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Is hell real? On this episode of Pastors Talk, Jonathan Leeman, Mark Dever, and Dane Ortlund explain that hell is a place of eternal destruction. They emphasize the importance of preaching the doctrine of hell soundly to your congregation and explain how a pastor can do a better job at it. Finally, they remind us that we deserve hell but through God’s boundless grace, we have been saved.

• What is Hell?
  
• The Importance of Preaching about Hell
  
• How To Preach the Doctrine of Hell Well
  
• Do We Deserve Hell?
  
• Is Talking about Hell a Mission Drift?

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Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Jonathan Leeman:

Hi, this is Jonathan Leeman.

Mark Dever:

This is Mark Dever.

Jonathan Leeman:

Welcome to this episode of 9Marks Pastors Talk. 9Marks exists to help pastors build healthy churches, learn more at 9Marks.org. Today we have a special guest with us. Dane, I believe you’ve been on before. Dane Ortlund, you’ve been here, right?

Dane Ortlund:

Correct. One other time.

Jonathan Leeman:

Yep. Pastor of Naperville Presbyterian Church. I think the last time you were on, we were discussing perhaps Gentle and Lowly. Is that what we talked about?

Dane Ortlund:

Yep. That’s right.

Ortlund On Why He Writes About Hell

Jonathan Leeman:

This time, however, you’ve written a little booklet for us in our Church Question Series called, Is Hell Real? It’s a 5,000 to 6,000-word booklet and treatment of this topic of, is hell real?

Let me ask you first, Dane. When we asked you to write this, why did you say yes? Why did you think this was a good use of your time to address?

Dane Ortlund:

It is always great to talk with you, Mark, and Jonathan. Thank you for being my friends. Because I am underdeveloped in thinking about it, I lack a sufficiently acute, vivid, close, felt apprehension of the horror of hell.

And if I lack it, I’m pretty sure most of my people do. Part of it was I want to grow in how much I feel the weight of the awfulness and eternality of hell because that is actually a healthy and salutary thing for so many other doctrines, happier doctrines to fit into place.

So I just wanted to grow in it and I wanted to work with you guys again, which is always so much fun. This is not a fun topic, but I was glad to step into this and think myself, write myself clear from the Bible, and try to help others get clearer and have their own vividness of awareness of hell grow.

Mark Dever:

And sometimes people think this doctrine is a bit of an annex. You know, you have real Christianity, main Christianity, central Christianity, and it seems to me that if the resurrection is central to our faith, that necessarily suggests that a life that persists beyond this one, as God raises people from the dead unless everyone is raised only to life, which doesn’t seem to be the witness of Scripture, or unless some are annihilated, cease to exist, which also doesn’t seem to be the witness of Scripture, then it seems that this doctrine of hell sits right next to the very reason we assemble every first day of the week, the resurrection of Jesus Christ himself.

Is This Generation Lacking Awareness of Hell?

Dane Ortlund:

Yeah, it’s not peripheral, Mark. I have probably had, not probably have, shied away from it more than is healthy. So I want to grow. Yeah, it is right there.

It’s one vital element in a constellation of matters of first importance with regard to what we believe about life and eternity. And in our generation, would you guys not agree, in our generation, there is a less acute awareness of hell than in past generations?

Jonathan Leeman:

Do you agree with that?

Mark Dever:

I think so.

Dane Ortlund:

My worship pastor here pointed out to me today that the last stanza, of the great Isaac Watts, Charles Wesley, and so on hymns tended to lift our eyes to eternal realities, heaven and hell, in a way that hymns written today don’t do as much. So we need to grow in this generationally.

What is Hell?

Jonathan Leeman:

Dane, what is hell?

Dane Ortlund:

Hell is the absence of the Lord Jesus Christ, but the presence of God in just and righteous wrath. It is what those who persist in impenitence and do not collapse in penitent faith into the arms of Jesus will experience forever. Mark, you mentioned the resurrection.

This is one point that there is confusion on. I am finding is that the condemned also are raised. This is clear in Paul’s teaching in the book of Acts, latter chapters of the book of Acts. And it’s right there in the Apostles Creed, the resurrection of the just and the unjust but hell will be the place.

We don’t want to go beyond what scripture gives us. So we don’t want to become overly speculative, but hell is apparently the place where the impenitent, those who never bow the knee to Jesus Christ will experience the language that scripture uses eternal destruction, unending condemnation, shame, anguish, horror, discomfort forever.

