Category: Theology

Categories
Bible Study Theology

1 Peter 3:18-19; 4:5-6 Is Hell really eternal unending punishment?

I don’t plan on answering that question definitively in this post, but I chose it as the post title because it is something that many sincere Christians ask, and I hope that those who are asking it will read this post and be helped along in their search of answers.

I clearly remember a time in my life when eternal conscious torment in hell was a doctrine that I was finding harder and harder to accept.  I believe that many people today are in that place and I hope that by sharing just a little bit here of what God taught me, they may be spared from the grievous error into which I very nearly fell.

First of all, I want to challenge anyone who is questioning the historic orthodox doctrine of eternal conscious torment in hell to ask himself…


“Why am I questioning the reality of eternal punishment?”


If you are honest, I think you would have to admit, as I had to, that the starting point of my thinking was not what God has revealed to us in his inspired Word about his justice, hell and eternal punishment, but rather it was my own philosophical stumbling blocks.  In other words, it is very hard for us to come to grips with eternal punishment, so we go to the Scriptures trying to find a reason why this can’t be true.  Perhaps we were taught about hell in our childhood without ever understanding the biblical basis for the doctrine.  So as adults we begin to question what we were taught because it just doesn’t seem fair that some sinners would be saved and others would be lost.  It doesn’t seem to accord with our concept of love that God would allow a person to suffer an infinite, eternal punishment.

Are you willing to make what God has revealed your starting point, rather than starting with your questions?  Are you willing to study what God has revealed with an open mind?  When we start with our questions, we are putting God on trial and trying to fit his character and being into our human understanding rather than starting with what is greater and infinite and letting it shape our limited, finite understanding.

Try to come with grips with the large portions of Scripture where God’s pure and holy hatred of sin is undiluted.  This is the value of reading the Old Testament prophets.  They break us and show us our wickedness so that we are then in a position to read a chapter like Isaiah 53 and begin to grasp the magnitude of what Jesus did for us when we understand that the wrath in the cup that Jeremiah was told to take to the nations (Jer. 25:15) was drunk for us by God the Son himself (Luke 22:42).  To say that Jesus did not suffer God’s wrath for us is a convenient route to take philosophically, but it is not what God reveals to us in his Word (see my review of The Shack for some of the biblical teaching on God’s just and holy judgment of sin).

God also showed me my pride in questioning his revelation concerning eternal punishment in hell.  Not only was I stubbornly refusing to come to grips with what he was saying to me in his word, I was also claiming that it was unjust for him to condemn me to hell for my sins.

Of course, my concern wasn’t for myself, so I thought.  I was concerned for others who hadn’t yet come to Christ.  What about them?  How could God send them to hell and not me?  Doesn’t that sound noble?  Doesn’t it sound merciful and loving to question how God could condemn poor, lost sinners to eternal punishment.

But what I was missing was the important scriptural doctrine of the unity of the human race.  The problem is not my sin over against your sin.  The problem is our sin.  In Adam, we are all sinners together.  We bear our guilt together as well as individually (Romans 5:12-21).

So when I say, “God, how can you justly punish that poor sinner with eternal punishment”, I am really saying, “God, how can you justly punish me with eternal punishment.” If I am not willing to accept that I deserve eternal punishment then how can I accept what Jesus did for me at the cross?  Do I think that he is saving me because there is something in me that is worth saving?  If so, then I am clinging to my own filthy rags of self-righteousness rather than casting my self wholly on him.  And if I deserve eternal punishment, then so does every other sinner.  That is why I should pray for those who have not believed with humility, recognizing that it is our sin of unbelief and rebellion that needs to be covered with Jesus’ blood.

This is already a huge post, but I want to treat at least one Bible passage that is sometimes appealed to as an argument that hell is not eternal punishment.  Actually, there are many other more important passages to deal with, but this one happened to be the one that motivated me to write this post in the first place, so I’ll just deal with it.

1 Peter 3:18-19

18 For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but made alive in the spirit, 19 in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison, 20 because they formerly did not obey, when God’s patience waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was being prepared, in which a few, that is, eight persons, were brought safely through water.

