I just did a seminar called The Glory of God and the Logic of Hell. I thought I would share with you some thoughts and conclusions from that seminar as my blog this week. I pray that it would challenge you in a God diminishing, hell belittling world in which we live.
God bound by His own righteous character to preserve the worth of his glory; for the ultimate crime-sin, falling short of that glory; sentences with the ultimate justice, guilty; with the ultimate penalty, pouring out his wrath and sending guilty sinners to hell. A crime is wicked and blameworthy in direct proportion to the worth of the one assaulted. Think about this. There are no penalties for slapping mosquitoes. However if you kill dogs with the same disregard you can get into trouble. And you'll be in worse trouble if you do the same thing with horses. And when you assault or worse kill a human being your guilt increases in the same way that the worth of a person is greater than the worth of an animal. And so it is when you assault the glory of God.
Since God is infinitely greater, infinitely more valuable, than human beings, an assault on his worth is wicked and blameworthy beyond measure. And therefore it is just and right that God should condemn people to eternal condemnation. There is an immensity of horror for the sin of disbelieving God. It is the ultimate most horrendous evil that there is. Nothing can compare to it. Not even the hellish crimes of the Holocaust of the Jews, the killing fields of Cambodia, the genocide of Sudan, and the holocaust of abortion. The indigence we feel concerning those crimes is an indictment against the lack of indignation that we feel about the holocaust of sinners perishing in unbelief!
Jonathan Edwards said,
"The glory of God is the greatest good; it is that which is the chief end of creation; it is of greater importance than anything else. But this is one way wherein God will glorify Himself, as in the eternal destruction of ungodly men He will glorify His justice. Therein He will appear as a just governor of the world. The vindictive justice of God will appear strict, exact, awful, and terrible, and therefore glorious."
John Piper adds,
“God; bound by His own righteous character to preserve the worth of his glory; for the ultimate crime-sin, falling short of that glory; sentences with the ultimate justice, guilty; with the ultimate penalty, pouring out his wrath and sending guilty sinners to hell. “
Since God is infinitely greater, infinitely more valuable, than human beings, an assault on his worth is wicked and blameworthy beyond measure. And therefore it is just and right that God should condemn people to eternal condemnation.
Jonathan Edwards in his sermon The Justice of God in the Damnation of Sinners said,
"A Being of infinite greatness, majesty, and glory" God is therefore "infinitely honorable" and worthy of our absolute obedience. "Sin against God, being a violation of infinite obligations, must be a crime infinitely heinous, and deserving of infinite punishment."
God did not ordain the cross of Christ or create the lake of fire in order to communicate the insignificance of belittling his glory. The death of the Son of God and the damnation of unrepentant human beings are the loudest shouts under heaven that God is infinitely holy, and sin is infinitely offensive, and wrath is infinitely just, and grace is infinitely precious, and our brief life, and the life of every person in your church and in your community ,leads to everlasting joy or everlasting suffering
John Piper writes,
O how infinitely dreadful sin must be! How infinitely blameworthy it must be to treat the glory of God with contempt! How infinite must be the insult to God when we do not trust his promises! What infinite beauty and glory and purity and holiness God must have, that endless suffering is a just and fitting punishment for disobeying his word. Hell is an echo of the glory of God. The infinite horrors of hell are intended by God to be a vivid demonstration of the glory of God. And it is to fill us with wonder that the death of one man--the God-man, Jesus Christ--could bear the infinite penalty as a substitute for everyone who repents and trusts in him. And that God who says it is an abomination to punish the innocent and acquit the guilty could somehow be God and yet save and justify sinners like us (Proverbs 17:15). Think on that for awhile! Hell is an echo of the glory of God. It reveals the greatness of the glory that has been rejected and the greatness of Jesus' suffering because he bore that. The point of all these is that we are meant to shudder. We are meant to tremble and feel dread. We are meant to recoil from the reality. Not by denying it but by fleeing from it into the arms of Jesus, who died to save us from it.
A summary of why hell is logical to me:
If:
GOD IS INFINITE
GOD IS THE GOD OF INFINITE GREATNESS AND GLORY
GOD HAS INFINITE PURPOSES
GOD IS BOUND BY HIS INFINITE PURPOSES
GOD MAKES INFINITE OBLIGATIONS
GOD IS WORTHY OF INFINITE WORSHIP
GOD IS WORTHY OF ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE TO HIS INFINITE OBLIGATIONS
Then:
SIN IS A VIOLATION OF INFINITE STANDARDS
SIN IS INFINITELY HEINOUS
SIN IS THE ULTIMATE CRIME AND OFFENSE AGAINST AN INFINITE GOD
SIN IS THE ULTIMATE GUILT
THEREFORE:
SIN IS DESERVING OF THE ULTIMATE JUSTICE
SIN IS DESERVING OF THE ULTIMATE SENTENCE OF GUILT
SIN IS DESERVING OF THE ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT
THE ULTIMATE PUNISHMENT IS INFINITE ETERNAL PUNISHMENT
Understanding this is crucial to our drive to appreciate the work of Christ and to preach His gospel. Robert Peterson sums up the matter when he says that the images of hell "shock our sensibilities. They present a fate involving utter ruin and loss (death and destruction), the eternal wrath of God (punishment), unspeakable sorrow and pain (crying and grinding of teeth), terrible suffering (fire), and rejection by God and exclusion from his blessed presence (darkness and separation)." Jesus died to save us from hell and bring us into the everlasting enjoyment of His glory. All we need to do is turn to Him in repentance and faith and He will give us eternal life.
John Piper writes:
O what a difference it makes when one believes in hell - with trembling and with tears. There is seriousness over all of life, and an urgency in all our endeavors, and a flavor of blood-earnestness that seasons everything and makes sin feel more sinful, and righteousness feel more righteous, and life feel more precious, and relationships feel more profound, and God appear more weighty.Hell, then, is an eternity before the righteous, ever-burning wrath of God, a suffering torment from which there is no escape and no relief.
Grateful and reverent about my rescue from hell,
Pastor Bill
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