Heaven and hell...literal?

Our deep, insatiable, and constant longings for love/life can not be adequately explained physically. This is a clue we are far more than mere physical beings. These longings are a hint or indication that we do not cease to exist simply because our present bodies do. 

We long for something permanent - everlasting/ eternal - instead of temporary. Once we get a "taste" of love, we never want it to stop but want more. 

Longing for satisfaction without the ability or means to obtain it is the essence of hell. I would suggest that a never-ending longing and burning desire to fulfill ourselves and derive a sense of meaning through our independent efforts (i.e. without God), while no longer having access to the good gifts of God we now enjoy, is the essence of hell.

"Hell on earth" is seeking to find fulfillment in something other than God but not finding it. Even when we think we have, it never works or lasts long term.

Not just present but eternal longing

Longing for fulfillment does not cease simply because our existence on earth does. We are more than mere physical beings.

Hell is continuing in the state of longing after this life is over, with no means of obtaining what we need or hope of relief.

Though hell is depicted as a physical burning, I propose it is also - if not exclusively - an emotional/ spiritual burning that is so great the pain goes beyond the physical and may, in fact, be even greater. Think in terms of solitary confinement in utter darkness with nothing to distract yourself. No food to satisfy your hunger, no water to quench your thirst, no "toys" - creature comforts - to distract you or occupy your time. All you have is your thoughts and memories of enjoying the good things you use to have access to or endlessly replaying a poor choice others made that hurt you or you made that hurt others.

This may be hard to grasp but only because we do not understand the powerful void left within us by the absence of God. We are spiritually "shut down" - dead to seeing God as the Source of infinite love that he is - no longer having access to or use of the good gifts of His creation to keep our spiritual and emotional longings in check i.e. to numb the pain.

In order to contain a large object there must be a large container - spiritually speaking. Nothing is greater than God so the void within us must be immense. Far greater than we now realize because we mask it through use/exploitation of the creation - others and the good gifts of life. 

Does evil "send" us to hell?

Does doing evil send people to hell or is it evidence they are already on the road there? Isn't this simply an indication we are already in a state of rebellion from our dependence on the Source of life and all things - and therefore evidence of our alienation and separation from Him?

The good news is Christ has provided the remedy i.e. our rebellion no longer has to separate us from God now or in eternally; our refusal to accept God's free offer and solution does. Isn't the heart of evil our ongoing rebellious distrust of God resulting in destructive/evil behavior? God offers us freedom from all of this, yet we refuse it. 

Doing evil does not necessarily send people to hell as much as it's evidence they are a child of hell and already heading there unless they are restored back to God, our Designer and Source of love, meaning, purpose, and all things.

John 3:16  "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

John 3:17  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

John 3:18  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

John 3:19  And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

John 3:20  For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.

John 3:21  But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God."

The essence of heaven.

The essence of heaven is the complete unhindered and unfettered presence of the God of infinite love, glory, joy, delight, and bliss. Think of those best moments you have had that if they were any better, you would burst with joy and gratitude, then multiply that many times over without interruption and constantly increasing. This only begins to give us a glimpse of what heaven will be like.

However, we cannot and will not experience God's full presence without several things occurring first. 

• The animosity and alienation from our rebellious independence and distrust of God are removed (reconciliation). This addresses our heart towards God i.e. we are no longer his enemies aka totally untrusting, rebellious creatures.

• The just condemnation for our rebellious independence and distrust of God is removed (judgment). This addresses God's posture towards us i.e. He is and no longer needs to be our judge. Christ was judged in our place. 

• The complete righteousness of God -- earned for us by Christ -- is assigned and credited to us, establishing our good standing before God (justification). 

• The complete and eventual *removal of our propensity to distrust God and to operate independently of him (glorification). 

• Complete freedom from our mortality and the corruption of our present existence (glorification), no aging, sickness, or death.

Until we understand what Christ entered into for us; taking upon himself our hell so we might not have to, hell will appear unfair and make no sense - yet no one ever asks, how fair was the suffering of Christ who did nothing wrong and everything right. And He did all this for us because we weren't able to. 

Since he did, if we refuse his offer, would this not be the greatest insult and rejection of His love. Our being left to our own devices would be totally just.

The issue isn't if hell is unfair but that we refuse to accept his going through hell for us so we might not have to i.e. it is not as if there is no solution. We are only bound for hell if we refuse that solution He freely offers. God not only does not wish for us to go there, he did everything necessary to keep us from going.

