. Similarly, I use heaven to represent the final, post judgment, state of God’s redeemed.

Jesus spoke about hell more than anyone else in Scripture. Yes, Jesus, the friend of sinners (Matthew 11:9), the only way to the Father (John 14:6), warned of the unending judgment to come. When the church ignores or obscures this truth, it neglects something Jesus thought important. When a believer denies hell, they call Jesus a liar. In fact, Jesus experienced hell for God’s redeemed.

The pains of hell include:

Pain of loss. Latin “poena damni”, punishment of the damned (or the lost). This is separation from God, excluded from everlasting happiness, excluded from God’s glory, excluded from God’s grace, excluded from God’s light, excluded from all fellowship with God, excluded from seeing God. Here is unending subtraction of wanted blessing.

Pain of sense. Latin “poena sensus”, punishment of sense. This includes inflicted torments in body and soul. It’s the experience of something painful: physical pain, mental torment, anguish, sadness (weeping and gnashing of teeth), pain of conscience, absence of hope (or spark of light), darkness, and unquenchable fire. Here is unending addition of undesired punishment.

Make note that separation from God is in one sense absence from the presence of God:

2 Thessalonians 1:9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

This is not God’s complete absence though. While not present in the glory of His grace and blessing, He’s present in holy wrath and righteous anger. Unlike the redeemed, who see God and experience His full blessedness and loving comfort, the lost feel the unbearable power of His holy presence which they’re unescapably forced to bear. The lost remain forever indignant in their unending fear over this constant presence of the One who forever rules over us. They’re now forced to recognize for eternity the One they refused to recognize in life. The never-ending presence of their just and holy Judge now consumes their thoughts for eternity. Jesus defines the duration of this punishment as “aionios” or eternal...

Matthew 25:41 “Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

In this one verse Jesus pictures both pains of hell. Focus on two words: First, “depart” – the pain of loss and separation from God. Second, “fire” – a readily understood image of anguish and pain.

As already stated, Jesus, on the cross, suffered poena damni and poena sensus for us (1 Peter 2:24, 3:18; Galatians 3:13; 1 John 4:10; 2 Corinthians 5:21). Jesus’ physical pain during his crucifixion is at the forefront of many people’s thoughts about His suffering. Yet, God laid the entirety of our sin on Jesus (Isaiah 53:6; Romans 4:25). Not to lessen Jesus’ physical pain, His greater suffering was of the soul. It’s this mental anguish that saw Jesus thrice ask the Father if the cup could pass from Him (Matthew 26:38-44). What cup? Jesus spoke of the cup of God’s judgment poured out on the wicked. It’s a terrible outpouring of wrath causing them to stagger and vomit in pain and disaster (Psalms 75:8; Jeremiah 25:15-29). This was something our sinless Savior should have never had to bear (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 4:15; 1 John 3:15; 1 Peter 2:22). God crushes everyone drinking that cup like grapes in His wrath (Jeremiah 25:30; Revelation 14:18-19). The Father’s cup was the pain of His wrath, peona sensus, laid on Jesus.

While we have trouble understanding how the eternal son of God could suffer separation from the Father, Jesus’ own words in Scripture tell us that He did. In darkness, “Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Matthew 27:45-46).” How far removed is that cry from the eternal union and glory Jesus normally had with His Father? (John 17:24). Yes, Jesus experienced the pain of loss, poena damni.

As atheists invent false hope by imagining there is no God (Psalms 14:1), many unrepentant sinners create similar hope by denying hell’s eternity. Both find themselves wrong, one for rejecting the undeniable existence of the eternal God, the other for failing to recognize the enormity of their sin against that holy eternal God.

The Bible makes clear that unseen things are eternal (aionios) and hell deals with the unseen (2 Corinthians 4:18). It’s following the end of this transient seen world that judgment occurs. It’s of the unseen world that God casts resurrected bodies and souls into the lake of fire.

Annihilationism falsely offers hope of a cessation of pain, anguish, and punishment. The enormity of Hell rests in its unceasing pain and loss. The infinite unceasing wrath of God poured out on the unrepentant without hope of end, for a million years, and then expectation of a million million years to follow, leaves no hope at all. A belief that someday annihilation or ceasing to exist will come, provides false hope for an end. The lost would look to the ending as a means of escaping God’s wrath, an end to their physical and mental torment. Indeed, they long for this end as mercy and grace (both which God forever removed from them). The annihilationist wrongly claims to know the extent and limit of God’s just wrath (1 Corinthians 2:16). Many annihilationist’s claim an end to existence is a greater punishment than everlasting torment, something no soul wants. They fail to recognize how readily millions of people perish at their own hands, each trying to find cessation of their existence and an end to their pain. How much more would these tormented individuals find false hope in some final spiritual finish?

