Degrees of Punishment

One of the common objections to the doctrine of hell as it has been taught historically in orthodox Christianity is that this doctrine demeans the character of God, that it somehow casts a shadow over His goodness.

People say to me: "My God is a God of love. And my God is a good God.

Since God is really loving and good, He would never send anyone to hell."

I hear this constantly, and I wonder about the logic of it. Let's look at the premises that lead to the conclusion that God would never send anyone to hell.

The first premise is that since God is really loving, He would never send anyone to hell. By analogy, a loving parent would never chasten or punish his child. You might say: "Well, wait a minute, R. C., the punishment that a loving parent gives to a child is corrective. It is a chastisement that is designed to help the child avoid further difficulties later in life." Certainly, the New Testament teaches that God chastens those whom He loves, and this chastening is given for our welfare. But when we're talking about hell, we're not talking about the manifestation of God's corrective wrath; we are talking about His punitive wrath, the wrath that is not designed simply for the moral improvement of those who receive it, but is an expression of God's justice. You might ask me, "If God is really loving, how can He visit punitive wrath on people?"

We have to ask ourselves this question: "What is the object of God's love?" The Bible does speak of the benevolence that God displays toward all mankind, a kind of love that He has for everyone, but let's not jump to the conclusion that God's benevolent love is unconditional and eternal to a fallen human race. I once heard a preacher on television say repeatedly, "God loves everyone unconditionally." I wondered where that preacher got that message. He certainly didn't get it from biblical sources, because God's salvific love is conditional. It requires repentance and faith on our part, and the work of Christ, as well. There is a divine benevolence that God gives indiscriminately to people who have not repented and not come to faith, but

that does not extend forever, because there was a design for that lovingkindness—to give people opportunity to repent and to take advantage of the mercy that is offered in Jesus Christ.

In addition to God's love for us as sinful creatures, God has a greater love, and that is His love for righteousness and for His own character. God is not going to compromise His holiness or His righteousness in order to accommodate us. There is a sense in which God loves His own glory. And the punishment of recalcitrant, impenitent persons in hell redounds to the glory of God. That may be one of the most difficult concepts for us ever to grasp—that hell, in one sense, glorifies God. How can that be possible? In simple terms, hell glorifies God by showing, in clear terms, the goodness of God.

But wait—didn't I just say that two of the most frequent objections against hell are the claims that God is loving and good? People reason that if God is loving and good, there can be no hell. According to this perspective, God's goodness must demand that He be loving enough to save everyone, regardless of their response to Him. The concepts of God's love and God's goodness are very closely related here. The protest against hell is: "If there is a hell, God is not really loving. And if He's not really loving, He's not really good." So if we believe that God is good, then we believe that He is loving, and that there is no limit to that love, as there is no limit to His goodness. Therefore, if He is loving, and if He is good, no one will ever go to hell.

However, does a good judge, a just judge, leave evil unpunished? If the courts in this world were to refuse to bring judgment on those who are known to be guilty of gross and heinous crimes, would we say those courts were good? Of course not. So what is meant by the goodness of God?

A theologian friend of mine once served on a jury, and the foreman of the jury said, "We're not here to discern right and wrong, but to deal with human relationships." That's the mentality of our age. We sometimes think that God's central concern should be human relationships, not the punishment of evil. If God insists on punishing evil, He must not be good.

But I think the opposite is the case. Seen from another perspective, God's punishment of wickedness actually demonstrates His goodness. God would not be good if He didn't punish the wicked. He would not be good if He completely abandoned His righteousness or His justice.

However, we sometimes rely on the opposite assumption—the idea that God's love will mitigate His goodness. We are at ease in Zion because we are convinced—or at least we cross our fingers and hope—that God will not be just, that God will not be good. But it is precisely because God is good that there is such a place as hell where He punishes evil.

We have already seen that Jesus discussed hell quite frequently. Like Jesus, the apostle Paul did not hesitate to deal with the theme of a just judgment at the hands of God. Like Jesus, Paul warns us to flee from the wrath that is surely to come. In Paul's letter to the Romans, we read: "Therefore, you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are who judge, for in whatever you judge another you condemn yourself; for you who judge practice the same things. But we know that the judgment of God is according to truth against those who practice such things. And do you think this, O man, you who judge those practicing such things, and doing the same, that you will escape the judgment of God?" (2:1-3).

Paul is asking a question here: "Do you think, if you are sinning, that you are going to escape the judgment of God?" Of course, Paul is giving this teaching in the second chapter of Romans in anticipation of unfolding the gospel of forgiveness and of justification by the free mercy of God. He's laying the foundation, building the framework for us to understand the cross and the doctrine of justification, and he's saying that unless we have a Savior, we're in serious trouble. He's addressing people who think they don't need Christ, who think that they will escape the judgment of God.

