The Hell That Love Made

“For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.” —Jesus Christ

For a long time I’ve thought about writing this essay, my delay primarily due to a sense of inadequacy, that I would fall far short of conveying the unfathomable depth of God’s love for humanity. His love for you. His love for me. The key role that his Fatherhood plays in all he does. Although my apprehension lingers, the desire to encourage others to boldly explore non-traditional thinking, that our idea of God be ever more true, is stronger.

The word “love” is so overused in our lexicon that it can fall deafly upon our ears. We become numb to the fathomless significance of what this word symbolizes. Yet God is, at his very core, Love. (1 John 4:8) And it is this same Love that made hell.

Why?

Why would the God who is love create such a place? It is a question worth all the pondering it may take to reach a conclusive answer. One which you are convinced of to the very marrow of your spiritual bones. For your answer ought reflect the essence of your God, that which you believe of him to the uttermost.

Traditional thinking likens hell to a sort of prison on steroids, its sentence the consequence of a person’s choice to reject God before taking their last mortal breath. A place where unrepentant evil-doers go to be punished for all eternity. A terrible place of unspeakable torment devoid of any shred of hope. A never-ending quarantine of the incurably bad—if only for their rejection of Jesus as Lord. Once in, never out.

But does this widely published view square with God’s character and his aspiration for the universe he created? What if there proves an alternative purpose for hell then the merely isolating and punitive? One coinciding with the confluence of scripture, reason and our hearts? Would not such an alternative explanation, as unorthodox as it may at first appear, be worth our painstaking inquiry?

The traditional explanation may seem satisfactory—but only on the surface!

Many have questioned over the years why I seem so hung up about hell. To them the matter seems straightforward and the traditional orthodox explanation satisfactory.

I don’t believe them.

I don’t believe them because I have attended many a funeral where the deceased was never known to be a follower of Christ and who, in some cases, stridently opposed what they assumed Christianity to be. In every case but one, those who were closest to the deceased doggedly clung to whatever small shred of supposed evidence they could find—no matter how far-fetched or frail—that the person was not lost to the torments of hell for all eternity but had managed to reconcile with God in the last moment before their death.

This tendency towards hopefulness I find quite natural and in keeping with the Spirit’s own optimism.

But there was one notable instance that differed.

Two family members had died within a short time of each other. Both were known to be ardent rejectors of Jesus Christ. An individual with close ties to both, a devout Christian, was in great despair as she considered the magnitude of what she had been taught: that these two dear ones were forever lost in the torments of hell. She pondered the implications of this belief and found herself troubled beyond the reach of solace.

Who among us wouldn’t feel our hearts similarly agonizing if it were true? If hell has no redemptive purpose, only punitive, some of those we love are forever lost to us. End of story.

I give this dear women homage for she applied herself to stare into the face of what traditionally has been taught us about hell and the logical conclusion, far from comforting her, was a source of tears.

But there is another reason I doggedly pursue the truth about hell: what we believe about hell has everything to do with what we believe about God! And what we believe about God impacts what we do. What we say and convey about him to others. Is he a God whose love never fails and is powerful enough to ultimately rid his universe of sin? Or is he a Father who can be satisfied with merely isolating evil and seeing perhaps the greater portion of his beloved children punished for all eternity without hope of redemption?

Those around us in the world hear a conflicting message: God loves you but only to a point. If you haven’t repented and cast yourself upon his Son prior to your death God’s love transforms to vengeance and your fate sealed with everlasting punishment your eternal lot.

No wonder my friend—or anyone else who thinks the matter through with intense scrutiny as they hold the image of their unsaved loved ones before them—found herself wrestling with despair!

“But,” I hear someone call out, “you cannot just arbitrarily alter the facts of the matter as pointed out so clearly in the Bible just because you wish it were different.”

True enough!

So let us begin to take another look at what the Bible does and doesn’t say. In doing so, we must force ourselves as best we may to set aside what we have been taught by others and do our best to look at scripture with fresh eyes and an unbiased mindset asking the Spirit of God to lead us into the truth of the matter. For it is into a dim mirror we peer and, absent of the Spirit’s aid, we have not the eyes to see.

What we behold in God the Son is the perfect revelation of God the Father

Let us begin by looking at Jesus. After all, he alone is the perfect reflection of his Father and came to earth to reveal him, to show us what his Father—and ours!—is truly like. We do well to keep in mind, whenever we read the Bible, that the gospel records provide us with the clearest lens into the heart of God. When encountering challenging passages in the Epistles and throughout the Bible we can use this utterly reliable lens to keep us on track in our interpretation. As Jesus said to Philip, “He who has seen me has seen the Father… The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own initiative, but the Father abiding in me does his works.” (John 14) And again, as told us in Hebrews, “…He [Jesus] is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature…” (Hebrews 1:3)

So then, we have every reason to avail ourselves of Jesus, God the Son, to explain God the Father.