Many people believe that these verses teach that those who have died without accepting Jesus will eventually be released from hell as they are “brought to their senses” and come to trust in Christ.  Hell, in this way of thinking, is like the “hell” that the prodigal son went through and that brought him to his senses and caused him to come back to Christ (this is only one of several possible interpretations that have been offered). But is Peter really saying here that Jesus, after his resurrection, went and proclaimed the gospel to people from Noah’s day who had died and were in a spiritual prison awaiting judgment day?

1 Peter 4:5-6 seems to refer to the same thing…

5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.

Is this verse also teaching that the good news of salvation in Jesus is preached to people after they have died?

I don’t believe it is, and here is why…

In the context of these verses, Peter is talking about suffering as believers when we take a stand for Jesus and proclaim his gospel (3:13-17).  Immediately before the verses in question, he says, (v. 17) “For it is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.” Verse 17 is crucial to understand.  If it is better to suffer for doing good, than for doing evil, then there is a suffering for evil that is possible to fall into.  Is Peter here only referring to suffering in this world?  We shall see…

To continue his argument, in v. 18, Peter reminds his readers that Jesus suffered for their sin on the cross so that they would not have to suffer God’s judgment “for doing evil” (end of v. 17).  Jumping ahead to v. 21, Peter reminds them that through their water baptism, which was an outward demonstration of their faith in what Jesus did for them in his death and resurrection, they were saved from having to suffer “for doing evil” (remember v. 17 again).

Now let’s look at the verses in between v. 18 and v. 21.  Here Peter uses the example of the sinners who were judged in Noah’s day to draw a contrast between those who do not have to suffer for doing evil (because they were united with Christ through faith demonstrated in water baptism), and those who do have to suffer for doing evil (because they did not believe).  Those who survived the flood of water represent those who are saved through the water of baptism.  But the water that saved some was also judgment for others who did not believe.

The sinners of Noah’s day had opportunity to repent of their sins and find salvation in Noah’s ark.  But how did they have this opportunity?  Most people assume that the Genesis account says that Noah, during the entire time he was building the ark, was also warning people of the coming flood, but if you look again in Genesis, it never says that Noah preached.  The only references to Noah preaching are in the New Testament.  One is in 2 Peter 2:5, where Noah is called a “herald of righteousness.” The other is right here in 1 Peter 3.  Notice that it says that God was “patiently waiting” in the days of Noah.  Waiting for what?  Peter himself answers that question in his second book (2 Peter 3:5-9).  He says that just as God patiently waited for people to repent in Noah’s day, he is also patiently waiting for them to repent now, before he again comes to bring judgement on the earth.

So what does all of this have to do with Jesus preaching to the spirits in prison?  The answer is that Peter is referring to the fact that Jesus, in the Spirit, was patiently preaching through Noah, in Noah’s day, to the people that were in danger of coming under the judgment of the flood.

Let’s say that my brother gives me a Macbook Pro for my 30th birthday because I am moving to Indonesia to live.  Ten years later, it can be said of my brother, “yeah, he gave a Macbook Pro to his brother in Indonesia.”  It doesn’t mean that I was in Indonesia when he gave it to me, but that in contrast to the brother that lives in Ecuador, it was the brother who now lives in Indonesia that got the new laptop.

So we should understand Peter’s words in v. 19 this way: “…in which he went and proclaimed to the spirits who are (now) in prison.” The spirits of those people who were warned by Jesus, who in the Spirit used Noah as an instrument to warn them, are now in prison.  They are facing eternal judgment because they did not respond in faith to what the Spirit of Jesus was revealing to them by offering them an ark of salvation to get into before the judgment of the flood fell.

Summarizing, these verses in 1 Peter 3 do not teach that people can have the good news preached to them after they die and before the judgment, rather they teach that Jesus suffered for evil, and that if we will put our faith in him, we will not have to suffer for our evil deeds, even though we may have to suffer for doing good.

As Peter continues on talking about Christian suffering, we come to the second reference that seems to imply that the gospel will be preached to people after they die…

1 Peter 4:5-6

5 but they will give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead. 6 For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.

