“And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.”
–Matthew 10:28
In all of Christianity, there is no doctrine more heart-wrenching than that of hell. Dr. Charles Hodge, the great biblical scholar at Princeton Seminary centuries ago, wrote,
“(Hell) is a doctrine which the heart revolts from and struggles against. The doctrine of hell is a doctrine to which the heart submits only under the stress of authority. The church believes the doctrine of hell because it must believe it or renounce faith in the Bible and thereby give up all the hopes founded upon its promises.”
Now, if most believers were to be gut-level honest, there’s a small part of them that wishes hell weren’t a reality. That part of them says, “You know, God would seem a whole lot nicer and our message would be a lot more palatable if we just took hell out of it.”
Yet in removing hell from our faith, we would make a mockery of God’s holiness, render His judgment useless, and ultimately nullify His grace.
Hell is real because sin is real and evil is real. And how you feel about it has no bearing on its reality. Don’t be embarrassed to speak of hell. Instead, rejoice that God has given us a clear escape from His judgment: Jesus Christ.
HELL IS REAL, BUT GOD HAS GIVEN EVERYONE A CLEAR ESCAPE PATH FROM IT IN THE PERSON OF JESUS CHRIST.
