Denial and Affirmation Eight

We do not believe in the annihilation of those who die apart from Christ, but in their eternal conscious punishment. Among the kinds of suffering we ought to seek to alleviate, this is the most grievous, and it is our urgent duty and God-given privilege to seek to alleviate it by proclaiming the gospel and calling all people to believe the gospel by repenting and receiving the Lord Jesus Christ. 

Commentary 

Although this point addresses doctrine which we affirm in our Statement of Faith, it is important to address because with the Statement of Faith revision, concerns have been raised that “eternal conscious punishment” will be the next doctrine to be changed. Indeed, it is also a doctrine that is being questioned, undermined, and/or denied in broader evangelicalism. 

Throughout history, the church has held that Scripture affirms that the destinies of believers and unbelievers, though very different, stand in parallel, and both will continue to experience the consequences of their choice through eternity. 

Jesus himself most clearly established this connection when he spoke of the Son of Man separating human beings on the day of judgment as sheep and goats, saying to the goats on his left hand, "Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. . . . Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life” (Matt. 25:41,46). 

The “eternal fire” prepared for the devil and his angels will be the place of “eternal punishment”—a punishment that mirrors the blessing of “eternal life” of the righteous. Because this verse uses precisely the same word to describe both the blessedness of the righteous and the punishment of the wicked, it is best to affirm that both enter into an unending conscious state. 

The apostolic witness of the New Testament echoes Jesus' weighty words on this topic. Paul speaks of a time of "wrath and anger" awaiting those who reject the truth (Rom. 2:8). Those who do not obey the gospel "will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord" (2 Thess. 1:9). Jude offers the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah "as an example of those who suffer the punishment of eternal fire" (Jude 1:7). Finally, the Book of Revelation speaks in these harrowing tones: 

If anyone worships the beast and its image and receives its mark on their forehead or on their hand, they, too, will drink of the wine of God’s fury, which has been poured full strength into the cup of his wrath. They will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment will rise for ever and ever (Rev. 14:9-11). 

They will join the beast and the false prophet who “will be tormented day and night for ever and ever” (Rev. 20:10). 

Both Testaments affirm God’s holiness (Ex. 15:11; Isa. 6:3; 57:15; 1 Cor. 1:30; Eph. 4:24; 1 Pet. 1:16) and God’s love (Neh. 9:17; Zeph. 3:17-18; Jn. 3:16, 35; 17:24; 1 Jn. 4:8,16). These two divine attributes, love and holiness, are not contradictory but complementary and culminate in the cross of Christ (Ex. 34:6-7; Rom. 3:21-26; 5:5-11). Because God is one and infinitively perfect (Dt. 32:4; Job 1:7-10; Ps. 18:30; 50:2; 90:2; 145;3; Matt. 5:48), his love is always perfectly holy, and his holiness is always perfectly loving. It is perhaps this notion of God’s awesome holiness, and his wrath that flows from it, that we most need to grasp in our world today. Without it the gospel makes no sense—we have no conviction of our sin and no need of a Savior. And without it we have no understanding of the new life to which we are called and the final goal of our salvation—that we might share in the character of God himself (Rom. 8:29; 2 Cor. 3:18; 2 Pet. 1:4; 1 Jn. 3:2). For the Lord says, “Be holy because I, the Lord your God, am holy” (Lev. 19:2; 1 Pet. 1:16). Our prayer ought always to be, “Our Father in heaven, may your name be holy" (cf. Matt. 6:9; Lk. 11:2). 

The gospel is not a self-help strategy for finding peace and happiness in this life. The Bible presents the gospel as a matter of eternal significance. In fact, it is a matter of heaven and hell, for our eternal destiny hinges on our response to Jesus Christ (cf. John 3:36; 5:24; 8:24), with the unbeliever experiencing condemnation and eternal conscious punishment (Matt. 25:46; Lk. 16:26; 2 Thess. 1:9; Rev. 14:11; 21:6,8; 22:14,15), and the believer experiencing eternal blessedness and joy with the Lord (Matt. 25:34, 46; Jn. 14:2; Rev. 21:1-3). 

The Bible offers images to seek to convey something of the nature of hell’s terror. First, hell is pictured as a place of burning fire, emphasizing its physical torment (Mark 9:43,48; Jude 7; cf. Rev. 21:8—“the fiery lake of burning sulfur”). In hell, the wrath of God is poured out as a punishment for sin. Second, hell is described as a place of darkness— “outer darkness” (Matt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30) or “blackest darkness” (2 Pet. 2:17; Jude 13), emphasizing a banishment from God’s presence (2 Thess. 1:9). Finally, hell is characterized by death and destruction. John, in the Revelation, refers to the lake of fire as “the second death” (Rev. 20:14; 21:8; cf. 2:11; 20:6). Destruction is where the wide road leads (Matt. 7:13); it is what happens to the house built on sand (Luke 6:49); it is what is prepared for the objects of God’s wrath (Rom. 9:22); and it is the destiny of the enemies of the cross of Christ (Phil. 3:19). 

The language of destruction does not entail annihilation so much as ruin and corruption. In contrast to those who inherit the blessing of “eternal life” and so share in the life of God, the condemned are cut off from the goodness and common grace of God and are given over to their sin. In their eternal unrepentant state, their hardened hearts become harder still.⁷ The ungodly in hell become so corrupted by sin that they almost cease to function as human beings created in the image of God. They become nothing more than embodied versions of the devil and his angels, no longer objects of compassion or pity. 

Hell, then, is the culmination of the effects of sin and the confirmation of God’s opposition to it. It is both the inexorable result of human choice and the active and deliberate judgment of God. 

Eternal conscious punishment is a sobering subject, but faithfulness to our Lord Jesus obliges us to speak of it, for he certainly did. God is just, and the Judge of all the earth shall do what is right (Gen. 18:25)—of that we can be absolutely certain. One day his glory will be wonderfully displayed even in his judgment (Ex. 34:6-7; Rev. 19:1-4). Until then, compassion toward those traveling on that road to destruction, cf., the compassion of both Jesus (Lk. 19:41-44; 23:28-31) and Paul (Rom. 9:2-3; 10:1), must compel us to reach out in love with the good news of God’s means of rescue and new life in the gospel of Jesus Christ.  

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[7] This is illustrated in the hardening of unrepentant hearts in the midst of divine judgement found in the book of Revelation (cf. Rev. 6:15-17; 9:6, 20-21; 16:8-11, 21).