What then do we find when we stare into the life of Jesus? Is there not love, goodness, mercy and forgiveness everywhere apparent in lavish abundance? And all these grandly divine attributes infinite in that they have no end? Every action taken, every word spoken by the Son of Man is swathed in redemptive purpose for Jesus came to seek and to save the lost. He is the One who proclaimed that if he were lifted up from the earth he would draw all men to himself. (John 12:32) Did he not speak the truth?

Take the parables of the lost coin and the lost sheep. (Luke 15) Does it escape our notice that in both tales the search continues until that which was lost is found? Rejoice in this fact and let the glad richness of it pour over your soul until you find yourself giddy with delight!

God is good and there in not the slightest hint of a dark shadow in him. Everything he does is good and what he means by “good” is such as what we mean and recognize as good too. He is the truest of Fathers and it is this fatherhood, and our relationship to it in our childness, that we must unflinchingly embrace if we are to apprehend his relentlessly persevering love. For God is determined, as Father, to get the wrongness out of us and bring us back home to his great heart of love from which we sprang. It is sin in us that is to be feared far more than hell. If hell were needful to free us from sin’s deadly grasp then plunge headlong into hell we ought gladly go.

A father wants what is best for his children. As Jesus said, “If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give what is good to those who ask Him!” (Luke 11.13)

God’s desire is the reconciliation of his estranged children to himself through the merit, power and love of his Son, Jesus Christ, our elder brother who alone is the way, truth and life. The very Light of the world. Following Jesus leads us home. Becoming true sons and daughters in the likeness of Jesus is our greatest purpose and reward.

Subtle but critical nuances

In the translation of the original Greek text to English there are occasions where subtle but critical nuances are lost to the harm of what may well have been the clear intent of the originating speaker or author. I would venture to go so far as to wonder aloud if the word choices made in certain translations are subject to longstanding doctrinal biases.

I offer two passages, the first oft cited in support of the traditional position on hell as being a permanent condition of never-ending punitive punishment absent of any redemptive purpose whatsoever, the second a supposed touting of the power of God to compel behavior regardless of an individual’s choice.

The first is found in Matthew 25:46:

“These will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

Jesus himself said these words as he spoke about a day of judgement to come. It is found at the conclusion of a passage describing sheep and goats which has, as I alluded, traditionally been held up as the final sentence upon the so-called lost. It may very well prove to be more a judgement of those who claim Christ as Lord in conversation but not in conduct. After all, both groups—the sheep and the goats—refer to Jesus in the passage as “Lord”. But let us set this aside and keep to the main point as it refers to the topic at hand.

There are two words in this verse that bear scrutiny: eternal and punishment.

The Greek word translated “eternal” is aionion and is derived from the root word aion which carries with it an abundance of nuance including age, an age, of the ages, for the age, age-lasting and age of the ages. There is a measure of debate as to how this word ought to be translated in various settings as the word refers to a period of time of either defined or undefined length. An eon if you will with an implication that the associated duration of time may come to an end.

(Yes, both instances of “eternal” in the referenced verse spring from the same Greek word which may seem to complicate things.)

The word translated “punishment” is more straightforwardly problematic as kolasis is the word Jesus used. It is a word that, in the Greek, originally dealt with the pruning of trees so that they might grow better. According to renown scholar, William Barclay, “…in all Greek secular literature kolasis is never used of anything but remedial punishment.”

Is there another Greek word that speaks of penal punishment that Jesus could have used if such were his intent? Yes, timoria would have served perfectly. In fact, there are four alternative words in the Greek language that, if used by Jesus, would have rendered the idea of other than corrective discipline clear. They are:

Ekdikesis: Vengeance (1 Peter 2:14)
Epitimia: Penalty that is imposed by a judge (2 Corinthians 2:6)
Dike: Execution of a legal sentence (Jude 7)
Timoria: Legal penalty or punishment (Hebrews 10:29)

My encouragement is to view Matthew 25:46 through the lens of God’s character. Doing so might yield a paraphrase something like this: These will go away for a time of corrective discipline.

