With all due respect to those who try to erase
Hell from the discussion of the rebel’s danger in the presence of a holy God,
this is not something which can be photo opted. To pretend to have enough enlightenment
to adjust God’s warning is not just perilous. It is pernicious. To try to do so
is to abandon, Christianity, not readjust it. Eternal damnation is on the lips of Jesus – forcefully.
Actually, as with God’s wrath, the warning of an
eternal torment of judgment for treason against our Creator is not that
difficult to understand; but we have to confront some false assumptions.
Assumption number one. Everyone wants to go to
Heaven.
This assumption holds ground so long as we
forget that the person who finds his greatest joy on earth in things which are abomination to God is not likely to be excited about eternity in a place where those options will be unavailable. When a person trusts Christ it is because God has changed those appetites enough to desire the goodness he does not have. This creates a hunger for mercy for the evil heart he has cultivated. Having trusted
Christ he becomes God’s child through the new birth and undergoes an appetite change. That change is the motivation behind his determination as a soldier engaged in spiritual battle against his new enemy, his old master, the devil, whose traitorous purposes he once served and whose destiny he once shared. When the purpose of that person's earthly walk has run its
course (be it long or short) he will enter the rarefied atmosphere of complete
goodness; and it will be enjoyed without the heart he once had which could make something impure out of whatever he looked at.
We would do well, in talking to the still unsaved, to address this assumption. Help them discover if sin is really something they want to live without. It could be revealing.
We would do well, in talking to the still unsaved, to address this assumption. Help them discover if sin is really something they want to live without. It could be revealing.
No comments:
Post a Comment