God’s Word for You

Psalm 58:10-11 The evils of hell

by Pastor Timothy Smith on Monday, December 19, 2022

10 The righteous one will be glad when he is avenged,
  when he bathes his feet in the blood of the wicked.
11 Then people will say, “Surely there is fruit for the righteous.
  Surely there is a God who judges the earth.”

This concludes our imprecatory psalm. Imprecatory means that it is a prayer that God would pass judgment on the wicked. These are the ones who stand accused: “In your heart you commit injustice, and your hands hand out violence on the earth” (vs. 2) and who do not judge with justice (vs. 1). While Christians will not seek to carry out God’s judgment on unbelievers, they are right to pray that God’s will would be done concerning unbelievers. “It is our solace and boast,” Luther says in the Large Catechism, “that the will and purpose of the devil and of all our enemies shall and must fail and come to naught, no matter how proud, secure, and powerful they think they are. For if their will were not broken and frustrated, the kingdom of God could not abide on earth nor his name be hallowed” (Lord’s Prayer, Third Petition). So it is not unloving to pray for God to judge and frustrate the plans of the wicked, and to call them to his justice before his holy throne, but the constant prayer of faith: “Your will be done.”

In the judgment and punishment of hell, there will be two forms of eternal punishment. The first is the absence of every good, and the second is the presence of every evil.

• The chief evil of hell is separation from God and Christ. “They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power” (2 Thessalonians 1:9). But since in the Scriptures “the face of God” occurs in two ways, we must understand that this means that God’s grace and mercy are forever removed from the damned, but his wrath and indignation will be turned toward the damned forever, and they will cry out: “Hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb!” (Revelation 6:16).
• Another evil of hell is separation from the blessed (good) angels. They are the angels who stand before the throne of God (Daniel 7:10) and always see his Fatherly face (Matthew 18:10). Wherever the grace of God has no place, there is no place for the gracious presence of the angels” (Luther). The protection and comfort that the angels provide in the unseen realm will be withdrawn because of the foul sins of the wicked. “Just as smoke drives away bees and a stench drives away doves, so stinking sin drives away the angels” (Basil, on Psalm 33).
• A third evil is separation from all the blessed people in heaven. The godly “will take their places at the feast with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the kingdom of heaven” but the ungodly “will be thrown outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth” (Matthew 8:11-12). There is therefore no reunion between the damned and their believing spouses, children, family, or friends. Cyril of Alexandria is eloquent on this point: “The righteous will hear: ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance’” (Matthew 25:34, but the sinners will hear: ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels’” (Matthew 25:41). The righteous are in paradise, the sinners are in very lively and unquenchable fire. The righteous overflow with delights, the sinners are consumed with hardship. The righteous dance, the sinners are in chains. The righteous sing, the sinners weep. The righteous are thrice happy, the sinners are thrice wretched. The righteous are in song, the sinners are in a cave” (and much more).
• A fourth evil is separation from paradise. The rich man of Luke 16 hears that “a great chasm has been fixed (put in place forever), so that those who want to go from hell to heaven cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us” (Luke 16:26). Jesus describes this in dramatic words: “Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the skies? No, you will go down to the depths” (Matthew 11:23).
• A fifth evil is that none of the joys, delights, pleasures, or peace of heaven will be known to those in hell. The peace of rest will be taken from the wicked, and even light. Hell is “where darkness resides” (Job 38:19), and there will be blindness of the mind, ignorance of God, and true spiritual darkness as well, “for the darkness has not understood Christ” (John 1:5).
• A sixth evil is being deprived from proclaiming God’s praise in any way, including prayer. The spiritually dead cannot praise the Lord, for they are “those who go down to silence” (Psalm 115:17). “Those who go down into the pit cannot wait (or trust in) your faithfulness” (Psalm 38:18). The echoes of distant cries of agony, misery and loneliness will be the only sounds in hell (part from the constant crackling and roaring of the fires), echoing through the cold, dark and vast corridors of the dark spiraling pit, without even the companionship of a fellow sinner for company; only the shrieks of the demons and the final and everlasting silence of Satan, his teeth broken and his mouth forever closed.
• Still another, seventh evil of hell is the complete and utter lack of the sympathy of human compassion. “Neither the Creator nor any creature will provide the damned with sympathy” (Gerhard). God says: “You ignored all my advice. You did not accept my warning, therefore I will laugh at your calamity. I will jeer when terror strikes you” (Proverbs 1:25-26). When the rich man begged for something from the heavenly banquet, it could have been anything, but he asked only for water; not a pitcher or jug, nor even a cup, but only a finger dipped in water to cool his tongue, but this was refused as impossible (Luke 16:24). Is this because God is cruel? Not at all! That would only be another lie of the devil. It is because God is just. John says: “The wicked will be tormented with burning sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and of the Lamb” (Revelation 14:10); Christ and the angels will see the torments, but will feel no mercy or pity. This fact is surely the most terrible of all the evils of the damned (Job 16:10-11, 17:6, 30:10; Psalm 35:15).

To these we could and must add: (8) pains (like the agony of birth pains, Luke 16:24), (9) torments (feared by the demons, Matthew 8:29); (10) chains (Jude 1:6; 2 Peter 2:4),  (11) blows and whippings (“beatings for the backs of fools” Proverbs 19:29), (12) weeping and wailing (Revelation 1:7), (13) crying out and howling (Isaiah 65:14; James 5:1), (14) weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 8:12, 13:42), (15) and finally, the unutterable evils and pain of the damned (Mark 9:48), and even the salt of punishment, for while salt preserves and blesses, it will also be used on the damned for punishment (Mark 9:49).

Most of us need to stop and breathe after reading such a terrifying list. Yet David gives us the very breath of the Holy Spirit and a delicious gulp of the living water in the final verse, for he assures us: “Surely there is fruit for the righteous.” This fruit is the reward and blessing of Paradise, and must include the very fruit of the Tree of Life, promised to us by Christ: “To the one who is victorious, I will give the privilege to eat from the tree of life, which is in the paradise of God” (Revelation 2:7).

Praise God for his justice, and also for the unexpected, undeserved, and humbling joy of being saved from such terrible punishments. We put our trust completely in Jesus, and we know that in his loving and compassionate arms we are safe, both now and forevermore.

In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith

 

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