And I would just underscore, Jonathan, the awfulness of hell. For example, Lord Jesus did not shy away from teaching on hell. He spoke in Mark 9 of hell being a place where the language he uses is, their worm does not die.

So it’s almost too gruesome to ponder, but here you have a corpse that is being eaten away by some large parasitic worm, but actually the worm never totally consumes the body. It is eternally unending destruction.

Mark Dever:

It seems almost Dante-esque.

Dane Ortlund:

Yeah, that’s where Dante got it. And their fire is not quenched. So people say, you know, is hell literal fire? I don’t know.

I suspect not. But if it isn’t literal fire, that’s only because the reality is far worse, not easier than the symbol of fire. Christ is trying to help us feel the horror of it.

The Importance of Preaching About Hell

Mark Dever:

Dane, to any pastor who may want to say, listen, I’m here for the gospel, the good news. I want to talk about Jesus and what He says. I’m just thinking in looking at the teaching of Jesus here, I’m just almost at random opening up to the end of Luke chapter 20.

And Jesus says in the hearing of all the people, he said to his disciples, beware of the scribes who like to walk around in long robes and love greeting in the marketplaces and best seats in the synagogues and place of honor at feasts, who devour widows’ houses and for pretense make long prayers they will receive the greater condemnation. So that condemnation, I guess the preacher who’s trying to avoid hell has to wonder, that greater condemnation, is he talking about in this life?

Or is there going to be some comeuppance that these people who devour widows’ houses receive in this life? Or is Jesus alluding to something beyond this life? And in my mind, particularly because this comes right after Jesus’ dispute with the Sadducees who were denying the resurrection, this is clearly as Jesus does in so many places, pointing to a punishment that exceeds the bounds of this life.

Dane Ortlund:

It has to. Yeah, it has to, Mark, I agree. What preachers and teachers and Christians are losing, to the degree that we decrease our awareness of just what you’re talking about, the potentiality and deservedness of eternal condemnation in the next life, to the degree that we diminish that, to that degree we are at the same time, would you brothers not agree, diminishing the goodness of the good news. The two rise and fall together.

Mark Dever:

But Dane, if you were to listen to 20 of my sermons at random, just 20 at random, I’m pretty sure you would hear me share the good news. I think you would hear me speak sternly about condemnation and being lost, but I don’t think you would hear me give much description of all of what that eternal condemnation is like in contrast to what I would probably do when I describe eternal blessedness in the presence of God.

Jonathan Leeman:

Are you commending your example there, Mark? Or are you saying, maybe this is a shortcoming? What’s your frame?

Mark Dever:

I’m saying maybe it’s a shortcoming, and I’m just observing what I’m pretty sure is a fact and feeling kind of different than a lot of my predecessors in the pulpit. And I’m wondering if Dane has any thoughts about this.

Dane Ortlund:

Wow. Well, you’re way out ahead of me, brother, in understanding effective preaching. But wouldn’t we all agree, let’s let the text and the feel and tone of the text at hand inform explicitly, comprehensively, the content and the feel and tone of our preaching on that text?

So if we’re preaching a passage like Luke 20, like you just read there, Mark, or Mark 9, or so many other places in the gospels and elsewhere, must we not just agree together to unleash, by the grace of God, with His help, whatever way we can unleash the full force of what is to be felt and experienced in that passage?

Should Feeling Language Be Used When Talking About Hell?

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, that’s something that struck me when we first began this conversation. You kept using feeling language. You said, I want to feel this, which for us reformed guys is sometimes a kind of foreign language for us, right?

That kind of feeling language. Mark, any comments? Do you think Dane is right? Do Christians and pastors need to feel in some sense the force of this biblical language?

Mark Dever:

Yeah, I think Dane is sounding like Jesus. I mean, when Jesus in Mark 13 and Matthew 24 and Luke 21 in these little apocalypses, when he’s describing what’s going to happen to Jerusalem, he uses a lot of the feeling language that Dane is using right now.

And that seems to be not only one, true in itself but two, pointing to a truth that’s going to be incarnated when he returns and that will be full and it’s not gonna be a positive experience. So if Jesus is as explicit as he is about things that will happen that are negative when he returns, and that’s only the beginning of the condemnation that he mentioned earlier, I think it probably does push me to preach in a way more like some of my predecessors and very much unlike what I’ve been doing for 30 years.