This alternative rendering gains further credence from such translations as:

And these shall go away into the Punishment of the Ages, but the righteous into the Life of the Ages. (Weymouth New Testament, original version)

And these shall go away into age-abiding correction, but the righteous into age- abiding life. (The Emphasized Bible)

And these shall be coming away into chastening eonian, yet the just into life eonian. (Concordant Literal New Testament)

How long a time and what form the discipline takes is, I believe, ideally suited to each individual. God the Father knows his children perfectly and can be trusted to apply the disciplinary form and duration necessary to bring them to Christ.

The following second example demonstrates how dismissing the powerful subtleties and nuances of the Greek words used in the text alters the flavor of a passage quite dramatically from traditional interpretations.

For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:9-11 emphasis mine)

The actual Greek words reflecting the bowing of the knee (kampto) and confession of the tongue (exomologeo) are not reflective of actions imposed upon an unyielding subject but of glad and willing veneration from unbridled adoration. (Sunkampto is the word that would have been used of a bending by compulsory force. Likewise, Homeologeo is the Greek word for admitting to the guilt of a proven accusation.)

How could it be other than a free and glad choice of one’s will? After all, a bowing of the knee and declaration of the tongue are to the glory of God! What sort of misshapen glory would it be if the actions were forced upon resistant wills from a position of domination? No glory at all!

The Rich Man and Lazarus

The Gospel of Luke includes a story Jesus told of a rich man who died and went to hell where he was in agony. A poor man, who laid outside Lazarus’ gate, was taken by angels to “Abraham’s bosom”. Between the two yawned an impassible chasm. (Luke 16)

This parable is often cited as another illustration of the eternal, impassable nature of hell.

Perhaps it bears closer scrutiny.

While it is clear that the rich man has regrets and desires relief from his torment and a warning sent to his five brothers who are yet alive, what is sorely missing in the man is a repentant heart! Nowhere in the story do we see the sort of change of heart and confession of sin that reflects Jesus’ first command in Matthew’s Gospel to, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” (3:2) Absent of sincere repentance, an inseparable chasm must ever exist.

What the Bible does not say

Do you recall the incident so carefully detailed in Acts 26 by the inspired historian Luke? It is the recounting of Paul’s address to King Agrippa and his wife, Bernice, in the court of Festus, the governor. Paul painstakingly tells the king the in-depth story of how he went from a persecutor of those who followed Jesus to a messenger of the gospel. It is a thorough telling with all the details laid out before the king. Deeply moved, the king responds, “In a short time you will persuade me to become a Christian.” In return Paul says, “I would wish to God, that whether in a short or long time, not only you, but also all who hear me this day, might become such as I am, except for these chains.”

We never learn of King Agrippa becoming a Christian. But notice what Paul never says. Not to the king or to anyone else in any of his Epistles. Paul never once provides a clear warning in simple words to the effect that, “If you don’t repent and turn to Jesus before you die you will be forever punished in hell.”

And Paul isn’t the only one. Not once in the entire New Testament does such a simple declaration appear. The absence seems telling.

The true glory

The true glory of God is the defeat of sin and the reconciliation of his estranged ones by the willing choice of his child to firmly grasp the Father’s help by believing in the Son, obeying Jesus’ commandments and abiding in Christ as Jesus abides in his Father. God is not willing that any should perish (2 Peter 3:9) and his fierce love does all that is needful to drive a lost child to Christ, even if it should take the fires of hell to do so.

God’s nature is one of forgiveness as so wondrously exampled by Jesus on the cross where he cried, “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.” (Luke 23:34) As the parable of the Prodigal Son illustrates, God’s forgiveness stands ever at the ready once genuine repentance arises in the heart of one of his wayward children.

I’ve little doubt that there yet remain many who are convinced that one’s last mortal breath seals their lot. That a failure to trust Jesus during one’s earthly life ends all chance for salvation forevermore. I find it impossible, in light of God’s character, to join in this conclusion. Is it not far more in keeping with what we know of God through Jesus Christ to joyfully embrace the possibility that the hell that love made has a redemptive purpose?

As George MacDonald so passionately proclaims:

For hell is God’s and not the devil’s. Hell is on the side of God and man, to free the child of God from the corruption of death. Not one soul will ever be redeemed from hell but by being saved from his sins, from the evil in him. If hell be needful to save him, hell will blaze, and the worm will writhe and bite, until he takes refuge in the will of the Father.

© Michael Kimball 2020 (This writing may be freely shared in its entirety without prior permission from the author.)

Acknowledgement

I would be greatly remiss if I did not acknowledge the many contributions on the topic of hell to be found in the writings of George MacDonald and Michael Phillips. To read more on the subject I heartily recommend the following:

George MacDonald and The Late Great Hell Debate: Rethinking the Core Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Michael Phillips and George MacDonald)