Good News About Sin and Hell

Introduction

This winter we’ve been talking about “reasons to believe”, starting with the importance of belief itself and the value of seeking deeper meaning in a superficial world. So far we’ve spent some time on external and internal clues of God – external clues from the natural world and internal clues from our human experience of things like beauty and our sense of right and wrong.

Just in case you’ve been thinking “I’ve been coming to church a long time already, do I really need to hear about ‘reasons to believe’?” – here’s why I see value in considering these things:

First of all, not everyone here has believed for a long time, or feels confident about matters of Christian faith, so digging down to the bedrock of belief can be helpful to someone in that situation.

Second of all, most of the people you’ll come across outside of this building don’t have a religious worldview anymore, and no longer think it makes much sense to even pay attention to those sorts of things. If church folks were more familiar with some reasons for, and benefits to, Christian faith, there would more opportunities to have a positive conversation, or ask a thought-provoking question, or give a helpful answer to an objection or hard question.

I watched a video testimony a while ago where a young man from France described his journey from a completely irreligious background to Christianity. His biggest obstacle was the impression that becoming a Christian meant, in his words “committing intellectual suicide.” He saw attractive things about Jesus and the Christian life but it took quite a bit of time and lots of conversations with a pastor to help him see that he didn’t have to abandon rational thinking to take a step of faith toward Jesus.

This isn’t everybody’s issue with faith, but in our culture, where we’ve been steadily disenchanting everything – stripping away any sense of mystery, wonder, or deeper meaning, I think it is a fairly common stumbling block.

If someone is finding it hard to get their head around faith, or isn’t very confident in the foundation of their faith, then I hope some of these topics help. And those who are totally confident and comfortable as Christians, well, you must want to share the Gospel and be a positive witnesses to others so that they might gain the wonderful blessings that you have found, right?

Today I’m going move us from some of the broad topics of belief into more specific Christian doctrines. Since Erica taught on the moral law last Sunday, our internal sense of right and wrong, I’m going to follow up with a few things about sin and hell. These can be awkward subjects, but I want to make a case for why these Christian beliefs are, in fact, reasons to believe, and shouldn’t be obstacles or stumbling blocks to belief once we’ve properly wrestled with them.

Sin, and What We Live For

Sin is not a popular word, even among Christians. When was the last time you heard someone say that they sinned? That’s not what we say. We say we messed up, made a mistake, or did a bad job of something. And that’s assuming we don’t just blame someone or something else.

Even when we apologize to someone we say we’re sorry for hurting them, or for not appreciating their feelings about something. We don’t say “please forgive me for sinning against you…” That sounds weird! But the Bible encourages us not to shy away from the word and all that it means.

The passage that was just read from 1st John 1 and 2 makes it clear that sin is a universal condition. If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If you don’t think you’re a sinner, you’re lying to yourself. Not only that, but you’re presenting Jesus as a liar – If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

The book of James calls on Christians to regularly confess their sins to one another. Jesus called on Christians to approach each other if they believe someone has sinned to bring it to their attention. Sin should be something we think about and talk about regularly within the Church, not a topic we avoid because it’s awkward or impolite.

Let me back up to what sin is, though, because it’s easy to fall into the thinking that sin means the complete list of all the bad things a person might possibly do.

Sin enters the story of humanity right at the beginning of the Bible. Humanity was given a beautiful world to rule on God’s behalf, one that could be turned into a place of life and harmony. But that meant still acknowledging God as being in charge – governing the Earth in a way that would be pleasing to God.

In the book of Genesis Adam and Eve, at the urging of the serpent, reject this. They don’t want to submit to God, they want to make their own rules. And so they begin humanity’s rebellion against God, rejecting His rule over their lives.

Christians believe that this is what is fundamentally wrong with the world – we are living in rebellion against God, trying to replace God with other things which aren’t able to make us whole.

The Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard described sin in a helpful way by explaining that sin is trying to have an identity apart from God. Human beings were created, he thought, not only to believe in God in some general way, but to love God supremely, and centre their lives on God above all – building their identity on God. Anything other than this is sin.

Put another way, sin isn’t simply “breaking divine rules”, it’s making something other than God central to your significance, purpose, and happiness. Human beings long for significance - we need to know we matter. And so we build an identity on something that makes us feel this way and it becomes god to us.

What’s why I often say that everybody worships something – we all have something at the core of who we are that we are devoted to. But only God is capable of satisfying this human need.

If you put a human relationship there instead of God it will go wrong, because any shortcoming in that person becomes a major threat to you – who could bear the burden of being your “all”?

Same thing if you put work or fame or some kind of success in that central spot. If you fall short of your goals or expectations that will undermine your identity and wreck your sense of worth.

Same thing again if your identity relies on approval or power or control. These are unstable.

Theologian Thomas Oden writes: Suppose my god is sex or my physical health or the Democratic Party. If I experience any of these under genuine threat, then I feel myself shaken to the depths… Suppose I value my ability to teach and communicate clearly…. If clear communication has become an absolute value for me…then if I [fail in teaching well] I am stricken with guilt. Bitterness becomes neurotically intensified when someone or something stands between me and something that is my ultimate value.

If you build your identity on things that can be threatened or taken away or on things you could lose through your own failures then this is a recipe for fear and anxiety, and even hating yourself.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that our Western society is becoming more personally anxious, more agitated about politics, and more obsessed with a growing number of sexual and gender and neurological identities at the same time it moves away from viewing God as an ultimate good to build your life on.

Tim Keller writes “Only if your identity is built on God and his love can you have a self that can venture anything, face anything. There is no way to avoid this insecurity outside of God…”

This is the issue at the core of the things that we can easily point to as sins. People cheat on their partners because their identity is built on some need they didn’t feel was being met by the person they committed to. People lie to cover up their failures or preserve their reputations, which many build their identities on. People mistreat others in all kinds of ways when they are selfish or self-absorbed, having put themselves and their circumstances above God as the supreme good.

Here some good news, though. If you look up “sins” in the Gospels what you will find is mainly a list of verses where Jesus is telling people that their sins are forgiven, and then another bunch of verses where people are saying “He’s not allowed to do that, is He?”

A normal person can’t say that – they can’t forgive your sins against God, all the ways you replace God with lesser things at the centre of your life and the harms that come from that.

But Jesus claimed He could do this. It was why He had come into this world – that’s what an angel told Joseph: “[Mary] will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

Jesus, Immanuel, God-with-us, can and did and does forgive sins. He is available to anyone who comes to see that their life should be built on God and His love, who want forgiveness for all the ways they’ve gone wrong in failing to do this, and who know they will need God’s help in living a new life.

Going back to 1st John from our scripture reading, we see this expressed in a very straight-forward way: If we confess our sins he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the world. God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.

This is the core of the Christian Gospel, and it is good news! Rather than sin being this awkward or shameful thing, it should be a hopeful thing, because there actually is something that can be done about it, and Jesus has already done the hard part. What do we need to do?

Accept responsibility, to start. You are a sinner. Maybe the deck was stacked against you because of your family background or circumstances compared to other people, but you are still responsible for what you put first in your life, which then shapes your life. Nothing gets better until a person owns that.

But God’s forgiveness and new life is given freely. God doesn’t demand a payment or a sacrifice to mend the broken relationship – Jesus sorted that out on the cross. It is finished. It’s left to us to decide if we will believe, if we will humble ourselves enough to admit our need, if we will desire that Jesus become the centre of a new life and ask Him for it.

Rather than being some guilt-ridden and difficult thing to believe, understanding sin can actually be empowering. I can understand at least some of what’s wrong with me, I can do something about it by the grace of God, and I can make a difference in the wider world thanks to this. But it also requires humility – I can’t do any of this on my own, only with Jesus.

