It is the evening prior to the Jewish Passover, approximately 2000 years ago. Jesus has completed His public ministry and has been spending the last few days of His life with His apostles, instructing them of His approaching death and how they are to carry on His work after His death. He enjoys the Passover meal with them and instructs them of the new covenant, the means in which, by Him, men and women will enter into and exist in an eternal love relationship with God. In the course of the meal, He reveals that one of them will betray Him into the hands of the Jewish authorities, that one ultimately revealed as Judas (Luke 22:14-22) (Hebrews 9:15).
Jesus and His Apostles then move out to a place that Jesus frequented for times of prayer and rest, the Mount of Olives, and specifically the Garden of Gethsemane. This would be Jesus’ last visit to this Garden and this visit would not be tranquil, but traumatic. In Matthew 26:36-43 and Luke 22:39-44 we have an account of Jesus praying that night, and praying in such a way that He is experiencing such unimaginable anguish, such deep distress as He prays, that we are told in Luke 22:44 His sweat became like great drops of blood falling to the ground.
This is Jesus anticipating the horror and terror of what He will be enduring in the next few hours on behalf of sinful men and women to reconcile them to God, such that at one point He petitions the Father that if there were any other way to accomplish this, He would be open to it (Isaiah 53:4-6) (Luke 22:42). Jesus prays this not in anticipation of the physical and emotional suffering He was to experience over the next few hours, although that would be horrific in itself. The degradation, filth and torture of the Cross was a horrible, bloody and fatal reality, the most torturous and agonizing form of execution ever devised by the evil mind of man. He would be publicly scorned, rejected, abandoned, shamed, despised, hated, humiliated, ridiculed by the very people who should have loved Him.
However, hundreds, if not thousands of men had endured the shame and agony of crucifixion before Him, many having a far less distressful response. But our Lord Jesus was no coward. If this was all He had to endure He could have done so with the same quietness of spirit in which He endured the unjust trial, mocking’s and scourging that proceeded His time on the cross.
What was causing Jesus’ unimaginable anguish was His anticipation of being made both the bearer of our sins, taking within His soul the ugliness, filthiness, vileness and destructiveness of sin, our sin, sin which He hated, and then taking upon Himself the wrath and judgement of God due all He would save from it, wrath that would have its final and full expression in Hell (2 Corinthians 5:21) (1 Thessalonians 1:10) (Revelation 20:10-15).
This imagery of the cup of God’s wrath in which Jesus referenced in His prayer represents in both the Old and New Testament the outpouring of the fullness of God’s final and ultimate judgment on sinful men and nations (Psalm 75:8) (Jeremiah 25:15-16) (Revelation 14:9-10) (Revelation 16:19).
As I noted in my previous post, Jesus fully understood the incomprehensible torment and anguish of Hell as He, the Father and Holy Spirit created it for the just punishment of rebellious angels and men (Matthew 25:41) Hell is presented by Jesus in the four gospels and in His revelation to the Apostle John in the book of Revelation as follows:
- A place of eternal torment from which there is no end or escape (Revelation 14:9-11).
- A place of unimaginable suffering ultimately in both body and soul, where people will gnash their teeth in anger and despair for which there is no relief (Mark 9:43-48) (Matthew 10:27-28) (Matthew 13:42)
- A place of absolute darkness meaning it is absent of any of the light of the glory of God’s mercy, kindness and grace as we have while in this world, despite our sin and rebellion (Matthew 25:30).
- A place of graduated, just punishment for sin (Matthew 11:20-24) (Revelation 20:12-13) (Genesis 18:25).
- A place so vile, so detestable, so obscene, so offensive to all of our senses and sensibilities, that Jesus uses the Greek word Gehenna, which we translate into Hell. Gehenna or the Valley of Hinnom, is the valley outside the city of Jerusalem, which had a history of being used for human/child sacrifice and was at that time the city trash heap which contained discarded refuse, human waste, dead animal and human bodies dumped there to rot and burn continually (Matthew 10:28).
- A place wherein we should do all that we can while in this world to avoid being consigned there at our death (Matthew 18:7-9).
Using these Biblical references to and descriptions of Hell, and the writings of learned Christian writers such as Jonathan Edwards On Heaven and Hell, I believe we can reasonably make the following conclusions regarding what our existence in Hell will be like, and why we should, from the depths of our heart, love, honor, praise and glorify God from morning to night every day of our lives in this world and throughout eternity for rescuing us from it.
Hell is a place of unimaginable shame, torment and suffering that never ends – torment and suffering that will ever increase as men and women in Hell are given over to the full corrupting power of their sin and hatred of God and will thus continue to blaspheme God throughout eternity – even in the midst of their ever-increasing torment and pain (Revelation 16:7-11).
Hell is a place of unimaginable horror – total darkness – void of any of the goodness and grace and mercy of God we experience while in this world. It is a place of unending emotional, mental and ultimately physical agony and anguish where all that we are and see and experience will be ugly, disgusting and vile.
The five senses that God gave us to experience and enjoy with Him an infinite variety of pleasures and delights throughout eternity (Psalm 16:11) will now experience only continuous pain, agony and torment. There will be no drugs – no distracting entertainments – no consoling relationships – nothing to mediate the unmitigated expression of God’s wrath and vengeance justly measured to each person there.
Hell is a place where we will experience an infinite sense of loneliness, emptiness, purposelessness and despair. It will be a place of utter hopelessness, where the needs, desires, dreams, longings and passions that God put in our hearts to be satisfied in and through Him, will remain as part of us, but will never be satisfied or fulfilled. Our needs, desires and longings for true love and intimacy, for intense and lasting pleasures, for significance, purpose and meaning in our lives, for joy and comfort and delight, all will burn passionately within our soul, unfulfilled and unsatisfied throughout all eternity.
Hell is a place where everyone there – including God – will hate you and you will hate everyone/yourself. Interpersonal hostility and violence, self- hatred and self- loathing will likely be taken to a whole new level among the inhabitants of Hell as they will be loosed to act on their most base, vile and selfish instincts and desires. The Bible seems to indicate that those in Hell may be able to see into Heaven/paradise and be tormented by seeing the redeemed enjoying the infinite love of God and the glory of his grace while they experience only His hatred, displeasure and wrath (Luke 16:19-31).
There will be no rescue from or end to your suffering and misery in Hell– ever. In Hell all of your faculties, time and attention will be given over to nothing but enduring pain and suffering which will keep you forever incapacitated – unable to do anything but curse God and invite more of His wrath. The only future you will have is one of learning more and more of the depths of God’s wrath and His infinite hatred of sin (Revelation 16:7-10).
In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus is anticipating having to experience the full spectrum of these horrors in ways we cannot conceive of nor imagine. Yet, He does so willingly, even joyfully for the glory of His Father and for the eternal joy of the innumerable men, women and children He will save from this horrific destiny as a result of what He will experience on the cross on the next day – the day we refer to as Good Friday (John 10:17-18) Philippians 2:8-11) (Hebrews 12:1-2). Why such a day can be called good is what we will look at in my next post – on Good Friday.
Grace and Peace ×