Jonathan Leeman:

Well, on that, here’s something Dane wrote in the booklet. Dane, here’s me quoting you to you. When I say the doctrine of hell, I mean the teaching that those who do not repent of their sin and trust in Christ spend an eternity in conscious torment under the displeasure of God.

Here at the outset, this is interesting, here at the outset to get clear in our minds that hell is not a problem. What do you mean? Yes, it’s a problem. I don’t like this doctrine. It’s a problem.

You say it is not a problem. The absence of hell would be a problem. Hell is the affirmation that God is a God of justice, of fairness, of dealing with humans in a way that is right.

So what do we lose when we lose the doctrine of hell as described?

Dane Ortlund:

Well, here we are going through life as believers, receiving great or small injustices, and mistreatments from the world one after another. If there is no hell, then any sense of fairness, equity, satisfaction, and righting of wrongs is up to me in this life. Hell frees me to allow God to be the bringer of justice and vengeance in the next one so that I can set my face like Flint, forgive my enemies, and put one foot in front of the other, however, the world is treating me.

Mark Dever:

You know, I think in this description of the second coming in Luke 21:26, Jesus describes people fainting with fear and foreboding about what is coming in the world. That’s very graphic language and again, that’s just the beginning of condemnation.

Jonathan Leeman:

Yeah.

Dane Ortlund:

Yeah. In Revelation 6, similarly, Mark, the rulers, the kings, and congressmen of the world are asking the cliffs and rocks to fall on them and squish them rather than that they face the wrath of the Lamb.

Jonathan Leeman:

On this question of whether or not pastors and Christians are downplaying it, you alluded to that a moment ago, Dane. Mark, I was asking you if you think that’s the case. Just one anecdote, if I may.

You had the elders of CHBC read a book on the mission of God, a seven, 800-word [page] book on the mission of God several years ago. If you look in the index, this is an entire book trying to look at the entire canon and what God’s mission is.

Flip to the index of that book. Look for the word hell. No references to hell. An eight, 900-word [page] book on the mission of God. Okay, flip to that author’s author’s book on the mission of the church.

One reference to hell, merely mentioned in passing. How is it that we’re able to write books on the mission of God or the mission of the church and not even mention hell? Mark, do you see this downplaying? Are we less aware of this doctrine than we used to be?

Mark Dever:

I think it’s typical of our age, at least here in America, for us to be more concerned about the implications of following Christ in this life than in the next life. So we’re interested in the civilizational results of Christendom or Christianity being widespread or losing those. And the thought of what will come in life that’s to dwarf this one in terms of scale seems to weigh little in our minds.

Jonathan Leeman:

Do you agree with that, Dane?

Dane Ortlund:

Absolutely.

Jonathan Leeman:

You say in the book, that hell is needed, awful, close, and deserved by every one of us. But there is a way to avoid going there. And that’s the wonderful thing. You then emphasize the gospel and how the gospel is gospel is a rescue from hell in this little booklet.

Dane Ortlund:

Hell is avoidable. The Lord Jesus Christ experienced hell on the cross. He was experiencing condemnation in our place if we’ll simply have humility, not humility as a virtue, but open ourselves up to allow his life and death to stand in for hours. So the avoidability of hell is the wondrous happy truth about the doctrine of hell.

How To Preach the Doctrine of Hell Well

Jonathan Leeman:

Mark, how do we do a better job of, as pastors, reflecting on it? It’s, again, what’s the language? Awful, close, needed, deserved. How do we as preachers, pastors do a better job, A, reflecting on it in our own lives, and B, preaching and teaching about it in the context of our churches?

Mark Dever:

That’s a good question. It makes me want to go back and look at specific sermons I’ve done. I remember for Ligonier once, years ago, I did a message on the wrath of God in which I looked at four or five aspects of the wrath of God makes me want to go back and listen to that and find that.

And I think I was dealing with that from Revelation. Also in a series I preached through Revelation, yeah, I’m wondering how I described the end there, that final judgment.

Yeah, I can certainly think of Puritan sermons that I’ve read in the past that are extremely explicit in descriptions. And there’s something in my modern persona that just wences at that. Even if I think it’s true, I shy away from that.

And I think that shows there’s some lack of understanding. There’s some lack of belief in me. If that really is true, and I know that’s true, and yet I find myself reluctant to talk about it, it’s clearly… I’m just flipping through Jesus’ words here, like in Luke 19, the chapter before, the couple I was looking at.