Are you counting on that? Are you hoping that God will be merciful to you in spite of your refusal to embrace His Son? I find no reason for such hope anywhere in Scripture; the Bible never hints that God will be anything but relentless in His insistence that one must repent of his or her sins and come to Christ in order to escape hell. We remember that when Paul spoke to the philosophers on Mars Hill in Athens, the cultural center of the ancient world, he spoke of the patience of God, and he said: "Truly, these times of ignorance God overlooked, but now commands all men everywhere to repent, because He has appointed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by the Man whom He has ordained. He has given assurance of this to all by raising Him from the dead" (Acts 17:30-31). Do you hear what Paul is saying? Repentance isn't an option. Paul does not speak in the style of an evangelist who says, "All you have to do is walk down the aisle,

raise your hand, or recite this prayer after me." God doesn't invite people to be saved. He commands them.

What happens if we disobey this command? God commands us to repent.

But we are complacent, saying: "I'm not going to repent. I'm not going to embrace Christ because I don't have to worry about it. There won't be any consequences for my sin." Most of the world is doing exactly what Paul is warning against here. They are thinking that they will escape the judgment of God. They can go hear preacher after preacher and listen to theologian after theologian who will give them all the security they desire, reinforcing their hope that God is not going to judge them. And they'll do it by denying the very reality of hell.

Paul goes on:

Or do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? But in accordance with your hardness and your impenitent heart you are treasuring up for yourself wrath in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God, who "will render to each one according to his deeds": eternal life to those who by patient continuance in doing good seek for glory, honor, and immortality; but to those who are self-seeking and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness—indignation and wrath, tribulation and anguish, on every soul of man who does evil. (Rom. 2:4-9a)

This is a scary passage, because what Paul is describing here is a hoarder.

When we used to play Monopoly at home, my daughter would rebuke my son for hoarding. He would stash away some of his money so the rest of us wouldn't know how much he had in reserve. But my daughter was quick to discern this ploy. She would look at him and say, "You're hoarding." Well, the idea behind hoarding is to amass a reserve supply of something against a rainy day. Paul says here that those of us who neglect the goodness and the patience of God, who assume we're going to escape His judgment apart from relying on Christ, are treasuring up or storing up wrath in the day of wrath.

I remember being in charge of an ordination exam for a man who was coming into a church as a minister. During that examination, I asked him whether he believed in the degrees of guilt. He emphatically responded in

the negative. He said: "No, everyone is equally guilty. All sin is equally heinous. James says, 'If you sin against one point of the law, you sin against the whole law.'" The man who was being examined had made an illegitimate inference from that text to conclude that all sin is equal. He denied that there are different levels in heaven or gradations of felicity there, or levels to hell, as Dante imagined in his famous Inferno. But here in Romans 2, Paul is talking about hoarding judgment, amassing wrath, heaping it up, piling it up. Every time we sin, every day that we delay repenting of our sin and coming to faith in Christ, we are adding to our guilt before God, and thereby adding to our punishment in hell.

Remember, in His perfect justice, God punishes each sin justly. If someone is guilty of five counts of murder and someone else is guilty of but one count of murder, the punishment that God gives in His final courtroom will be perfectly just. The person who has committed five murders will be judged five times worse than the one who has committed one murder. We don't have the ability to do that in this world, but God does. This is the sober warning of the apostle, that we are building a case against ourselves.

The longer we sin without repentance and without fleeing to Christ, the worse our judgment will be.

Jesus Himself teaches this concept repeatedly. He speaks of the unprofitable steward (Luke 16:1-8), and He talks about those who will be beaten with few stripes and those who will be beaten with many stripes (Luke 12:47-48). He talks about the judgment that will fall on Bethsaida as being greater than the judgment that will go to Sodom and Gomorrah, or Tyre and Sidon (Matt. 11:22). There will be various degrees of punishment because hell is the place where perfect justice is exacted. Though we are all guilty and all deserve to go to hell, still there are degrees and gradations of guilt of those who go there. Just as the rewards in heaven will differ according to the level of obedience we offer to Christ during our lifetime, so the punitive wrath of God will differ in intensity according to one's light and opportunity.

Do you see the problem that we have with hell? In the first instance, we deny it. Then, if we affirm it or think it might possibly be true, we neutralize it by saying that everyone is in the same boat and receives the same punishment.

I don't want to be in the most wonderful level of hell. I don't want to be there at all. Though there are degrees of reward and felicity in heaven, and

degrees of punishment in hell, the gap between the two places is almost infinite. It's a huge, unbridgeable chasm. But we have to understand our peril in taking for granted the mercy of God and tempting Him, assuming that He is incapable of bringing us to justice or unwilling to do so. Beloved, He will bring me to justice, and He will bring you to justice. And when we are brought to that tribunal, if we're given the righteousness of Christ for our justification, we will escape His wrath, but if we abandon, avoid, or neglect Christ, we will be brought to justice alone.