Healthy plants have deep roots and strong pillars have solid foundations. If we are to be Christians who are deeply rooted in Christ and built on the solid Rock, then we need more than mere sound bites. One means that the Lord has used throughout church history to strengthen His people’s faith and witness is reading good books. This book review series is identifying books that can serve as shovels that help you dig deeper in your Christian life.
Book: Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College - Michael J. Kruger
Your university campus is a mission field that presents you with plenty of opportunities to share the good news of Jesus. However, as you do so, the problem you’ll encounter is that your good news will be received as bad news. Your friends will bristle at the idea that everyone needs a Saviour because they are under God’s wrath. As this happens, you may find yourself hesitating to share the gospel and even doubting biblical concepts like judgment, sin, and hell. You may wonder, “Wouldn’t a loving God just save everyone?” While the doctrine of hell is challenging, in chapter 6 of Surviving Religion 101, Michael Kruger shows us how it makes sense when properly viewed in the context of the Christian worldview.
1) Which God are We Talking About?
We need to understand that whether a person believes in hell is based on their more foundational beliefs about who God is, and what He’s like. Most people have a very different view of God from the One presented in the Bible. They view Him as the distant deity that’s generally laid back and stays out of our business unless they need some extra help. It would be absurd for this ‘god’ to judge anyone.
When you encounter this, you have a great opportunity to ask your friends how they know that God is the way they say He is. Where do they get their information from? Most people don’t have a solid answer and it becomes clear that their understanding of God is how they want Him to be. But that creates its own massive problem: when our God is just a reflection of our personal preferences then we have made ourselves God!
In contrast, Christians know what God is like by looking to the Bible. When we do, we find a God who does not conform to our preferences or make us comfortable. He’s not a one-dimensional God of our own making. He is the God of love, who is holy, just and pure. The prophet Isaiah discovered this when he saw something of the unmatchable glory of God (Isaiah 6:1-4)!
Here’s the point: If the biblical God exists – the one who is ‘holy, holy, holy’ – then it makes a lot more sense to think that He might judge sin after all.
2) Sinner, Know Thyself
Our view of hell changes not only when we come face-to-face with the true, living God, but also, when we come face-to-face with ourselves. We need to realize that we are much bigger sinners than we can ever imagine. Ironically, that realization only dawns on us as we encounter the true God. When Isaiah saw the holiness of the Lord, he fell apart, exclaiming: “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!” (Is.6:5). Thus, the brighter we see the light of God’s holiness, the dirtier we will see ourselves to be.
This is where we naturally go wrong. We typically measure ourselves by comparing ourselves to others, which is a standard we assume we can easily meet. However, when we compare ourselves to God’s perfect holiness, then we see that we persistently break God’s law not only in our actions, but also in our heart (Mt. 5:28)!
3) Sin is Spiritual Adultery
Another reason we trivialize sin is because we think of it as merely breaking a rule, while the essence of sin is breaking a relationship. Sin is when we take our deepest affections off the God who deserves them and place them onto other things that do not. Thus, all sin is idolatry, or what the bible frequently compares to spiritual adultery.
The reason why this is always the case is because God made us to be worshippers. The issue is not whether we will worship God, but what god will we devote our life to? Whatever our preferred idol is, it will let us down. Money, sex, success and any other god-substitute all become harsh taskmasters, ruling our lives and driving us to despair. The real tragedy of being enslaved to sin is that when we fear our idols might be taken away, we desperately lash out like a drug addict to keep them in our life. The very thing we love is the very thing that is destroying us (John 8:34)
To help us understand this relational aspect of our sin, the Bible compares sinners to an unfaithful bride (Ezek. 16). Even though she lawfully and legally belongs to her Husband, and even though He is kind, gracious, loving, and patient with her, she coldly rejects Him and runs off with other lovers. That is what our sin is like. It is that which strikes out against God (Ps. 51:4)
4) God Punishes Sinners in Hell because He is Good
God cannot just “overlook” our sins. If a human judge was faced with an awful, vicious criminal in his courtroom, and he let him off the hook it would be a travesty of justice. The same is true with God. If He just ignored our cosmic crimes, then He would be unjust, and He would not be worthy of our worship. Here’s the startling reality: God does not punish people in hell despite His goodness; He punishes people in hell because He is so very good!
To help us grasp the goodness of God’s justice, it might be helpful to ask your friends about their concept of justice. In their worldview, how will all things eventually be “made right”? If there’s no final judgment, does all the awfulness of this world – child abuse, genocide, sexual assault and so on – just remain unaddressed and unresolved forever?
Your friends might begin to realize that they have a longing for justice that their worldview cannot meet. The ironic fact is that a worldview without hell is the one that is most unjust! This helps us understand why Jesus plainly taught on hell as a real place of eternal torment where God perfectly executes His justice on the wicked (Mt 13:42; Mk 9:43; Lk 16:23).
5) What Can Wash Away My Sin?
So, our sin is not just a ‘mistake;’ it is cosmic treason against the King of the universe (Rom 1:21-25; 3:23). How do you solve the problem of your sin?
The most common strategy of the fallen human heart is to try and make up for it. We think that if we commit ourselves to holy living, then perhaps our good deeds will outweigh the bad in the end. Naturally, we try to address our sins through self-cleansing, where we attempt to wash away our moral dirt.
However, the Bible is clear that our future law keeping cannot make up for our past sins (Gal 3:10). All our hard work – even our penance – cannot remove all the stains of guilt. Despite our best efforts at self-improvement, our guilt cannot be washed away by us; they must be washed away for us.
6) Unfair in Our Favour
Do you see how dire our situation really is? Not only are we sinners rightly under God’s wrath, but there’s nothing that we can do about it. The only one who can do anything about it is the very God we’ve spent our lives rebelling against!
Realizing this flips our whole approach to the doctrine of hell on its head. Rather than being shocked that God would send evil sinners to hell, we should be shocked that he would save any of us at all!
Heaven, not hell, is the real mystery of Scripture! We should be blown away that there’s a place where a holy God and lost sinners can dwell together in peace and harmony. How is that possible?
The answer of course is the good news of Jesus and his saving work. When He died on the cross, He paid the full penalty of His sinful people, absorbing all the wrath that they deserve. When we are united to Him by faith, then we are free from facing hell because Jesus suffered the pangs of hell in our place.
The sheer wonder of this comes by remembering that God would be completely justified if He judged everyone and saved no one. God’s justice is according to truth and He is right to condemn rebellious sinners to hell for violating the law that is written on their heart (Rom. 2:15). He does not own salvation to anyone. And yet, in His infinite grace, He freely choses to save countless hell-deserving sinners at great cost to Himself!
Summary: Once we understand who God really is (He is holy) and who we really are (we are sinful), then Hell is not the unthinkable doctrine that it seems to be. Ironically, to downplay hell is to diminish what Christ did for His people on the cross. It makes God less loving because it makes what Christ did on the cross less significant. Thus, hell becomes another key to unlocking God’s vast, unfathomable love (Rom. 5:8)!
Surviving Religion 101 – Letters to a Christian Student on Keeping the Faith in College by Michael J. Kruger. Published by Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2021. Softcover, 262 pages.