His words are graphic when He talks about someone finally falling under sin. It will crush him. It will be taken to pieces. I mean, he uses very strong language that doesn’t sound like a lot of our sermons, but when I’m sharing the gospel, I warn someone that they need to be forgiven of their sins by God because he’s good and just.

And yet, somehow there’s something in me that seems to suggest if I play out what it means that they could be forsaken by God and fall under his justice, if I start describing it, then I’m somehow cheapening the reality of the horror of falling under God’s justice. And Jesus didn’t teach like that. Jesus used very earthy, simple pictures of pain and loss and failure and destruction to help people grasp, yeah, this is something I want to avoid.

Jonathan Leeman:

We should preach and teach about hell because the Bible does, because it’s real because it’s true. We should also preach and teach, I would think, for various other reasons, like helping our church to evangelize. Fair to say that if you’re not preaching and teaching on hell, eventually that’s going to impact your church’s evangelism or lack thereof.

Dane Ortlund:

I would agree with that, brothers. What I have found is I will mention hell in passing here and there in the regular course of preaching. What I have avoided up until this month, we’re doing a series on hell right now. What I have avoided up to…

Jonathan Leeman:

How many sermons?

Dane Ortlund:

Two on hell, three on heaven. So we wrapped up the Gospel of Mark before Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday. I had five weeks. I said, we normally do serial exposition. We’re going from Mark to Isaiah but we’ve got five weeks as it lets do something topical, biblical, but topical on hell and heaven because we’re underdeveloped in it.

And I just, wouldn’t you say guys, one reason that we must face the doctrine of hell is that we are so immersively bombarded by a world and culture around us that is drawing our minds down to the seven, eight, nine decades we’re spending on this earth and just relentlessly flood like immersion in the marketing advertising world and even a lot of Christian books telling us how to help good Christian books that are focused on this life in a way that does seem out of accord with, as you keep saying, Mark, the proportion of what we find in even the teaching of the Lord Jesus as to cadence.

Mark Dever:

So, Dane, how many sermons are you doing on hell?

Dane Ortlund:

Well, we did two on hell.

Mark Dever:

And can you give us the outline of the two?

Dane Ortlund:

Well, I used that little booklet as a starting point, and basically, we had 12 points. I’ve got sermon number one pulled up here, my six points where hell is neglected, hell is needed, hell is awful, hell is close, your life is a vapor, hell is crowded, broad is the path that leads to destruction, many that find it, and hell is avoidable.

And then we had another six after that. And we were just trying to say guys, we cannot avoid this, we’ve got to think about it. I looked out at the people and I went back and forth on the pastoral wisdom of this.

But I did look out at the people and say, I need to tell you as your pastor. Some of you who are members of this church are currently headed for hell. And we’re not a huge church, but of several hundred, doubtless, that is true.

And I try to say, guys, picture of the eight, almost 8 billion people alive in the world today, the person who is in the most abject suffering today, the most suffering today on this earth, in this life, would give anything, let me put it this way, if the person having the easiest time in hell, would give anything to trade places with the person having the worst suffering on this earth.

Do We Deserve Hell?

Mark Dever:

So Dane, if all that was in your first sermon, what did you do in your second?

Dane Ortlund:

It was hell is permanent. We tried to talk about annihilationism. Hell is deserved because people say, that even if I live an awful life for 70, 80, or 90 years, I do not deserve to be in hell forever.

No, you do. Hell is a shame, you know, Daniel 12 speaks of those being resurrected, the condemned being resurrected to shame, and the believers being resurrected to glory. So not only condemnation, and forgiveness but also shame, and glory is one way into the doctrine of what we’ll be experiencing forever.

So yeah, we just tried to face it. I said to them, that I was fishing in the Everglades, which was January 2nd, bass fishing. And the fishing guide said, hey, towards the end of the day, I know you’re a pastor.

Can I give you my views on religion? I said, go ahead. He shared where he was at, basically moralistic, therapeutic, deism, good people. Stay out of prison, you go to heaven.

And I said, my response to him was, Brother if I am perfect my entire life up until today, January 2nd, 2023, and then I am perfect the rest of my life, taking the entire life, my whole life into account based on the day I am living today, and I’m not gonna commit any crimes today. I’m gonna tip you well.

Based on the life I am living today, I deserve an eternity in hell given the fountain of vile, ugly, treasonous rebellion flowing out of me towards my Creator who is infinitely beautiful and lovely and undeserving of that. And he thought that was perverse.

