Thursday, June 23

Thursday

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried.  In hell, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony.  And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’  - Luke 16:22-26

In the movie Gladiator (one of my favorites) the main character Maximus, played by Russell Crowe, says to his Roman Legionaries just before they head into battle; “brothers, what we do in life echoes in eternity.”  I have no idea what the writers of that movie intended, but that statement is actually quite biblical.  The choices we make in this life do indeed have eternal consequences.

In the story we have been reflecting on from Luke 16, both Lazarus and the rich man survived their own funerals. This is the one thing that they had in common, they both died.  The death rate is still 100% and no amount of riches or power can change that.  We tend to think of this world as the land of the living but, in a sense, it is actually the land of the dying.  We are all on our way toward the end of our earthly lives.  Some of us are inching toward our death and others of us are racing toward it, but we are all going to get there one day.  When that day finally comes, we will wake up to spend eternity in either Heaven or Hell.  There are those who suggest that God is gracious enough to give a second chance after death, or even a third, fourth, fifth, or as many chances as we might need to finally accept His offer of forgiveness and redemption.  This sounds nice and would be quite nice of God if it were true.  The problem is that all of the evidence we have from His Word clearly indicates that it is not true.  The Bible makes it abundantly clear that our lives on this side of eternity matter too much for that to be true!

Hebrews 9:27 - Just as man is destined to die once, and after that to face judgment.

The writings of C.S. Lewis have helped me tremendously in many ways to better understand my faith.  In particular, Lewis has some very good insights on how to understand the reality of an eternal hell, and as usual, he simply says things better and more clearly than most people.

"Christianity asserts that we are going to go on forever and that must either be true or false. Now there are a great many things that wouldn't be worth bothering about if I was only going to live eighty years or so, but I had better bother about if I am going to go on living forever. Perhaps my bad temper or my jealousy are getting worse so gradually that the increase in my lifetime will not be very noticeable but it might be absolute hell in a million years. In fact, if Christianity is true, hell is precisely the correct technical term for it. You may even criticize it in yourself and wish you could stop it. But there may come a day when you can no longer. Then there will be no you left to criticize the mood or to even enjoy it, but just the grumble itself going on and on forever like a machine. It is not a question of God 'sending us' to hell. In each of us there is something growing, which will BE Hell unless it is nipped in the bud."              - C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock

In the long run the answer to all those who object to the doctrine of hell is itself a Question: "What are you asking God to do?" To wipe out their past sins and, at all costs, to give them a fresh start, smoothing every difficulty and offering every miraculous help? But He has done so, on Calvary. To forgive them! They will not be forgiven. To leave them alone? Alas, I am afraid that is what He does. I willingly believe that the damned are, in one sense, successful, rebels to the end; that the doors of hell are locked on the inside.  All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell.        – C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain

No one who is ever in hell will be able to say to God, “You put me here,” And no one who is in heaven will ever be able to say, “I put myself here.”


Jeff Frazier