Chapter 4 begins with this reasoning:  If Jesus suffered the death penalty for the evil deeds that we were guilty of, then we no longer have to live enslaved to evil human passions.  He doesn’t state it explicitly, but I think his implicit reason for this is that we are united with Christ in his death so that we, with Christ, died to our sins.

He goes on to say that those who are not in Christ do live enslaved to evil human passions, and that they will have to, “give account to him who is ready to judge the living and the dead” (v. 5).  In other words, even though those who are not believers think it is pointless, even ridiculous that we do not join them in doing “what feels right,” they will eventually discover that they are going to have to account for their actions.

Then Peter says, “This is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead…” Here again, just as he did in chapter 3, Peter is not talking about preaching that occurs after the person has died, but rather preaching that brought people to repentance before they died (see my previous illustration of the Macbook Pro).  These people who “are (now) dead,” had the gospel preached to them SO THAT (this is why…) they would be able to stand in the coming judgment.

Even though these believers seemed to come under the judgment of physical death (this is the meaning of, “… though judged in the flesh the way people are” )  they will live spiritually eternally because Jesus suffered their penalty in their place (“…they might live in the spirit the way God does.”)

So again, the teaching here is not that there will be opportunity for people to be saved after death, but rather that there is a judgment that is coming and for those who have sought refuge in Christ, there is hope that the suffering we experience now is not the portent of eternal judgment.

But for those who have not sought refuge in Christ, the suffering of believers is a sign to them that if they do not repent, they will be judged.  This is why Peter closes chapter 4 with these words:

“15 But let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief or an evildoer or as a meddler. 16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify God in that name. 17 For it is time for judgment to begin at the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the outcome for those who do not obey the gospel of God? 18 And…

“If the righteous is scarcely saved,

what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

To conclude my post, I want to lovingly and humbly plead with anyone who may be contemplating the possibility that God will not judge sinners eternally with an infinite punishment.  Seek God in his word.  Spend more time there than alone with your human doubts.  Don’t be content to latch on to a few scriptures that may seem to teach what you want to hear, but ask God to show himself to you, in all of his infinite justice and love that was displayed at the cross of Jesus.  It is my prayerful confidence that he will.


Categories
Books Theology

90 Minutes in Heaven

Sometimes I wonder how many times this book sells because people assume it was written by JOHN Piper.  If you aren’t familiar with either Don or John, let me introduce them to you.  Don Piper is a pastor who has written a book chronicling his experiences surrounding a terrible automobile accident.  He believes that he died and spent 90 minutes in heaven before God miraculously brought him back to life.

John Piper, on the other hand, also a preacher, has written dozens of books in which he presents the glorious gospel of the Savior, Jesus Christ, who died on a cross and suffered the condemnation and wrath of God that sinful humanity deserves so that those who are united with him through faith can experience reconciliation with God and the full enjoyment of God’s glory for all eternity in heaven.

In this post, I want to take a brief look at DON Piper’s book in the light of Scripture…

My 14 year old son read D.P.’s book and liked it initially, but the more we talked about it together, the more we came to the conclusion that there was something wrong.  Any experience that a believer has needs to be held up to the Word of God and evaluated in its light.  When we did this to D.P.’s experience we found the following problems.

1.  D.P.’s “experience of heaven” didn’t include Jesus

Surely Jesus is the “principal attraction” of heaven and would be prominent in any genuine experience.  Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5:8 that “we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.” and in Philippians 1:23, “My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better.” When we die, we will immediately be with Jesus. We will not be in a tunnel and we will not be in heaven “waiting” to see him. I think that based on these scriptures it is safe to assume that Jesus will be the very first person or thing that we see when we die. D.P.’s experience just doesn’t seem to fit with these verses. Does that mean that he is a bad person or intentionally trying to deceive people? Absolutely not, but he needs to look at his experience and seek to understand it in light of Scripture.

It also strikes me that a friend of mine who follows another major world religion has had four surgeries and describes very similar experiences to what many Christians claim to have experienced through near death experiences–being in a long mirrored tunnel with very bright light at the other end. In his case, it strikes me as a demonic deception that he is “OK with God” spiritually and ready to die, and not a genuine experience of whatever lies beyond the grave for him.