 

In short, Christ took on what was not rightfully his - total condemnation and rejection - so he could give us what was not rightfully ours - perfect love and acceptance by His Father.

However, people who don't know Christ or refuse his offer are choosing hell every day. They are choosing separation from God which simply continues on into eternity. How you may ask? By using creation to attempt to fill the void left by the Creator's absence and refusing God's free offer to restore us back to Him.

We now have access to all the gifts of creation yet without acknowledging the Creator, Giver, Provider, and Sustainer of those gifts (Rom 1:21-25). In eternity they will continue to refuse to acknowledge the Creator but will no longer have access to all the good gifts of creation we presently enjoy, be that the use of our own personal skills and gifts or those we find all around us...the hearing, seeing, smelling, feeling and tasting of created things etc. 

Hell is our choice.

"Hell is your freely chosen identity, based on something other than God, going on forever." - Tim Keller, former pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City. 

The essence of "hell" is the absence of God and His love, which is also part of our present state of existence. 

2 Thes 1: 9 They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might,

The hard reality is we all are presently experiencing the absence of God in the ultimate sense -- none of us are fully in his loving presence yet, nor can we be in our present state. We are therefore in a kind of hell now to a limited degree i.e. In varying degrees we all experience suffering and pain now.

Intuitively we get this. Every time we experience overwhelming pain and suffering it is a reminder that Hell exists and is real. Who hasn't felt or said "that was hell" after going through some extremely painful and difficult circumstance -- yet, oddly, we have a hard time accepting the continuation of this very same state of pain and suffering after we leave this life?

At the same time, we all are also experiencing God's loving presence to a limited degree i.e. heaven. Whether we trust him or not we experience something of him through the many gifts we now enjoy. For those who have accepted God's offer of reconciliation, His Spirit of infinite, endless love also indwells us. 

Our present existence in this beautiful yet broken world is a kind of in-between state. We experience something of the joy of who God is but also the pain of not yet being fully reunited with Him in His infinite love. 

For those who have entrusted themselves to Christ and therefore love him, they experience heaven now to some degree by his presence in and through his Spirit that dwells within.

When we are finally in God's full and unfettered presence there will no longer be any pain, suffering, or crying, only joy, and endless ever-growing bliss. But not until then. Rev 21:4  

Everything good in this life that causes joy and delight points to the goodness of God and is only a prelude to the uninterrupted good/joy/glory to come for those who love him.

Everything bad in this life points to our brokenness and separation from God and the prospect of continuing in that separation for those who reject him.

If heaven is a real place, hell must also be -- just as darkness must exist because light exists i.e. darkness is simply the absence of light -- for heaven is the presence of God and hell is the absence of his loving presence.

So our present existence is as much of Heaven as someone who rejects/distrusts God will ever experience and as much of Hell a lover/worshiper of God will ever experience.

Do all of us feel God's absence? 

Does a man born blind understand sight or sense its absence? If no one told him he was blind (and everyone else around him was also blind) would he not think his condition normal? 

Most are not aware of the void of God's absence for two primary reasons. 

1. We are disconnected from God and therefore also spiritually dead to God, seeking only what we can see, smell, taste, feel, and hear.

2. Proof (and also the result) of this is we have and use the good gifts of God to mask or numb that void/deadness. Not unlike a blind man groping around, experiencing something of the reality of this world, while never fully enjoying it.

If our life is built around having and enjoying the good gifts of God and not God himself, the Giver of those gifts, we will leave this life without either and experience the full force of the void/emptiness now within us due to God's absence. This is the essence of hell.

For a further discussion on how hell is a continuation of our current path click here

For a discussion of whether we are rebels to God click here.

For a discussion on whether God's wrath is reasonable click here

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¹I would argue this removal is organic and not mechanical. Our inclination away from God even as His children, will be fully subdued or overpowered once we see him face to face i.e. we will be like him when we see him as he is i.e. no longer through a glass darkly but in the fullness of his glory. This will result in the longing of our hearts being satisfied for the first time. What (more correctly WHO) has been missed and what our hearts have longed for all our lives will now but right in front of us. How can we long after anything else once we are in the presence of perfection and perfect love? 

Obedience... does it matter or not?

For the child of God, two seemingly opposing principles must be tenaciously and equally held on to (believed) and kept in balance.

