Is Everyone Punished the Same in Hell?
00:00:00.000 | Today's question comes from Callum in Southampton, England.
00:00:07.480 | "Hello Pastor John, after listening to episode 996, 'Do some people have more joy in heaven
00:00:12.800 | than others?'
00:00:13.800 | I remembered a number of passages in the New Testament where Jesus seems to suggest that
00:00:17.920 | there will be people for whom the day of judgment will be worse even than for the people of
00:00:23.120 | Sodom and Gomorrah or Tyre and Sidon."
00:00:27.960 | Matthew 10 verses 12-15, chapter 11 verses 21-24, and in 2 Peter 2, 19-22, it describes
00:00:36.040 | people who have known the way of righteousness and then turned back.
00:00:40.040 | To them, Peter explains, it would have been "better for them never to have known the way."
00:00:46.800 | Revelation 14, 19 describes the enemies of God being gathered and swept into the "wine
00:00:51.640 | press of God's wrath."
00:00:54.000 | And this doesn't seem to leave much room for a hierarchy, so to speak.
00:00:57.160 | I loved the explanation in episode 996 about the differing capacities for joy in heaven,
00:01:02.840 | about how the most joyful in the kingdom will in fact be the humblest.
00:01:07.520 | Amazing.
00:01:08.600 | But does something like this happen in reverse in God's judgment?
00:01:11.480 | Are some people in hell able to perceive greater despair than others?
00:01:19.080 | Able to perceive greater despair.
00:01:25.720 | That may be true.
00:01:27.520 | I didn't expect him to end with that phrase, but it's a fascinating and helpful question
00:01:35.120 | to ask.
00:01:36.880 | What we're actually told or not told in the New Testament is in what way the suffering
00:01:47.520 | will be greater for some than others.
00:01:52.600 | But we are certainly told that there will be degrees of suffering in hell.
00:02:01.000 | It will be unspeakably terrible for everyone who goes there, just unspeakably terrible
00:02:09.640 | without any experience of good, no sight of beauty, no pleasant sounds, no bodily pleasures,
00:02:22.000 | no gratified appetites, no satisfied desires, no hopes fulfilled.
00:02:31.000 | That's everybody.
00:02:33.800 | So saying that there is degrees of suffering doesn't paint a light picture for anyone.
00:02:44.160 | Those who joke that they'd rather be in hell drinking with their buddies than in heaven
00:02:48.880 | with stuffy saints are ignorant of reality in a terrifying way.
00:02:54.760 | It's not funny.
00:02:56.220 | They will not be having a good time.
00:02:59.840 | But though hell will be without all good for all unbelievers, it will be worse for some.
00:03:10.040 | And here, let me just read for the folks a few texts.
00:03:13.800 | This is Luke 12, 47.
00:03:16.960 | That servant who knew his master's will will not get ready or act according to his will
00:03:24.160 | will receive a severe beating.
00:03:27.140 | But the one who did not know and did what deserved a beating will receive a light beating.
00:03:37.400 | Now, it's just a picture at the end of a parable, but everybody I've ever read says it points
00:03:44.440 | to a greater or lesser torment in hell.
00:03:49.200 | Or here's Matthew 10, 15.
00:03:51.600 | "Truly, I say to you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom
00:03:59.200 | and Gomorrah than for that town," the one that Jesus is referring to.
00:04:04.120 | So "more or less bearable" points to degrees or differences of suffering.
00:04:12.080 | Here's Matthew 11, 21.
00:04:14.520 | "Woe to you, Chorazin!
00:04:15.760 | Woe to you, Bethsaida!
00:04:17.800 | For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented
00:04:22.880 | long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
00:04:24.720 | But I tell you, it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for Tyre and Sidon than
00:04:32.800 | for you."
00:04:33.800 | So "more or less bearable" signifying greater or lesser suffering.
00:04:38.880 | And then one more.
00:04:40.800 | Romans 2, 4.
00:04:41.800 | And this one is so striking because of the word "thesauridzo," which means "to store
00:04:46.920 | up."
00:04:47.920 | It's usually used for storing up.
00:04:49.720 | Like Jesus says, "Lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven."
00:04:52.160 | That's the word.
00:04:53.680 | Only here it's used for wrath.
00:04:55.440 | So here's what it says.
00:04:56.440 | This is Romans 2, 4.
00:04:57.920 | "Do you presume on the riches of God's kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing
00:05:06.400 | that God's kindness is meant to lead you to repentance, but because of your hard and
00:05:12.400 | impenitent heart you are treasuring up wrath?"
00:05:17.560 | Meaning making investments in it, putting more and more away.
00:05:21.520 | Like we're supposed to store up treasures in heaven by doing good deeds day after day.
00:05:26.120 | These people are doing the opposite.
00:05:27.920 | They're storing up, treasuring up more and more wrath.
00:05:31.120 | Not treasures of blessing, but wrath for themselves on the day when the wrath of God—when God's
00:05:36.320 | righteous judgment will be revealed.
00:05:38.880 | So in those four texts that I just read—and there are several more—I see two explicit
00:05:47.760 | reasons given for why some will suffer more than others, and then I see three implicit
00:05:57.240 | reasons that flow from those two explicit ones.
00:06:00.600 | So let me just name these five.
00:06:03.880 | One is—these are reasons now why it would be so that some are suffering more than others—one
00:06:09.400 | is that the more light you have, the more knowledge you have, the more truth you have,
00:06:16.280 | the worse your sin and punishment at rejecting it.
