Hellish Thoughts From Two Perspectives.

For the Christian, a sinner saved by grace through faith in Christ, hell is a place that tells of Jesus' all-conquering and amazing love for him. Hell is a place that he deserves to fall into by the mere weight of his sin alone, yet, Christ bore all of his sins and satisfied the eternal wrath of God by dying in place of the believing sinner at the cross. When the Christian thinks of Hell, he rejoices that he does not have to endure it for all eternity, and that the only hellish thing he will have to experience is this brief life on earth which is full of many rebellious, God-hating, and hell-bound sinners.

For the sinner, a religious or natural man who rejects Christ and trusts in his own good deeds to propel him to heaven or denies the supernatural altogether, hell is a place that tells of God's terrible and horrifying eternal judgement and wrath meant specifically for him. When the sinner thinks of Hell, he either denies that Hell is a real place apart from the silly religious fanatics' imagination, thinks that a "loving God" would never send him there because he thinks it unjust for God to do so based on his own definition of "love", or believes himself good enough to avoid it. What he doesn't realize is that, by trusting in any of these things, he has denied his only way out of Hell, namely Christ, and will be thrown into the very place that he thinks himself free from.


-burton 261E