For those who have doubts about a literal hell

These thoughts began one night as I sat in my favorite chair for sleeping and dreaming. I am 85, and my wife of 64 years was in the Goshen (Ind.) Hospital recovering from a near-death illness. It is easy to reflect on my life and destiny. I’ve tried to understand God, be faithful to the Scriptures as I understand them and lead others to Christ.

I empathize with St. Paul when he felt he was “chief of sinners.” I was about to baptize a young man, when I asked him to remove the finger ring his mother had given him. Mother and son dropped out of my life. The last I heard of him he was in a tank guarding the gate in the wall separating East and West Berlin. Will God forgive me for causing a little one to stumble?

Some sincere people have a literal view of Scripture that forces them to believe in a literal hell, yet in the privacy of their innermost thoughts they wish they did not need to believe in such a fierce God and terrible destiny. On the other hand, there may be just as many Christians who doubt there is a literal hell, yet their doubt makes them uneasy. I write for all those who doubt as I do and look for some degree of certainty.

Why did Jesus, our Lord and Savior, say so much about hell? Jesus talked as though hell was a real place where sinners receive the ultimate penalty for sin. This seems so out of character for one so compassionate. Yet Jesus warned of a destiny for sinners that included weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and a fire that is not quenched.

Jesus chose the valley of Hinnom or Gehenna as a symbol of hell. In that loathsome valley the heathen had once offered their babies as burnt sacrifices to their gods, and later the filth of ancient Jerusalem was cast out and burned there. The location of this valley is unknown today, other than that it was south of Jerusalem. But the enigma of why a teacher like Jesus said so much about hell continues to be a burden to the church.

A partial solution to the enigma may be in Jesus’ great Sermon on the Mount, taken literally as Mennonites are prone to interpret it. Jesus said, “Think not that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets: I am not come to destroy but to fulfill” (KJV). How Jesus fulfilled the law is instructive. First, note the words of Jesus. He said, “You have heard that it has been said, but I say unto you.” He repeated this critical formula six times in the sermon.

It seems to me Jesus was supplying something the law lacked. For the most part the law was concerned with sinful acts. The Son of God, as a human being tempted in all points as we are, was privy to the desires and emotions that lead to sins. To lust, Jesus said, was to be guilty of adultery, and to hate was to be guilty of murder. To put deeds not yet done under the law makes more binding a law that could not be kept. No wonder both Old and New testaments conclude that all have sinned and that there is none righteous, no not one. You and I know it is true.

Second, an effective law has a penalty attached. Consider specific penalties attached to the civil laws enacted by Moses at Mt. Sinai. A son who hit or cursed his father, a Sabbath breaker, an adulterer and those guilty of other such heinous crimes were to be put to death, a penalty common in the Old Testament. On the other hand, the Old Testament says little about the fate of those who die, revealing only that every one who died went to “sheol,” consistently translated the “grave” in the NIV and most other modern versions and described as a dark, shadowy place from which there was no return. Jesus gave the law what it lacked, a hell of fire as the ultimate penalty for sin. He knew the intent of God and the weakness of humankind. All are under condemnation, all are weak, all are lost; we’ve all gone astray, every one of us.

My comfort does not come from the law.

This generous Creator God gave the law to show us our need for a Savior and Redeemer, then gave Jesus to bring the kingdom of heaven on earth. The best loved verse in the Bible begins with, “God so loved the world that he sent, …” and clearly reveals that God loved the world before Jesus came to earth. Jesus illuminated God’s love for people by miracles, parables, acts of kindness and the simple authoritative sayings that drew the masses to him.

This said, it must be acknowledged that Jesus was not a fan of the law. He came to earth because the law had failed to save one soul. When the disciples of Jesus were criticized for “threshing grain” by hand on the Sabbath, Jesus reminded the critics that when King David was hungry he ate some holy bread that priests alone were allowed to eat. Jesus justified his seemingly cavalier attitude toward the law by asserting he was the lord of the Sabbath and had the right to make or break Sabbath rules. He demonstrated that not even a law given by Moses and deemed from God should prevent one from doing good.

It was for doing good that Jesus was crucified. He healed the sick on the Sabbath and ate with sinners and the unclean. He was their friend, and everyone knew it. Jesus was perfect, but in the eyes of the hypocrites in power he was not the ideal keeper of the law. To their annoyance he did what only God could do: He forgave sinners. He was their friend. He ate with them.

Jesus revealed a twin purpose in his sermon for his coming. He said he came not only to fulfill the law but to fulfill the prophets. Jesus came to usher in a new day, a day of mercy, grace and peace, a day of hope and salvation. Here it is enough to concentrate on the fulfillment of one major prophetic oath found in Isaiah 45. God is described as taking an oath in his own name, an oath described as absolute and irrevocable. This divine oath trumpeted that “every knee will bow before him; every tongue will swear [confess] that in the LORD [Jehovah] alone are righteousness and strength.”

Fulfilment of this prophetic oath may be more process than event. Jesus prayed that his disciples “may be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you [the Father] sent me” (John 17:22-23).

From the beginning of the church until now, Christians have stubbornly criticized and judged their brothers and sisters for who they are and what they do. In Romans 14, the prophetic oath is used to challenge this damaging habit of the church. The Scripture asks pointedly, “You, then, why do you judge your brother? Or why do you look down on your brother? For we will stand before God’s judgment seat. It is written: ‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, ‘every knee will bow before me; every tongue will confess to God’ ” (Romans 14:10-11).

An ancient confession invoked for the church the attitude with which Christ Jesus came to earth to incarnate God’s love, both by the life he lived and by the death he died. Here the oath is worldwide in scope and applicability. Simply said, every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Philippians 2:10-11). This universal obeisance will be obtained neither by torture nor compelled by law but by love and grace.

I submit these thoughts, not because my doubts are gone but to testify to what comforts me. Surely, the universally violated law stands firm. Happily, my disturbed mind is eased because it appears to me that the oath of the God of love defeats the law, frustrates hell and overwhelms universal need. The single-minded purpose of God is embedded in the name of Jesus which is “Jehovah is Salvation.” Amen.