1. There is nothing we can do that will ever make us acceptable to God or enable us to participate in his love.

2. Living according to God's will/directions/commands is (a) most honoring to God (b) according to our design and (c) the most freeing way to live and experience all God has designed us to experience.

To say it another way 

Principle #1 is saying our righteousness or living right does not matter at all.

Principle #2 is saying our righteousness or right living absolutely matters (in fact it is all-important in our bringing God the greatest possible glory and experiencing God and all He desires to be for us).

How can these both be true and work together?

It all depends on the context and setting you are considering. 

Let's take a closer look.

# 1  There is nothing we can do that will ever make us acceptable to God or enable us to fully participate in his love.

Why? 

Two primary reasons (which include some additional underlying truths). 

1. Who God is:

   • All things came to be by Him and all things continue to exist by him         

      i.e. Everything depends on God. He is Creator & sustainer of all things. 

   • God is also holy, perfect, and righteous. 

      a. Because he is the Creator and because he is unyieldingly holy, He rightfully deserves our complete and total allegiance and worship. 

      b. Because of these things, He rightfully calls us to love him with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength and our neighbors as ourselves. 

Anything short of conducting ourselves accordingly is out of line with reality i.e. who God is, who we are, and is therefore unacceptable.

2. Who we are:

We are in his image designed to be in a relationship with him but rejected (and still reject) Him as our Creator and sustainer resulting in our spiritual deadness i.e. we are dead to seeing him for who He truly is. We are unable to live for him (unaided) as we ought and were designed to.  

We therefore simply do not have it in us to do as He calls us to do and be who He originally created us to be. We can never do enough. So there's no point in even trying. 

#2 Living according to God's will/directions/commands is (a) most honoring to God (b) according to our design and (c) the most freeing way to live and experience all God has designed us to experience.

Why? Faithfulness, obedience to God, living to honor Him, etc. is why we exist and what we were created for. It is living according to who we are and how we were designed to experience fullness of joy and life.   

True life is in God alone. Obedience to his directions is living in alignment with his good and perfect will, putting us not only in harmony with Him and who he is, but also operating according to who he has designed us to be.

A train is not somehow freed by jumping off the track but in fact may bog down in a ditch or field or run off a cliff, crash, and burn because it's no longer operating according to its design, i.e. it is off the track. 

Who would know better how the train operates best if not the designer of the train? 

Because he tells us how to best operate we must listen if we are to experience our greatest good and bring him greatest glory.

So how do these two principles come together?

In a word, Christ!

Christ, the eternal Son of God, stepped out of eternity, took on the flesh and blood of humanity, and dwelt among us as a man. 

And not only so but he lived out his life as a man wholly for the glory of his Father, in perfect harmony and obedience with him as we (humanity) were designed to live. 

After living this perfect life he allowed himself to suffer the consequences of our not living wholly for the glory of his Father. In doing so he satisfied the legal requirement to live according to God's glory and our design. 

He offered his righteous life in exchange for our unrighteous one so we are no longer required to live a righteous life to be received by his Father. 

In so doing he removed the barrier between us and God for failing to live as He designed us and calls us to. Now His Father's love is freely extended and poured out on us, as if we had lived perfectly for God's glory ourselves. 

His offer of right standing and uninterrupted love (the very same love the Father has for his Son) is now ours as a gift, if we receive it.

In summary, God demonstrated his love for us when we deserved the opposite, providing for us access to God and taking care of principle #1. 

As we see this love (for the first time) and are increasingly drawn up into it (an ongoing process) we respond more and more in love by seeking to honor him in all we do or say. Love is the life or dynamic necessary to live according to God's design and glory, enabling us to live out principle #2. To say it as the Bible does, we love him because he first loved us.

The Bible sums up these two principles in the following verses:

"There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh (i.e. attempting to live by the law to earn God's love) but according to the Spirit (i.e. seeking to obey the law out of love and gratitude to God in Christ for securing our right standing with him and his infinite love for us)." Rom 8:1-4

The Bible also touches on these contrasted principles in the following. 

1Co 10:23  "All things are lawful," but not all things are helpful. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up.

"All things are lawful..." simply means nothing we can do will be held against me legally because of a righteous status (legal standing) in Christ.

"not all things are helpful... not all things build up..." simply means we are designed to operate a certain way and will experience consequences for not doing so. 

The evidence of this right motive for obedience is expressed in the following

Joh 14:15  If you love me, you will keep my commandments.

1Jn 5:3  For this is the love of God, that we keep his commandments. And his commandments are not burdensome.