It’s time for round two in my joint venture with Mike Todd. The question: “Heaven and Hell. What are they and who goes there?” A straightforward question deserves a straightforward answer.I don’t like to be descriptive about heaven beyond what the Bible says. It mentions a throne room and throne, and multitudes surrounding…that’s all I can think of right now. But all that isn’t really important to me. What’s important to me is this: Heaven is the unmitigated presence of God, from whom all blessings flow. I don’t care if the sky is clear, the weather balmy, and streets paved with gold, because God is there and that’s all that matters.
Conversely, Hell is the unbroken absence of God. No life, no joy, no hope, no peace…just pain. There may be fires and there may be physical torment, but that’s superfluous in comparison to the spiritual torment of being totally separated from God.
Jesus tell us who will enter heaven:
“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.”
(this statement about the kingdom of heaven is referring to the “not yet” part. The kingdom as seen in the life of the church and the ministry of believers is “already”…but there’s a part of the kingdom that is not yet here; Jesus shows this in the next sentence when he says, “on that day.”)
“For my Father’s will is that everyone who looks to the Son and believes in him shall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day.”
Statements like this are found in a number of places, and are pretty self explanatory. I don’t feel the need to go into it deeply, because it’s easy to understand. Unfortunately, it’s also easy for other to twist this basic view of salvation into something exclusionary, arrogant, sectarian, selfish or ungenerous, among other things. If you plan to do that, or if you honestly believe that those terms apply, I’m interested in your thoughts, and I have much to say to you as well.
Jesus is also very clear about who will be sent into punishment, “where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Those who do not bear fruit, those who are not prepared, those who do not help the needy (just to use Matthew 25); “everything that causes sin and all who do evil”. But the main one is those who do not believe. The book of John is written “that [we] may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing [we] may have life in his name.” He says that those who do not believe are condemned.
I have a pretty basic position on Heaven and Hell. A few qualifiers: I don’t believe in Original Sin, but because of the nature of Sin, there’s no way to avoid it; I don’t believe in the “sinner’s prayer”…it’s not Biblical; I don’t believe in unconditional security, also known as “once saved always saved”; I don’t believe that you can have faith independent of your actions…if your faith in Jesus is true, your life will show it in worship, love, and generosity of spirit; I don’t believe in “cheap grace”…Jesus paid the price for our sin so that we could have grace, so we should respond with total devotion. There are more, but I think I should stop there.
I think this is a question that needs some interaction, so feel free to comment. Just make it a good, clean fight. See Mike’s post here. And just a fun fact: the image above is the first thing I’ve done with The GIMP since I got Ubuntu. It was hard.
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