We are going to close out our discussion of hell on a very positive note:
YOU DO NOT HAVE TO GO TO HELL!
The Lord Jesus Christ came to save us so that we are rescued from the wrath of God and the judgment that we rightly deserve for our sinfulness. So, we want to talk about that for just a moment. How can you avoid hell and eternal separation from God? How can you avoid the judgment that we rightly deserve?
I often talk about this in four parts so that we get this down well:
1. God is Holy. We have a holy, righteous God. The Lord Jesus has come to save us from the wrath of God. God is a holy God. God cannot tolerate the sinfulness of human beings. He cannot and will not populate the Eternal Kingdom with those who have rejected Him. So, we are in a plight that we do not know this holy God and we are sinful people. God is a holy God, but we are not. God is a holy and righteous God, and we are sinners that have rejected Him and want nothing to do with Him.
2. Sinful People. We are sinful people who cannot come eternally into the presence of that holy and righteous God. We are sinners. In Ephesians 2:1 it says, “And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.” That is the awful picture of our condition before Christ. We are trapped in our sins. We are followers of our own lusts. We are under the thumb of the devil himself and we have no way out. So, this is our dilemma: God is a holy and righteous God, but we are sinners that have rejected Him and want nothing to do with Him.
3. Christ and His great mercy. We have a Savior who died in our place for our sins. Ephesians 2:4, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” It would take the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, the holy second member of the Trinity, to rescue us from our own sinfulness. That would require: 1) That Christ, who had never sinned, came to this earth as the perfect, holy Savior. 2) That He always kept the law and the commandments of God. 3) He would go to the cross where He would become our substitute where He would take upon Himself our sin and the wrath and the judgment that was due to us. He would die as our substitute. Die in our place on the cross of Calvary. 4) He would then resurrect from the dead showing once and for all to all who are noticing: whether it’s the Father, the demons or humanity, that He has finished the work for us and done everything necessary for our salvation. Jesus Christ fulfilled every single requirement, and therefore He has taken our place and became our substitute . . .
