Don’t Go to Hell

Hell is a word that brings certain images to our mind: images of fire and flames, imprisonment and anguish.

We might even picture Satan and his demons, cruelly tormenting those suffering souls in the furnace. Hell is fine for comic strips, but today people don’t like to talk about hell as an actual reality and real possibility.

For how could a loving God send people to a place of everlasting torture?

Yet true faith isn’t shaping a god or reality according to your own liking. It is accepting who God is, and what He says. And in the Bible, God says that sin must be punished—even punished in hell. That’s the price demanded by God’s perfect justice.

And before anyone can protest that this seems unloving, consider this: God gave up his own Son to suffer through hell in our place.

On the cross, Jesus experienced God’s wrath. He carried the burden of God’s unrelenting anger against sin. The worst part was that Jesus was cursed by God. This was hell, for God had put him in the lowest pit. In desperation, Christ cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Matt 27:46).

Yes, this is love: Christ went to the greatest depths for sinners! His fellowship with God was broken, so our fellowship with God can be restored.

Because of Christ, God can be our God: no matter who we are, or what we have done.

Christ has delivered sinners from a life without God, and He has granted us a life with God.

Instead of going to hell, we can go to the glorious presence of God himself.

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Scripture Reading: Matthew 27:45-56

Prayer: Holy God, in your perfect justice you require that sin be punished with hellish agony. By ourselves, we can’t endure it. So we thank you for the work of Christ, the crucified Saviour! Amen.