One last word from Kierkegaard: The almost impossibly hard thing is to hand your whole self over to Christ. But it is far easier than what we are all trying to do instead. For what we are trying to do is remain what we call “ourselves” – our personal happiness centered on money, or pleasure or ambition – and hoping, despite this, to behave honestly and chastely and humbly. And this is exactly what Christ warned you cannot do. If I am a grass field – all the cutting will keep the grass [from becoming overgrown] but won’t produce wheat. If I want wheat… I must be plowed up and re-sown.

Tim Keller adds: Does that scare you? Does it sound stifling? Remember this – if you don’t live for Jesus you will live for something else… Jesus is the only Lord who, if you receive him, will fulfill you completely, and, if you fail him, will forgive you eternally.

A Heaping Of Hell

But what about the people who aren’t forgiven eternally? This is a stumbling block for many people inside and outside of the Church. How can hell be a thing if God is a loving creator who desires good for His beloved children?

Or how could a truly evil person who turns to Jesus at the 11thhour go to heaven while a normal, perfectly nice person, who doesn’t profess faith gets condemned to hell?

Well, what is hell? A lot of people are operating on a view of hell inspired by the thinking and art of the Middle Ages, where hell is this fire-filled torture dungeon where demons terrorize people for eternity relative to just how badly they sinned in their life.

If you were to simply read the Bible and look for every reference to hell or Sheol or Hades, which are Hebrew and Greek names for a realm of the dead, I don’t know that many people would end up with this exact impression of hell. In fact, I’m not sure you would end up with a very specific impression at all, because it’s just not mentioned all that often or with much detail. The imagery of fire is commonly associated with hell, but I don’t believe that we’re meant to think that the God who is love will allow any of his created people to BBQ in literal flames for all eternity.

Romans 6:23 says “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The reason that sin is such a big deal – any sin, all sin is a big deal – is that it pushes God farther from the centre of our lives. Sin separates us from the presence of God, which is the source of all joy, love, wisdom, or any good thing.

Fire disintegrates things, and we can see in this life how a person can fall apart because of self-centeredness, which can grow into bitterness, envy, and even abuse, paranoia and a loss of contact with reality itself. That can wreck a life. But Christian belief is that we don’t just end. Spiritually our life extends into eternity. So what happens if sin, which tears a person apart bit by bit, gets to work on somebody’s identity forever?

Tim Keller writes: Hell, then, is the trajectory of a soul, living a self-absorbed, self-centered life, going on and on forever. And Keller refers us to Jesus’s parable in Luke 16, about a rich man and a beggar named Lazarus. Lazarus was starving and sick and died and was taken to heaven, or “Abraham’s bosom” as Jesus put it.

The rich man also died and found himself in “Hades, where he was in torment.” And the rich man is presented by Jesus as being utterly deluded – he calls out to Abraham but doesn’t ask to be rescued from Hades, instead he asks for Lazarus to come bring him some water, and to go warn his family, continuing to act as though he, as the important rich man, should get to order lowly Lazarus around. And the rich man can’t seem to imagine that he is in Hades or that his family will end up there because of their own sin or injustice, but because of a lack of information, as though the Jewish scriptures didn’t have enough to say about how to live a godly life.

Some people don’t like the Christian concept of hell because they think there will be all sorts of people cast into a fiery pit calling out “I’m sorry, let me out!” while God ignores them or even celebrates their eternal punishment.

There are several competing ideas about hell that have their merits, but I find C.S. Lewis compelling when he suggests that hell is what happens when sin draws people so far from God that they do not desire Him, and would even prefer suffering over what they imagine is a loss of freedom by turning back to Him.

Lewis wrote “There are only two kinds of people – those who say “Thy will be done” to God or those who whom God in the end says, “Thy will be done.” All that are in Hell choose it. Without that self-choice it wouldn’t be Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it.”