Jonathan Leeman:

Sure.

Dane Ortlund:

As many Christians today too, absurd and perverse.

Jonathan Leeman:

So we have a small view of God and a big view of ourselves, don’t we?

Dane Ortlund:

That’s right.

Jonathan Leeman:

In addition to evangelism, I just want to kind of underline something you said a moment ago, Mark, just to make sure it’s highlighted. You know, in all of our talk these days of culture war, even this issue with the 9Marks Journal we’re doing on Christian Nationalism and Magisterial Protestantism, let me make no comment on those things, nor let me make any comment on larger questions of justice that a lot of Christians are concerned about.

Is it not fair to say that a bigger view of God, a bigger view of his justice and the deservedness of his justice as exemplified in hell, will not necessarily lessen our sense of this world’s injustices, but it will properly calibrate, help us to see them a little bit more rightly in size and dimension in comparison to the injustice of our offense against the Almighty in a way that right now offenses against the Almighty and punishment feel as your fishing guide said, I feel a little perverse.

Mark Dever:

Well, they’re discounted in our language and our thoughts. We don’t think much of it.

Is Talking about Hell a Mission Drift?

Jonathan Leeman:

The bottom line, is teachers, people, justice, and buy. Among other things, teaching them the doctrine of hell, right? Mark, is this topic mission drift for us to be talking about? I mean, we’re about building healthy churches. Are we kind of going off mission here as we talk about hell?

Mark Dever:

Not at all. I think if we see the gospel as the center of a true church, that is, a true church is to be distinguished from a false one not by its polity nor by its view of the relationship of baptism to the time of conversion it’s to be determined by whether or not the good news of Jesus Christ is preached.

Then if there is no penalty, if there is nothing wrong with the way we live apart from God and against God, then there’s no deliverance that Christ has accomplished. It’s like James Denny’s illustration of the man sitting on the end of Brighton Pier and the guy running along and just leaps off the pier saying to the man sitting on the pier, I love you, and to show how much I love you, I’m going to die for you.

And then he goes to the ocean and he drowns. But he accomplishes nothing by drowning because the man is not in any trouble. Well, that’s what happens to Christianity in the gospel.

Now, to use Denny’s continued example, illustration, if the man has fallen off the pier, can’t swim, and is drowning, and then the guy jumps off the pier and says, I am jumping off the pier into the water to show how much I love you, and he saves him, he rescues him, now that makes sense. And I think what we’re doing here is we’re saying, yeah, people really are drowning. There is a real danger that we are all in. And it’s a danger that by nature all of us like to ignore.

Jonathan Leeman:

Dane, anything to add to why this would not be mission drift for us as talking to pastors and churches?

Dane Ortlund:

It is adhering to your and my vision and mission to push the accelerator down all the more in how much we are talking about hell. I mean, it’s hard to imagine us talking too much about it if we do it in the right manner.

I’m told by a first-hand disciple of Francis Schaeffer’s, that Schaeffer couldn’t talk about hell without getting choked up. I didn’t want to manufacture anything emotionally as I was preaching on hell. That’s manipulative.

And I didn’t shed any tears when I was preaching on hell, but I was trying to speak in a way that comports with the solemnity of the reality that people are there, there’s a cemetery within a few miles of probably everyone who’s listening to this. People are dropping into hell all around us. Many of our neighbors and family members are like a choke on a grape, 60 seconds away from dropping into an eternity in hell. So it is not mission drift, brothers, for us to be explicitly focusing on this regularly.

Jonathan Leeman:

The little booklet is called, Is Hell Real? I’d encourage you to buy multiple copies and hand them out to members elders and deacons in your church. You write at the conclusion, that the great surprise of this universe is not that people are going to hell.

The great surprise of the universe is that people go to heaven. We might need to have another conversation, brother, at some point in heaven and hear about those three sermons that you said you’ve preached or are preaching in heaven.

Thank you so much for your time. Thank you for your work on this. My prayer is that anybody listening to this would take a moment to reflect a little bit more on this topic and consider their own ministry, whether it’s a discipling ministry, it’s a ministry to your children in the home, it’s a ministry in a Sunday school class or in the pulpit.

Is this something that ever comes up from your lips? And if the answer is, I can’t think of a time, maybe adjustments are needed, both in your own hearts, devotions, and reflections, as well as in your ministry. Thank you, brothers.

Mark Dever:

Thank you.

Dane Ortlund:

Thank you.