Most everyone believes there is a tormenting hell in eternity, a contrast to a place of peace and blessing. Common phrases about hell show up in many conversations as we speak of its condition in this earth: “What the hell is going on?” “Come hell or high water,” “Fight like hell,” and “You look like hell.”
Yes, we can experience hellish conditions in this world. The real hell we can easily relate to are conditions we observe and partake of in this everyday life. So we ask, where is the sensibility of hell?
Scriptural Understanding
For the past few weeks we’ve studied and reiterated the surprising fact that the Hebrew Old Testament Scriptures do not warn of a hell in eternity. Nor do the Greek New Testament Scriptures. The Apostle Paul never wrote of an after death hell in his Epistles. The book of Acts gives details of the first 30 years following the physical life of Jesus and never mentions a hellish place in the next life.
How can we think that our Eternal Father, who is Light and Love, (a) [see endnotes for Scriptures] would condemn any of His offspring to an eternal hell? Is it because we fail to achieve our potential? Human parents could not doom their wayward offspring to such a fate. Is the value of God’s love less than ours?
Many Christians today assume everyone goes to hell if they do not confess faith in Jesus. This seems to lack sensibility since Jesus did not appear until hundreds of generations after the first man. It would also condemn the vast majority of the human race that never heard about Jesus over the last 2,000 years.
Some people even think we only have the opportunity to acknowledge or respond to God during our earthly life. This would indicate God’s love and forgiving nature cannot be experienced beyond this temporal world. Scripture very clearly states that God’s care and love for us is not limited to our natural lifespan:
- “Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities (Greek-beginnings), nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (b)
- “He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him.” (c)
- “For as through the one man’s disobedience the many (Greek-all) were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One the many (Greek-all) will be made righteous.” (d)
- “For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.” (e)
- “All those who go down to the dust (die) will bow before Him.” (f)
- “For they will all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them,” declares the Lord, “for I will forgive their iniquity, and their sin I will remember no more.” (g)
These and other Scriptures affirm our Eternal Father’s undying and unlimited love for all of His human kids. While we may find it difficult to believe God is such a forgiver and fail to become encouraging expressions of His love, it does not restrict or limit His will, purpose, desire, and love for us in this life.
Scripture very clearly states that God’s care and love for us is not limited to our natural lifespan.
Conditions vs. After Death
God designed this natural universe and this earth as the place for offspring to begin life and initially develop as His children. (h) The spirit of life that animates everyone in this life comes from God and enables us to sense His guidance. This is true even when our wayward attitudes and ill actions persist. (i)
During our human beginnings, God declared that ignoring His guidance would produce a death like condition. (j) When our first parents decided to ignore God, the deathly rift in their relational interaction started. This is why Adam and Eve tried to hide when God came to interact. (k) This is also why they had to leave the Garden of God’s presence. He allowed them to experience what they choose.
As they ignored God, clarity was lost and 
their confused perceptions allowed fear to enter and become part of their awareness. When God inquired, “Where are you,” (l) He was not looking for them but was inquiring about their state of mind. The death they experienced was not to their spirit or their flesh; it was to their intimate fellowship with God. Unrepentant, they began to live as wandering offspring. (m)
There is no passage in Scripture or our translated Bibles that indicates the result of sin or its penalty ever changed from a deathly condition to a punitive hell after death. If such a horrendous place exists in eternity and a vast majority of God’s offspring go there, it would indicate the Eternal One’s creative purpose for offspring as His “image and likeness” (reflective similarity) (n) was faulty.
When we insist on maintaining bad ideas, what we believe can become harmful possessions. When Jesus removed (cast out) the possessions (bad ideas) that controlled a mad man, the man became normal. (o) It is the mistaken ideas we believe that create most of the hellish conditions we deal with in this life.
God instructs us to not let the sun go down on our anger (p) and that love keeps no record of wrongs. (q) Can we really think God maintains any displeasure and keeps such accounts? While we are instructed to forgive, could our heavenly Father be so hurt by our ignorance or ill actions that He would maintain a grudge? Is there really a dark side in God’s nature, like the fictional Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde?
God instructs us to not let the sun go down on our anger and that love keeps no record of wrongs.
Live In the Light
When we physically die, our body begins returning to dust and our spirit begins returning to God, its source. (r) While our soul’s (mind, will, emotion) interaction in this life ends, attached to the flight of our spirit, we consciously move towards God’s eternal presence.
Physical death releases us from the deathly condition that clouds our ability to respond to God’s light and love. If we have not actively interacted with God in this life, the speed of our journey into God’s presence could seem to be hindered, like we are dragging our feet. We might even feel like we are unclothed and not prepared to approach the fuller presence of God’s light and love. (s)
A Disciple asked “Lord…how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man cometh to the Father but by Me.’” (t) The Greek of this verse can accurately be translated as “I am the truthful way to live, no one knows God as Father unless they come as a son.” While we can know God as our Creator, Lord, and King, He wants us to know Him as our Father.
In this life we are invited to live “in heavenly places” (u) above this world’s restrictive conditions. While we may be going through hellish times that appear to be more destructive than productive, the presence of God is not far from any of us. Everyone can respond to God’s presence and experience a spirit-to-Spirit fellowship with Him while living in the limitations of this natural world.
As we stray from God’s insightful guidance, our ill beliefs and mistaken actions tend to produce hellish situations. A hell does exist in this temporal world and it is produced by bad attitudes and actions. Hell on earth is more of a reality than our ill perception of God or our imagined hell in eternity.
While we live in the limitations of this natural life, we do not have to be totally subjective to the ways of this world. We can be more responsive to God, partake of and be blessed by more of the Fruit of God’s Spirit: “Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and self-control.” (v)
In this developing life, God gives us the freedom to choose. Can we really assume our temporal will is more powerful than our Creator? It is unrealistic to think our ignorance and errors in this life could over-ride God’s creative intention. Can we conclude that a hell in eternity does not make any sense?
Hell on earth is more of a reality than our ill perception of God or our imagined hell in eternity.
a) 1 John 1:5; 4:7-8; b) Romans 8:38-39; c) Luke 20:38); d) Romans 5:18-19; e) I Corinthians 15:22; f) Psalm 22:29; g) Jeremiah 31:34; h) Genesis 2:7; i) Romans 5:8; j) Genesis 2:16-17; Romans 6:23; k) Genesis 3:8; l) Genesis 3:7-10; (m) Acts 27:22-29; n) Genesis 1:26; o) Mark 5:1-15; p) Ephesians 4:26; q) 1 Corinthians 13; r) Ecclesiastes 12:7; s) 2 Corinthians 5:2-4; t) John 14:5-6; u) Ephesians 1:3; 2:4-6; 3:10; v) Galatians 5:22-23
Keith Carroll, “The Relationship Guy”
Relational Gospel Founder