“Wicked men will hereafter earnestly wish to be turned to nothing and forever cease to be that they might escape the wrath of God.” (Jonathan Edwards, Sermon on Revelation 6:15-16).

Opposing Annihilationism, universalism falsely holds everyone finds forgiveness and rest in God. This echoes the serpent’s lie in the garden of Eden: “You will not surely die” (Genesis 3:4). They use this lie to blunt the offensiveness of sin and mute the holiness and justice of God. Contrary to God’s revelation, no one must fear punishment or loss, for in their imaginations the universalist claims eternal life and bliss for all. Like Eden’s serpent they claim none will die and all will live, as in a fairy tale, happily ever after. Their words are a fairytale and worse still a misleading invention that dulls righteous fear of an unspeakably Holy God. The universalist stands on a street corner crying out in agreement with Eden’s serpent, “You will not surely die.”

2 Thessalonians 1:9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal (aionios) destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might

Some argue that Scripture’s use of “aion,” meaning “age” is proof that hell is only for a term. Two words are actually in view: aion (“age”) and aionios (“eternal”): The Greek word “aion” is a broad word defined by its context. It may mean a present and limited age, but it similarly can mean a future and endless age. The only way to know which the Scripture writer intended is to follow the contextual clues surrounding it. In Revelation 20:10 “forever and ever” or “eis aion aion” refers to the eternal realm, the sphere of the devil and other spiritual beings. This is the “eternal” or “aionos” state of punishment prepared by God for this rebellious creature (Matthew 25:41). This unending duration of “eternal” or “aionios” is the same for sinful humans as it is for God’s saved righteous (see Matthew 25:46). Aionios, in identical context, modifies both punishment for the lost and life for God’s redeemed. Grammatically, this new life extends for the same duration as punishment for the lost. The lost join the eternal state of the devil (Revelation 20:15). Here the text defines the “second death (Revelation 20:14),” an unending death, as “tormented day and night forever and ever.” Notice the beast and false prophet are already in this fire for “a thousand years” before the devil joins them – they are still there in punishment and not consumed (Revelation 19:20, 20:3, 7, 10). After the devil joins them, in Revelation 20:10 John stresses their continued state: “they will be tormented day and night forever and ever.” Aion, when used of post-resurrected saints or sinners, speaks of the last age, the unlimited eternal age. As the New Heavens and Earth (and City of God, see Revelation 21:1-2) are aionios in the aion to come, so is the Lake of Fire. The righteous are raised (body, soul, and spirit) to a new second, eternal, unending life. The lost are raised (body, soul & spirit) to a second, eternal, unending death. “Perish” in John 3:16 is an intentional contrast to “aionios zoe” or “eternal life.” Scripture shows that perishing doesn’t mean an end of existence, it means never ending punishment. As the apostle affirms in John 5:24, God’s redeemed have “passed from death to life.” In context, this means passing from unending death to unending life.

“The perpetual duration of this death is proved from the fact that its opposite is the glory of Christ.” (Commentary on 2 Thessalonians 1:9, John Calvin)

Some claim Hell’s eternal torment is contrary to God’s nature. Their arguments appeal to their ideas of God’s love and God’s justice. On the latter, they can’t see how eternal torment is God’s just response for humanity’s sin. Again, they fail to recognize the infinite magnitude of their sin and their rebellion against an infinitely holy God. In their view, eternal punishment is an unjust overreaction by God. The Bible makes clear that God judges “according to what they had done,” meaning punishment is equal to the evil done. Yes, the Bible teaches degrees of punishment in hell. But this equity in no way limits the everlastingness of Hell and that punishment. Those claiming overreaction by God, for an eternal hell, fail to see how God has showed His justice in the pages of Scripture. Are you equally willing to accuse God for overreaction as you consider these historical examples?