2.  Scripture is clear that man dies only once.

Nowhere in Scripture is there any account of someone going “halfway.” There are, however, plenty of examples of people who actually died physically and were raised back to life, both before and after Christ. God certainly raises the dead and he may very well have raised Don Piper from the dead! But I find it interesting that in every single one of these recorded biblical resurrections absolutely nothing is ever said about what these individuals experienced.

Scripture also says that it is “appointed for man to die once, and then comes the judgment.” (Hebrews 9:27). In my thinking, the only way to understand Heb. 9:27 in light of the many recorded resurrections is that when those individuals died, even though they died physically, their souls did not go to heaven. I certainly don’t believe in the erroneous doctrine of “soul sleep”, but I think that this is a reasonable understanding of Heb. 9:27. When God determines to raise someone from the dead, he knows that it is not their time to die, and so he doesn’t take their soul to heaven, but rather restores physical life to their body. I understand that this is just an inference on my part, but I think it is a reasonable one.

3.  Scripture is clear that “back from the dead” experiences will not bring people to faith.

Isn’t it interesting that none of the resurrected individuals recorded in Scripture shared their experience with others? Perhaps it is because there was nothing to share! And even if there was some sort of experience to share, Jesus made it clear in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16 that such experiences are not what God has sovereignly determined to use in the conversion of sinners. Luke 16:31 “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” Rather, “It pleased God through the folly of what we preach to save those who believe.” (1 Corinthians 1:21)

What is lacking in D.P.’s book is the clear, straightforward presentation of the simple biblical gospel, (the one the other Piper preaches). Testimonies are great, but they should point to our wonderful Savior and what he did for us when he took our punishment upon himself so that we might be reconciled to the Father.

If you want to read my son’s review of the book, you can find it here.

Categories
Cross-Centered Life Theology

Importance of the Lord’s Supper

To identify the central event in all of human history is not difficult.  Indeed, the same event is not only at the center of human history, but is central in the universe and even in eternity.  this event is, of course, the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  

It is impossible to over-emphasize the importance of Jesus’ death on the cross.  It is impossible to do too much to keep Jesus’ death central in our thinking, in our daily living, in our conversation and relationship with others, in our service to and worship of God.  

And if it is impossible to make too much of Jesus’ death in our individual living, how much more so is it impossible to make too much of his death in our corporate life together as the people of God.  Without Jesus’ death, there would be no church.  There would be no worship.  There would be no sermons on family life, or money management, or dealing with conflicts, or any of the manifold things we talk about in church.  

I believe we have a sinful tendency to marginalize the death of Christ.  Because of the sin that still indwells us, we tend to drift away from the gospel.  When we first come to Christ, the gospel is right in the forefront of our minds.  We see Jesus crucified in our place, as our substitute, taking upon himself the punishment that we deserve.  We see him as our wonderful Savior and we overflow with love to him.

But as time goes on, our tendency is to treat Jesus and what he did for us at the cross like a movie ticket stub.  When you go to the movies, you pay to get in and they give you a paper ticket stub.  Without that stub, you can’t get past the usher into the theatre to see the movie you want to see.  That stub is your ticket in.  But once you show it to the usher and go into the movie theatre, what do you do with it?  You put it in your pocket and you forget about it.  

That can be a picture of how we think about the death of Christ.  It is our “ticket in”.  We understand that without what Jesus did for us on the cross, we will not be admitted into heaven.  We understand that without his death, we can not be adopted as God’s children and enjoy the privileges of belonging to his family, but the more distant we get from that date when we first entered the family of God, the easier it is to forget the centrality of Jesus’ death on the cross to everything that we do.

Our Lord, knowing our tendency to drift from what should be at the center, gave us, his people, two sacraments to help us keep Jesus’ death constantly before us.  The first sacrament, baptism, is meant to be performed only once.  It pictures for us our entry into the family of God.  Through our identification with Christ through faith, we are united with him in his death and resurrection.  But the second sacrament, the Lord’s Supper, Jesus told us to repeat.  He said, “As often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” (1 Cor. 11:26).  

The reason for two sacraments is that the cross of Jesus is not just our “ticket in”.  It IS that, but it is so much more.  Jesus’ death on the cross that atoned for our sins and propitiated the wrath of God is the source of every single good thing that God has ever given us or the world.  It is the foundation upon which a sinful world and sinful people have any basis for relating to God at all.  As I said before, it is at the center of everything.