00:06:21.400 | That's right there in the texts.
00:06:23.640 | Second is that the more kindness God shows you, not just in giving you light and truth,
00:06:33.600 | but in, for example, giving you many undeserved pleasures in this life, the more grievous
00:06:42.160 | will be your unbelief and sin and your punishment worse in hell.
00:06:47.880 | So those are the two that I think are explicit in those texts.
00:06:52.120 | Now here are the other three.
00:06:54.880 | Third, if rejection of more or less light, or rejection of more and more light and kindness
00:07:05.600 | makes suffering worse in hell, then I infer the more days you do this, the worse it will
00:07:14.640 | be.
00:07:15.640 | In other words, time comes into the picture.
00:07:18.880 | Day after day after day after day, you keep on rejecting light after light after light,
00:07:25.000 | kindness after kindness after kindness.
00:07:26.520 | So the longer this goes on, the worse things are going to be.
00:07:31.480 | Fourth, there are kinds of sins that are more heinous, more destructive, more blasphemous
00:07:42.120 | than others, so that not only the amount of sinning over time makes things worse, but
00:07:51.160 | also the degree of ugliness and horror, heinousness, and blasphemy also increases the suffering.
00:08:01.560 | And then fifth, in all of this, there's a greater or lesser degree of high-handedness,
00:08:07.760 | arrogance, greater arrogance, greater conscious defiance and insolence, and therefore a consequent
00:08:18.160 | greater degree of punishment.
00:08:21.680 | So here's my concluding question.
00:08:24.960 | What should we do with this information?
00:08:27.320 | Why are we told this?
00:08:29.400 | Is it to make us feel like the risk is not as great, or make us feel better about lost
00:08:35.360 | people going there?
00:08:36.760 | What's the point of this?
00:08:38.200 | What should we do?
00:08:40.400 | All five of these reasons, I think, are reasons for greater suffering for some than for others.
00:08:51.280 | All five of these reasons send us trembling with joy to the cross of Jesus and to the
00:09:02.560 | grace of God, which holds on to us in the forgiveness that the cross gives.
00:09:10.520 | So here's the way I think we should hear each of those five.
00:09:15.620 | They make us seriously vigilant not to misuse greater light and truth.
00:09:24.120 | To whom much is given, much will be required.
00:09:26.320 | We should strive that the truth which comes to us would not come without humbling us,
00:09:34.960 | building our faith, increasing our love.
00:09:37.120 | In other words, don't squander precious light that God gives you in His Word and in His
00:09:44.280 | world.
00:09:45.320 | Number two, we should be seriously vigilant not to misuse all the pleasures of this life
00:09:53.720 | by treating them as God, or a distraction from God, instead of signs that He's kind
00:10:03.480 | and is better than all of them together.
00:10:06.920 | Third, we should be seriously vigilant over every passing hour and day so that they don't
00:10:15.680 | accumulate sins, but accumulate the fruit of righteousness.
00:10:20.880 | Every day a precious opportunity to invest, lay up treasures in heaven, not store up wrath
00:10:27.360 | in hell.
00:10:28.840 | Fourth, we should be seriously vigilant over our pride, lest we fall into patterns of arrogance
00:10:38.200 | and defiance and saying, "Ah, it doesn't matter.
00:10:42.120 | God can take His Word and stuff it."
00:10:45.360 | Here's a closing quote from Edwards.
00:10:46.800 | I mean, if you want to walk with somebody who has thought deeply about hell, wow.
00:10:56.360 | Edwards has a couple sermons on this issue of degrees of suffering, one of them based
00:11:01.400 | on Matthew 5.22.
00:11:02.400 | Let me give you one closing quote.
00:11:04.560 | This is just an example of how seriously he took these things.
00:11:10.440 | He said in this sermon on Matthew 5.22, "The damned in hell would be ready to give the
00:11:18.720 | world if they could have the number of their sins to have been one less in this life."
00:11:30.400 | Powerful.
00:11:31.600 | Incomprehensible and beyond my grasp, but biblically grounded.
00:11:36.280 | Thank you, Pastor John, for walking us through those key texts.
00:11:39.120 | And thanks for listening in.
00:11:41.000 | Our fall programming is fully underway now.
00:11:44.080 | We recorded this episode in the studio in advance of Pastor John leaving for his second
00:11:47.800 | stint in Europe in 2019.
00:11:50.000 | He and Noel are currently traveling and ministering in Holland, France, and Germany this time
00:11:54.680 | around.
00:11:55.680 | Would you pray for their safety and for the fruitfulness of their ministry?
00:12:00.440 | We would really appreciate it.
00:12:02.040 | But all new episodes are coming up in the months ahead.
00:12:05.680 | And the next one is, where should a Christian wife set boundaries in relationship to her
00:12:11.120 | unbelieving husband?
00:12:12.400 | It's a great question.
00:12:13.880 | It's up next when we return on Wednesday.
00:12:15.480 | We'll see you then.
00:12:16.360 | [END]
00:12:18.360 | 1.
00:12:19.360 | What is the meaning of the word "unbeliever"?
00:12:20.360 | 2.
00:12:21.360 | What does it mean to be a believer?
00:12:22.360 | 3.
00:12:23.360 | What does it mean to be a believer?
00:12:23.360 | [BLANK_AUDIO]