- Lot’s wife dead, as a pillar of salt, for looking back (Genesis 19:26)

- Priests Nadab and Abihu dead, consumed by fire, for improper worship (Leviticus 10:1-2; Numbers 3:4)

- Achan and his entire family dead, by stoning, for coveting and theft (Joshua 7:24-25)

- Uzzah dead, struck down by God, for trying to keep the ark from falling (2 Samuel 6:6-7)

- Uzziah condemned to a slow painful death, by leprosy, for improper worship (2 Chronicles 26:16-23)

- Ananias and Sapphira dead, struck down by God, for lying (Acts 5:1-10)

Each of these people acted in rebellion or opposition to God’s commands. God’s reaction for each is just. If committed against you or me, the offender wouldn’t deserve death, yet these sins were against One far greater. Each of these people deserved condemnation for their actions (no matter how well-meaning or incidental they appeared); each deserved punishment that God in advance promised for their actions. The Bible well shows Ananias and Sapphira’s sin was a sin against God himself (Acts 5:3-4). All sin is an attack against God, and for that sin and attack on God’s character, the sin deserves eternal death: “The soul who sins will die (Ezekiel 18:4; 18:20).” In a bigger picture, the sin and death we inherited from our father Adam is also proof of God’s justice (Romans 5:12,15-19). God pronounced sentence of death on us all for the sins we’re born into. Whether lived in luxury or years of toil, hardship, or torment, we’re not much different than Uzziah – we finally die under the just sentence of God. Disobedience and unfaithfulness characterize our being. We willingly follow in Adam’s footsteps in his revolt against God and we’re as guilty as him (Romans 3:10-18, 23). If it wasn’t for the new life found in Christ there’d be no hope. And all this physical death is merely a shadow of the second and unending death we still deserve for our sin against an eternal God.

Don’t miss these unchangeable facts:

God is judge (1 Peter 1:17; John 5:22; Revelation 20:11-15)

God rules over hell (Luke 12:5; Matthew 25:41; Revelation 20:10, 15); the devil doesn’t rule here, he’s cast there to for eternal torment.

God is present in hell (Revelation 14:10; also 2 Thessalonian 1:9 showing God is not present in grace and blessing; Psalms 139:7-8)

The Bible has three types of punishment in view: preventative, remedial, and retributive...

Preventative: punishment given to deter others from sinning. (ie. 1 Timothy 5:20)

Remedial: punishment given to cause improvement in the person undergoing punishment. (ie. Hebrews 12:7, 10-11)

Retributive: punishment given as deserved. (ie. Genesis 9:6).

Hell is retributive punishment (2 Thessalonians 1:5-9; Revelation 14:10-11). This is the promised punishment God has told His saints to wait for (Revelation 6:10). This is when God destroys the destroyers of the earth (Revelation 11:18). This is God’s just judgment against persecutors of His people (Revelation 16:5-6). This is the judgment God calls his saints and apostles to rejoice over (Revelation 18:20, 24; 19:2).

Hell is the opposite, the antithesis, of heaven. Consider, if hell is perpetual torment under God’s holy wrath, complete with separation from God’s blessing, grace, and mercy, then heaven is the reverse. Heaven features the constant presence of all God’s blessing, grace, and mercy. It’s unending experience of our God’s joyous presence and glory.

The positive terms and imagery that God uses for His people and heaven also show intensity of the reverse negative for those in hell.

God describes heaven using terms of joy, specifically a wedding, with a beautifully adorned bride who loves her bridegroom and a strong and protective bridegroom who loves his bride. That marriage supper, the celebration, the awe and wonder of the groom seeing his bride and the bride her bridegroom. It’s earthly imagery intentionally evoking the best thoughts we can imagine. The spiritual and physical truth behind Revelation’s wedding imagery is beyond our grasp.

Consider ten ways the Bible contrasts heaven with hell:

Believer: rejoice in the promised eternal reality of heaven in the glorious presence of God. Unrepentant sinner: turn while you can and cast yourself on God’s mercy. Come to faith in Jesus Christ and enter the joy and glory of this gracious God. I pray you never must experience the unending, unimaginable, unbearable torment that awaits everyone remaining in rebellion against our Holy God. Every knee will one day bow (Romans 14:11; Philippians 2:10-11). Will it be willingly before your Lord and Savior or because you’re forced too – and so begin your eternal torment constantly aware of the God you refused to acknowledge in this life?

2 Corinthians 5:11a Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade others.