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Transcript 243E
Will There Be Degrees of Punishment in Hell?
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes. I was wondering if you could help me with scripture on the different degrees of punishment in hell.
HC: The question, is raised concerning the degrees of punishment in hell. In Luke's Gospel, in Chapter 12, God gives us an insight into this. Let's look at that, and then we'll reflect on it a moment and see why this is so.
In verse 47 God declares, "And that servant who knew his master's will, but did not make ready or act according to his will, shall receive a severe beating. But he who did not know, and did what deserved a beating, shall receive a light beating. Everyone to whom much is given, of him will much be required. And of him to whom men commit much, they will demand the more."
Now we can see why there would be degrees of punishment. The Bible declares, "The wages of sin is death." Now every sin that I commit is going to have to be answered to on Judgment Day, and it will have its share in the hell punishment meted out. If therefore I have committed two sins, my judgment will be greater than if I have only committed one sin.
Actually, we are human beings, and so we sin all the time. So the judgment is very severe, ordinarily. The judgment magnifies particularly when we think of those who have known the way of salvation, that is, they have read the Bible, and they know about Judgment Day and about the wrath of God. And they know that in Christ there is a way of escape. And yet they willfully continue to go their own way. They don't want the salvation God has provided. And so they are sinning in the face of much more knowledge than, let's say, someone who has never read the Bible. And so for that reason we can see that their punishment would be much more severe.
CALLER: Is there no other scripture that speaks of that? Only in Luke?
HC: Yes. Luke 12 is really the best passage, although I'm sure that there are other passages, although I have to admit, nothing comes to my mind right at the moment, that teaches the same thing. We find it implied, for example, in Luke 10, where Jesus is faulting Chorazin and Bethsaida, cities that were in existence at the time that Jesus was bringing the Gospel. And they, in the hardness of their hearts, in the presence of the Messiah Himself, as He was personally there, rejected Him.
And we read in Luke 10:13: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable in the judgment for Tyre and Sidon than for you. And you, Capernaum, will you be exalted in Heaven? You shall be brought down to Hades."
This language again, you see, is emphasizing the degrees of punishment.
CALLER: Hell is being away from God. I don't see how there could be different degrees. Do you know anything about that? What the degrees would be?
HC: Now are you raising the question, or are you suggesting that hell is to be cut off eternally from God, and how could there be degrees of this? We don't have that much information about God, about hell. God uses a lot of language to describe the awfulness of hell. But because it is in eternity, and because it is in a situation that no human being has ever experienced, that is, it is in an environment where we are cut off eternally from God, language can't really be found that we could understand, that accurately describes the horror of hell, because, you see, there's no man today who has experienced hell, no matter how bad their situation may be. They may say, "I'm experiencing hell," but they don't know what they're talking about. No one really could ever be entirely without the sustaining presence of God on this side of the grave. God is always caring for His universe. And even the man in a dungeon someplace, with no space to turn around in, and never seeing the light of day, is still in the presence of a God who supports this creation by His power, and keeps this man so that he is able to endure the troubles he is enduring, and so on.
But hell is to be without His presence. And there we not only are without His presence, but we are under His torment, whatever that may be. Now God speaks of it as a place where the worm dieth not. That is, the maggots are forever crawling in and out of the dead corpse (the spiritually dead, of course), a figure of speech to indicate the eternal deadness of the unsaved. He speaks of it as the lake of fire. And we all sense the horror of fire. To be thrown into a fire, or to be burned, it's a horrible thought at best. He speaks of it as a place of outer darkness, as a place of eternal torment. All of this language is to convey to us in a very small way how terrible it is.
And so you can depend upon it. It's not going to be better than the language of the Bible. It'll be everything that the Bible declares. You read Deuteronomy 28, which is a description of curses that would come upon Israel, if they disobeyed God. Now that description is a description of an event that actually did occur on this earth, in which they ate their own children, and it goes on and on, in the most ugly kind of language But really it is language to indicate the wrath of God against sin. And it's a word picture of the awfulness of hell.
And so just how this punishment will be meted out, I don't know. I don't know. But I know I don't want to be there.