There are other objections people have to the idea of hell. A lot of people in our culture are only interested in a God who is so loving that He will overlook all sin and evil and just bring everyone into a happy eternity. It just seems mean to them for God to do otherwise. That’s convenient, because now they can live however they want and still cling to some hope that this god they’ve invented will save them.

The Croatian theologian Miroslav Volf, who saw terrible violence in the Balkans, suggests that this idea only makes sense to people who have lived a tranquil suburban life. If you’ve seen your village destroyed and loved ones killed or carried off, would you think that a God who does nothing about that is good? And if you don’t believe that God will hold people to account for the unspeakable evil they are capable of committing, why wouldn’t you dedicate yourself to violent revenge in this life? Anyone who loves people will be angry at that which seeks to destroy people – God’s divine justice is a part of His character as surely as His steadfast love and patience are in the Bible.

The other thing I think bugs some people about Christians and their belief in hell is that they think Christians must look down on them, or might not treat them well, if we think someone is hell-bound because they don’t follow Jesus.

I’m sure there have been Christians who have been guilty of things like that. But I find the whole idea so strange. Everyone is created in the image of God, and deserving of fundamental dignity and respect regardless of what religious choices they have made. And nobody knows how this will all shake out. The person whose faith seems the strongest might turn their back on belief one day, while the most hostile atheist can suddenly be drawn to God and give themselves to Christ unexpectedly. Any Christian who treats people better or worse based on some assumption about their eternal status has some unhelpful ideas about the love and compassion we owe the people around us.

Conclusion

Or, to put it more directly, they are sinning against others if they mistreat them in this way. And that takes us back to the sometimes awkward language of sin and hell, and why I think it is actually a reason to believe.

If sin isn’t the problem with our world, then what is? I don’t think there’s a level of equality or scientific progress or government policy that is going to deal with the deeper struggles that many people have. I’m not against these things and value the ways they can reduce human suffering if we approach them with wisdom, but the twisting of the human heart requires something more – returning God to the centre of our lives, the way we were created to live.

Sin should not be a taboo word or a shameful concept. I’m not proud of being a sinner, but I’m glad to know that this is what I have to wrestle with to flourish in life. I can accept that this is the reality, try to understand myself and what sinful tendencies are more strongly at work within me, and ask for God’s help each day to help me overcome them by keeping Him at the centre of my life as shown by my words, thoughts, and actions.

And I can rejoice that there is no question that if I confess my sins God is faithful and just and will forgive me my sins and purify me from all unrighteousness. I can find hope in the fact that when Jesus spoke of sin His favourite thing to says was “your sins are forgiven.” I can be glad that, when my desire is to know God and live according to His ways, He will not reject or abandon me, even though my best efforts are often pretty poor. It takes some getting used to, but I find it very helpful and even empowering to understand myself as a sinner justified by Jesus.

All of this should also embolden me to do more, say more, and pray more for those who don’t know Jesus and who are carrying on in sin that will draw them farther and farther from God’s live and life. That can lead to hell on earth for some, and hell beyond this present world according to Jesus. I’m not better, in the slightest, than anyone who seems to be in that situation. I trust that Jesus loves them, just as He loves me, and that believe this could be the greatest gift they can receive. That’s a message the Church is called to offer the people around us.

Worship in Song – In Christ Alone

Benediction – Borden

Lord God Almighty, shaper and ruler of all creatures, we pray for your great mercy, that you guide us towards you, for we cannot find our way.

And guide us to your will, to the need of our soul, for we cannot do it ourselves. And make our mind steadfast in your will and aware of our soul’s need.

Strengthen us against the temptations of the devil, and remove from us all lust and every unrighteousness, and shield us against our foes, seen and unseen.

Teach us to do your will, that we may inwardly love you before all things with a pure mind. For you are our maker and our redeemer, our help, our comfort, our trust, our hope; praise and glory be to you now and forever.