Luke 12:4-5

THE FEAR OF HELL

‘Be not afraid of them that kill the body.… Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell.’

Luke 12:4

We cannot safely put aside motives of fear. It was the motive of fear which enabled Wesley and Whitefield to convert their hundreds of thousands. We are altogether unsafe if we do not remember the punishments of hell behind us, if we fall back, as well as the glories of heaven before us if we go forward. It is with an infinite tenderness that our Saviour speaks to us in the words of the text.

I. The Bible view.—We believe that in the Word of God God has told us all that it concerns us to know about the mysteries of our being. We are, indeed, willing to weigh the language of the Word of God carefully, and to compare one passage with another. We are willing to allow for imperfections of language in the human channels of revelation; we do not refuse to recognise the human element in the revelation. But we do not believe that the Word of God could tell us anything about God which was not true. We are not willing to take modern notions for our rule, or say that if the Word of God comes up to these modern notions we will believe it, but if it does not come up to these modern notions we will reject it. No; we believe that in all these tremendous things—Heaven and Hell, Life and Death, God and the Soul, Time and Eternity, Redemption and Faith—we have got here the very mind of God sufficiently clearly and decisively for us to understand it and act by it. Therefore, while I take every means available for finding out the full meaning and history of the language of the Word of God, I take it in its plain and literal sense. I do not trouble my mind as to whether when our Saviour spoke of eternal punishment He used words which would allow of some far-off ending in some future providence of God; I have no means of determining whether when St. Peter spoke in his sermon at Jerusalem about the heavens receiving Jesus Christ until the times of the restitution of all things, he meant that there was some utterly remote possibility of hell itself being converted; whether when St. Paul said, ‘He must reign until He hath put all things under His feet,’ he meant that even the opposition of hell itself would some day cease and be subdued, I cannot tell—God has not revealed it. But I do know that we are over and over again warned against the torments of hell as if they never came to an end. I do know that we are everywhere urged to repent on the ground that our only chance is in this life. I do know that when the word eternal is used, whatever it may mean, it must mean something of the same sort as eternity. I do know that in His parable of the sheep and the goats our Saviour describes the King as saying to them on the left hand, Depart from me ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.

II. The fear of hell.—I do not see how God could govern the world if it were not for this great truth: ‘Fear Him, which after He hath killed hath power to cast into hell.’ Yea, I say unto you, fear Him. I remember when the famous sermons were preached on this subject they were very much misunderstood. Ignorant people thought that the preacher was doing away with hell altogether. I remember one Sunday—at that time I was riding along from Fulham to preach in some distant part of Middlesex—and I heard men encouraging each other to come into the public-house. They said, ‘Oh, there’s one of ’em been showing that there ain’t no hell.’ That is what the result would be if we took away from the words of this Book. God has chosen to tell us that hell is everlasting. If we say, No, hell is not everlasting, then every kind of sin will abound. Sinners will say, ‘Oh, we shall all come right in the end.’ God’s government of the world would cease. Nothing but the strong, stern, stubborn fact of hell as it is described to us will keep them back from trifling with their souls. Think of that expression—‘Their fire is not quenched.’ This expression must correspond to some dreadful reality, some external punishment. How fearful would it be to us to endure the bodily suffering of being burnt alive, even if it only lasted ten minutes! Each moment, as the scorching flame reached some new part, there would be a fresh accumulation of agony as the scalded blood hissed and the nerves cracked and smarted. Or if you had only to let your hand or your foot be burnt off with fire! Our hearts turn sick at the very thought. But what comparison is there between the fires of this world, which are but for a moment, and those which are described as everlasting? And the torments of hell our Saviour can paint in no other way than by saying, ‘Where their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.’

Oh, if God would draw aside for one moment the veil which hides the eternal world from our view; what amazement, what terror, what fear and trembling would fill our souls! Never again could we be the same as we were before. Never would the shrieks and yells of the damned be out of our ears. Never would the fierceness of those flames cease to flare before our eyes.

III. Each man’s resolve.—There was once a rich man who was afraid to die, and on the last day of his life he rose from his bed and rushed out into courtyard, and shouted aloud, ‘I will not die! I will not die!’ His friends caught him, carried him back. His strength was exhausted, and in a few hours more he breathed his last. There was nothing that could be done to prevent it. But there is a far more important resolve which you can make this morning. O, dear friends, make up your minds this very day, once more, that you will not go to hell! O, fall down before the Cross of Jesus, the Son of God, your Saviour, reigning in glory, but present here in this church, and let your cries be heard by Him from the depth of your heart, ‘Mercy, Jesu, mercy!’ again and again. Look back into your life! uncover your sins; know that the devouring flames of hell are behind you; and whilst it is called to-day ‘Flee from the wrath to come.’ For, as yet, the glories of God’s eternal heavens are before you. What an easy way to escape hell fire and to reach the blessed pastures and still waters by repenting of my sins! Or even if at any time repentance seems a hard up-hill road, and the battle against sin seems to rage all day long and weary, yet let me remember that hell is a much harder word, and that the struggle here, however long, is as nothing to the endless burnings of that dreadful lake of fire. O, let the fire of hell ever scare me from my sins!

Archdeacon W. M. Sinclair.

Illustration

‘Faint and weary Thou hast sought me,

On the cross of suffering brought me:

Shall such grace be vainly brought me?

Righteous Judge, for sin’s pollution

Grant Thy gift of absolution,

Ere that day of retribution.

Guilty now I pour my moaning,

All my shame with anguish owning:

Spare, O God, Thy suppliant groaning.

Thou the sinful woman savedst;

Thou the dying thief forgavedst;

And to me a hope vouchsafest.

Worthless are my prayers and sighing,

Yet, good Lord, in grace complying,

Rescue me from fires undying!’