For this reason, we gather together often to remember Jesus’ death on the cross.  We come together to pause and think about what he did.  If we only think of Jesus’ death as our “ticket in” we will very soon drift back to a dependence on our own righteousness to earn us a right standing with God.  But when we look often to the cross and what Jesus did there, we will mature in our faith and grow in our relationship to God.  There is a powerful, sanctifying effect that comes from meditating on the cross of Jesus Christ.  That is what we come together at the Lord’s table for.  

I believe that every time we come to the Lord’s table, we should focus on some aspect of what Jesus did for us there.  We can never exhaust the tremendous store of meaning that there is in Jesus’ cross.  Every time we come together to eat the Lord’s Supper together, it should be looking at another facet of the beautiful diamond that is the work of Jesus on our behalf at the cross.  Here are just a few of those facets that come to mind.  

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the SERVANT-NATURE of our Savior.  Jesus himself said, “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matt. 20:28).  Isn’t it amazing that the God whom we had rebelled against and scorned would stoop to serve us, his enemies?  

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the OBEDIENCE of our Savior.  Jesus saved us by obeying in our place.  When we were disobedient to the Creator’s commands, Jesus came in our place and said, “Behold, I have come to do your will, O God…” and the author of Hebrews goes on to say that “…by that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.”   

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the FORGIVENESS that Jesus provides through his death.  We can put ourselves in the place of the repentant thief and know that we will be in Paradise because we have repented and looked to the Savior.  We can hear him say to US:  “Father, forgive them, they don’t know what they are doing.”

When we meditate on the cross, we can consider the REDEMPTION that Jesus purchased with his death.  We were enslaved to sin, but we were ransomed, not with perishable things like silver and gold, “…but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot.” (1 Pet. 2:19).

When we meditate on the cross, we can see the SERIOUSNESS OF OUR SIN.  Nowhere do we more fully grasp what we are guilty of than when we look at the cross of Jesus.  It is there that we see our sin, because “God made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.” (2 Cor. 5:21) We see our sin at the cross because as Isaiah 53:6 says, “The Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all.” 

When we meditate on the cross, we can see the JUSTICE of God.  As God himself declared to Moses when he revealed to him his holy name:  “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty…”  

But God, who does not clear the guilty, is able to say in 1 John 1:9 that “he is faithful and JUST to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  He is JUST to forgive us our sins–because he has already judged our sins in Christ, and therefore it is right and just for him to forgive us.

And finally, when we meditate on the cross of Christ, we can see the LOVE OF GOD for us.  This facet is worth quoting several scriptures…

John 15:12-13  “…love one another as I have loved you.  Greater love has no one than this, that someone lays down his life for his friends.”

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

And 1 John 3:16, and 4:9-10 show us HOW God, in his love, gave his only Son… not just in the incarnation, but at the cross:  “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us…”  “In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.  In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”

For those of us who are married, our unions are meant to display the love that Jesus showed us when he died for us.  Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.”

Unless we meditate on the cross and Jesus’ death there as our substitute, we will not be able to comprehend the depths of his love for us, his children.  We were, Ephesians 2 says, “dead in our transgressions and sins… following the course of this world…following the prince of the power of the air… we were by nature children of wrath….         BUT GOD, being rich in mercy, because of the GREAT LOVE with which he loved us, even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.   TOGETHER with Christ, he says, pointing to the fact that Jesus shared our death, so that we might together with him, be made alive.

And perhaps the most incredible passage displaying the love that Christ showed us at the cross is Romans 5: 6-8:  “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly.  For one will scarcely die for a righteous person–though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die–but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

These are just a few of the many facets of this beautiful diamond which is the death of Christ on our behalf.  So every time you eat the bread, which represents his body given for us, and every time you drink the cup, which represents his life-blood which flowed out of his body for us, remember that the cross of Jesus isn’t just your “ticket in” to the Family of God, to be shoved into your pocket and forgotten.  It is the spring from which flows your entire relationship with God.  Meditate on it often, and not just on Communion Sunday!