What is hell like?

Suffering, Evil & Hard QuestionsIn theological review

The short answer

Hell, in Jesus's own teaching, is the final, conscious exclusion from God's presence that he most often pictured as Gehenna: a place of fire, darkness and loss, prepared for the devil and his angels, into which people enter by their own settled refusal of God. Jesus spoke of it more than anyone else in Scripture, always soberly, and always as a reason to flee to him now rather than to speculate later.

The fuller answer

Most of what Christians believe about hell comes from Jesus, which surprises people who picture him teaching only gentleness. His usual word for it was Gehenna, named in his teaching after the valley of Hinnom outside Jerusalem, a place associated in Israel's memory with child sacrifice and later with refuse and burning. He used it for the fate of those who finally refuse God: a place where the worm does not die and the fire is not quenched, language he borrowed from the last verse of Isaiah.

If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life crippled than to have two hands and go into hell, into the unquenchable fire. If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and be thrown into hell. And if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell, where ‘their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.’

Mark 9:43-48 (BSB)

In his great picture of final judgment, Jesus described the King saying to those on his left: depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. Two details deserve slow reading. The fire was prepared for the devil, not for people; human beings arrive there by joining a rebellion that was never built for them. And the same sentence pairs eternal punishment with eternal life, using one word for both durations, which is why the church has read the punishment as lasting.

And they will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.

Matthew 25:46 (BSB)

Jesus's story of the rich man and Lazarus must be labelled honestly: it is a parable, told to expose the hard hearted, not a travel report from the afterlife. Its flames, thirst and fixed chasm are story pictures, though they plainly assume a real division after death and real regret. Revelation's final picture is of a lake of fire into which death itself is thrown, called the second death. Fire, darkness, weeping and exclusion recur across every picture Scripture gives. None of them is decorative.

Then Death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death—the lake of fire. And if anyone was found whose name was not written in the Book of Life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.

Revelation 20:14-15 (BSB)

Two misunderstandings need clearing. Hell is not a place where God is absent in the sense that he loses control of it; it is a place where his presence is known as judgment rather than mercy. Nor is anyone there a victim of divine reluctance: the consistent note of Scripture is that God takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked and urges people, urgently, to turn and live. Jesus's own purpose in speaking of hell was rescue. He described the cliff edge so plainly because he came to pull people back from it.

Sources

Berean Standard Bible (BSB)

Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.

Dig deeper

No answer here is a dead end. Follow the question on, test it in practice, or work the method yourself on the Dig deeper page.

How can a loving God send anyone to hell?It is the hardest question in this section, and the Bible does not dodge it. The same book that calls God love also records Jesus warning of eternal punishment, in the same sentence as eternal life. The Christian answer holds both: God's love is proved at the cross, where he bore the cost of sin himself, and his justice means that persistent, final refusal of him is not overridden. Hell, in the Bible's terms, is separation from God finally granted to those who demand it.Is hell eternal, or do the lost stop existing?Christians differ on this question, and both sides argue from Scripture. Contend's position, following the historic confession of the church, is that the punishment of the lost is conscious and unending: Jesus pairs eternal punishment with eternal life in one sentence, using the same word for both. Annihilationists answer that texts about the lost perishing and death as sin's wages point to a final destruction. The texts on both sides are set out below.Do people get a second chance after death?No: Scripture presents death as the boundary after which comes judgment, with no second probation offered beyond it. Hebrews states the pattern in one line: people are destined to die once, and after that to face judgment. Jesus's parable of the rich man and Lazarus pictures a great chasm fixed between the dead, across which no one passes. The Bible's urgency about today comes from exactly this conviction.What is heaven like?Heaven, in the Bible's final picture, is a renewed earth, not an escape from one: God dwelling with his people in a vast, garden like city, with death, mourning, crying and pain ended, and a river and a tree of life at its centre. Scripture holds two things together: Paul says no eye has seen what God has prepared, and Revelation still gives real pictures. They are pictures, stated plainly, of a real place.Bible Character: JesusThe Son of God, born of Mary in Bethlehem, who preached the kingdom of God, was crucified for our sins according to the Scriptures, and was raised on the third day.