Re-Imagining Hell -- Or Rather, Freeing Hell from Our Imaginations: What the Bible Originally Says
Letting the Bible define hell
No one likes talking about hell
It’s a doctrine we’d rather ignore. It doesn’t seem kind, loving, or even good. How does it possibly fit in a Christianity that focuses on a God of love?
God talks about hell from the beginning of the Bible. But it’s not the hell that you’re thinking of.
When we start exploring what the Old Testament reveals about the afterlife, it shifts the reality of our conversation. We swiftly discover that God is not the enemy, nor is He a torturer.
We discover an awful truth:
We create hell.
We build our own everlasting torments, sin by sin, torment by torment. We are our own eternal enemies.
This is what God is striving constantly to rescue us from.
Hell begins in Genesis
When God created humanity, He gave us an awesome and terrible gift: the ability to determine the course of our lives.
“Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion.’” (Genesis 1:26, ESV).
This is the origin of your free will — your ability to take in information, assess it, and make your own choice about how you will respond. God gave you that gift so that you could be like Him, made in His image: a being with a mind and a will that can create, enjoy, appreciate, and most of all, love.
Yet every choice comes with a consequence.
God warns Adam and Eve that if they rebel against Him, they will die on that day. Eve and Adam choose to rebel and instantly experience this spiritual death.
They lose spiritual life — their oneness with God, their contentment, love, peace, joy, and satisfaction in the presence of their Maker. In its place they find the grave keepers of spiritual death: overwhelming shame, pain, guilt, blame, fear, and regret.
This is the condition all humanity is born into: spiritual death and separation from God. This is what God seeks to save us from: the consequences of our own choices.
Because of this, God would not let Adam and Eve remain in the Garden. If they did, they could eat from the Tree of Life and continue to exist eternally while being spiritually dead and separated from Him:
“Then the LORD God said, ‘Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—’ therefore the LORD God sent him out from the garden of Eden. (Genesis 3:22–23, ESV).
God refused to let Adam and Eve exist forever in spiritual death, full of torment, guilt, pain, shame, agony, and loneliness. God would not let them perpetuate spiritual death through eternity.
Does that concept sound familiar?
Isaiah reveals our self-made agony
Early in the book of Isaiah, God brings Isaiah to the Throne Room of Heaven. Isaiah enters eternity, seeing God while still full of sin.
And he experiences the agony of hell:
“In the year that King Uzziah died I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple.[…] And I said: ‘Woe is me! For I am lost; for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for my eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts!’” (Isaiah 6:1,5 ESV).
Isaiah experiences the torment that God sought to rescue Adam and Eve from. In eternity, Isaiah suffered the torment of his self-made hell until God cleanses his sin. After that transformation, Isaiah can look on God and feel joy instead of pain. Once forgiven, Isaiah can hear God and respond:
“Then one of the seraphim flew to me, having in his hand a burning coal that he had taken with tongs from the altar. And he touched my mouth and said: ‘Behold, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away, and your sin atoned for.’ And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am! Send me.’ (Isaiah 6:6–8, ESV).
There were no demons with whips. Isaiah didn’t fall into a cosmic torture chamber. Isaiah suffered hell’s agony because he was still filled with his own sin when he entered eternity. He saw the God of Life while full of rebellion against Him. This spiritual death tormented Isaiah excruciatingly.
The torment of hell comes from us — not from God, but from our own sin.
Daniel confirms everlasting torment
Many hope for hell to be temporary — a short punishment before being taken to Heaven. Others hope it is a mere figure of speech, or a metaphor of being destroyed and knowing no more.
God abolishes those possibilities in what He reveals to Daniel:
“And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.’’ (Daniel 12:2, ESV).
Those who are forgiven experience eternal life in the presence of God, seeing Him and feeling the joy that never ceases, a return to Eden and everlasting peace.
But those whose sin remains in them will experience eternal shame and contempt, forever feeling the torment of their sin as Isaiah experienced above.
There is no escape from our self-imposed fate.
Prophets paint the image of hellfire
The description of hell as a place of fire and torment is no late development. It originates in the Old Testament. These are the images and horrors God uses to describe the place of everlasting contempt:
“And they shall go out and look on the dead bodies of the men who have rebelled against me. For their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched, and they shall be an abhorrence to all flesh.” (Isaiah 66.24, ESV).
Be absolutely clear on this fact:
God does not kindle these flames. You do.
God uses the horrors of hellfire imagery to shock you out of complacency. Don’t treat the afterlife as an afterthought! Your own sins kindle a flame too horrible to imagine. God is screaming at you to turn and let Him save you.
Don’t miss the other clear point:
Hell is not a place for innocents.
No one goes to hell unjustly. It is a place for rebels, for “the men who have rebelled against me,” as God declares.
Or to say it another way: no one suffers in another person’s flames. If you refuse God’s efforts to save you from yourself, you will suffer in the flames you kindled for yourself.
The Old Testament establishes hell clearly and unavoidably
These few verses lay out the core truths of hell in shocking clarity:
It is eternal.
It is conscious, as Isaiah felt the torment of his sin consciously, and consciousness is required to feel shame and contempt as Daniel describes.
God does not torture or punish, but the sin of the individual causes their agony.
This agony of sin is the result of spiritual death, as Adam and Eve experienced, and as Isaiah experienced.
Those who end up in hell are those who chose to rebel against God.
Forgiveness of sin results in spiritual life, such that intimacy with God is restored, as Isaiah rapturously experienced.
God works to deliver people from hell, rescuing Adam and Eve by keeping them out of Eden, and rescuing Isaiah by forgiving his sin.
Hell is not a comfortable topic
No one likes talking about it. We hate discussing it.
But it is real.
We cannot bury our heads in the sand and pretend it does not exist. God warns us about it constantly, striving to keep as many out of it as possible.
The reason Jesus has not yet returned is to give people every possible chance to avoid hellfire:
“The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” (2 Peter 3:9, ESV).
God hates hell
More to the point: God hates when any child of His enters hell.
Jesus died on the Cross for your sin specifically to keep you out of hell. He offers complete forgiveness, instantly washing you of sin so that you can look on God in eternity with joy.
Don’t send yourself to hell.
Jesus wants to transform you to be like Isaiah above: cleansed of sin, able to talk with God face-to-face in eternity and enjoy His presence. That’s what He offers to you.
But if you persist in rebellion — if you refuse to bow before the God who created your life and try to rule it yourself instead — then hellfire awaits. It’s a fire you kindled yourself by entering eternity full of rebellion. Your own sins will cause your agony throughout eternity — unless you repent and bow before the God who gave up His life to save you from your flames.
Trust in Jesus
He alone is Life. Jesus is Joy, Peace, Love, Patience, Kindness, Compassion, Truth, Hope. He longs to fill you with these and every other good thing.
“How much more will your Father who is in Heaven give good things to those who ask him!” (Matthew 7:11, ESV).
Trust in Jesus today! You will never regret giving your life to the King who loves you. He is no dictator. He is your Father who loves you and longs to lavish life on you.
The only barrier between yourself and life is you.
Let Life in.