Text: Luke 16:19-31
Topic: A look at the necessity of the doctrine of hell

• One of the things that troubles people most about Christianity is the Christian teaching that God is a judge who consigns people to hell.
• Basically the objection goes like this: "How can you possibly reconcile the concept of judgment and hell with the idea of a loving God? They just don't go together."
• I believe the Christian understanding of hell is crucial for understanding your own heart, for living at peace in the world, and for knowing the love of God.

• First of all, understanding hell is crucial to understanding your own heart.
• The parable in Luke 16:19-31 has two characters: a rich man and a poor man.
• One of the things that commentators have pointed out for years is that this is the only parable in which a character—the poor man—has a proper name.
• You would think the other character—the rich man—would have a name. But he doesn't. The contrast is deliberate.
• The rich man was probably not an atheist or a pagan, but rather a man who would have prayed to the God of the Bible and obeyed the laws of the God of the Bible. Why no name?
• In verse 25, Abraham says to the rich man, "Remember that in your lifetime you had your good things—the things that you built your life on."
• For many years philosophers have talked about the summum bonum—the highest good of your life. The rich man's highest good was his status and wealth.
• These had been the basis for his identity, and now that he is dead and they no longer exist, there is no "him" left.
  • Illustration: Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish philosopher, wrote a book called Sickness Unto Death. In it he wrestles with the definition of sin, which he defines as building your identity on anything but God.
• The traditional definition of sin is breaking God's law. While Kierkegaard agrees that breaking God's law is wrong, he wonders whether that's a sufficient definition.
• Consider the Pharisees. Their self-worth was based on their morality and their religiosity, but in the end, they were building their identity on something other than God.
• If you take a good thing and make it an ultimate thing, you are placing your hope in something other than God.
• This misplaced focus is what starts a spiritual fire in your heart. That's what the metaphor for fire is about.
• But you ask, "What are you talking about—'starts a fire'?"
• The act of turning good things into ultimate things is like an addiction—and all addictions lead to internal and external devastation, isolation, and denial. This is the fire of which the Bible speaks.
  • Illustration: Keller quotes a line from the animated film The Iron Giant: "Souls don't die. Souls can't die." He's right, of course. That's what the Bible says. After death the soul and your personal consciousness go on forever.
• Every single person, religious or irreligious, moral or immoral, is addicted to grounding his or her identity in something other than God, and the human soul goes on forever. What does this mean for us in life and death?
  • Illustration: C. S. Lewis puts the two together and offers an answer. He writes that if Christianity's assertion that we are going to go on forever is false, there are a good many things not worth bothering about. But if it's true, and my bad temper or my jealousy are gradually getting worse, such attributes would be absolute hell in a million years.
• You see, it's not a question of whether God sends us "to hell." In every one of us there is something growing up which will be hell unless it is nipped in the bud.
  • Illustration: Whenever he describes hell, C. S. Lewis says that its doors are locked from the inside. It's insanity.
• Our text confirms this understanding of hell. Just look at the insanity—how out of touch with reality people are while they are in hell.
• Commentators have long noted that the rich man in the parable is astonishingly blind. He is in denial, filled with blame-shifting.
• Notice something else: The rich man does not ask to get out of hell; he tries to get Lazarus in hell.
• He strongly insinuates that God didn't give him enough information. When he asks Lazarus to go to his five brothers to warn them about hell, he is subtly hinting that he didn't get enough information.
• He even seems to say, "It's not so bad. I really don't want to be up there with you, Lazarus. I just want a break for a moment. That's all."
• Let me sum up my thoughts: Hell is a freely-chosen identity based on something else other than God that goes on forever. But even while you disintegrate, you refuse to admit what hell is.
• There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says in the end, "Thy will be done."
• Seeing myself as a spiritual addict apart from the intervening grace of God has been very important. It is crucial for any addict to know how to deal with what's going on in his or her life.
• As Christians, we spend most of our lives watching the fires start to come up, and we just blow on them. But to know what is really going on, though, we will want to extinguish the flames entirely.
• So, have you got a core identity—a name based in what God has done for you in Jesus? Or are you just a businessman or businesswoman or artist or mother or father?

• Secondly, without the doctrine of hell I don't think you can really live at peace in this world. Or, to put it another way, the doctrine of hell is a great way to live at peace in this world.
• There are many people who are afraid that if you believe in a God of judgment and the doctrine of hell, you will have disdain for classes of people—that you will oppress and make war and marginalize other.
• In some ways this objection is understandable, but it certainly does not understand what the Bible says about hell at all. As we've seen already, hell is not something imposed by God in violence.
• In fact, I find verse 25 of our text intriguing. When Abraham looks down from heaven into hell and speaks to this rich man, he calls him "son." There is a real sadness, a sense of tragedy, to his words.
• Anyone who believes the Bible looks with great sadness at people who are on their way to the fire of hell. Not if we understand what hell is like.
• Illustration: Returning to the charge that a belief in hell only gives birth to oppression and division, Keller turns to Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace. Volf, who observed the horrors of war and division in Croatia, writes that the only resource he knows that is powerful enough to pacify the human heart's desire for justice, while at the same time can keep people from getting sucked into a cycle of blood and vengeance, is to say there is a God who will put everything right.

• Finally, the doctrine of hell is necessary for knowing the love of God.
• "Wait a minute," you say. "The whole idea of a God of judgment seems opposed to the idea of a God of love." But you're wrong, with all due respect.
• Look at the end of our passage. What does the rich man ask of Abraham? He wants a miracle. He wants Lazarus to rise from the dead and warn the rich man's brothers.
• But Abraham says the miracle would never work. Fear of hell and damnation will never change the fundamental structures of a human heart.
• But what is the fire? Self-centeredness. Self-absorption. Me, me, me, rather than you.
• When you scare people with thoughts of hell, they won't end up being good for goodness sake or for God's sake, for his pleasure. They're just going to be good for their own sake. It's just more selfishness!
• So what will change the fundamental structures of the heart? Love. Radical, unconditional love is the only thing that will take our mistrustful, in-denial, conniving little hearts and shock them into a whole new way of living and being.
• But where are we going to get that kind of love that changes our heart? Jesus tells us indirectly in our text.
• Is the possible resurrection of Lazarus supposed to make us think of Jesus? Is his resurrection enough to live in a manner that will keep us out of hell? No!
• Jesus points out that the key is knowing why he died—which is shown in the writings of Moses and the Prophets, the law. The Lord made him a guilt offering, and by the results of his suffering, God is satisfied.
• You do not know how much Jesus loves you unless you know how much he suffered. What did he suffer on the cross?
  • Illustration: Keller offers an illustration from the preaching of David Martyn Lloyd-Jones' that imagines a man paying his friend's bill. The friend has no idea how to respond until he knows just how great the debt was. As Lloyd-Jones says, "Until I know how much he paid, I don't know whether to shake his hand or fall down on the ground and kiss his feet."