Should Christians Discuss Sin & Hell?

Now, Contending for the Faith. In this regular feature, Dave and Tom respond to questions from listeners and readers of The Berean Call. Here’s this week’s question: “Dear Mr. Hunt and Mr. McMahon, When presenting the gospel to the lost, how important is it to talk about sin, repentance, the cross, and hell?”

Tom: Dave, the sad thing (this is a good question) the sad thing is that as many times as I’ve heard the gospel presented, or at least an altar call made, rarely, do I find any of these things. You know, and I often wonder why is the person going forward?

Dave: Well, Tom, when we’re asked how important is it?, we have to ask a question right back. How important from whose perspective—from whose standards? And who sets the standards? I would say the Bible would indicate it’s very important, because this is the theme of the Bible. Genesis 1-3 we find out that man disobeyed God. He rebelled and he was thrown out of the Garden. All the rest of the Bible…

Tom: And more than that.

Dave: …death entered this world.

Tom: Mmhmm. Physical death….

Dave: Right.

Tom: …spiritual death.

Dave: Spiritual death, yes.

Tom: Mm-hmm.

Dave: Separated from God, subject to eternal punishment, and all the rest of the Bible from then on is how is God going to solve this problem? He doesn’t just pat us on the head and say, “Okay, that’s…you know.”

Tom: Yeah, “Try it again.”

Dave: Yeah, “Try again. Do better next time.” It’s a very serious problem. We have broken His law. God has said, “The soul that sinneth must die.” That is eternal death, eternal separation from God and torment forever and forever.

Well, then, the Bible is full of these themes. Man has to repent. He’s got to confess that he’s done wrong. You can’t get saved unless you’re being saved from something. What are we being saved from? We’re being saved from eternal separation from God and being under His judgment forever.

How does that come about? Well, God can’t just forgive us. That wouldn’t be just. He had to become a man himself.

Tom: Dave, just before you—sorry to interrupt, but people sometimes don’t understand, or they forget, if they ever knew, God is perfect. His righteousness, His holiness…

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: …that’s the standard that we’ve gotten so far away from.

Dave: Right.

Tom: God does not allow anything—He created Adam and Eve, they were perfect in every way. Sin never entered in. Once sin entered in, that broke fellowship for them, with God forever, because in God’s presence, sin can never enter.

Dave: Mm-hmm.

Tom: It’s a place of perfect righteousness and holiness. That’s the standard. Sorry, go.

Dave: Now, how serious is it that that broke fellowship with God? Well, we were made in the image of God. We were made for God. The image of God—He expressed himself through man. It must have been wonderful—God’s love and beauty and compassion and patience and goodness being expressed through Adam and Eve. They must have had a fantastic relationship. And God was really man’s life. He was the source of man’s life and of his continuing life and wellbeing. Now when you are cut off from the source of your life, well, you died spiritually. Adam began to die physically, and death finally took over.

What does this mean? Tom, sometimes I express it like this. I don’t remember whether I ever have on this program. I think heaven will feel so good for the same reason hell will feel so bad. Or hell will feel so bad for the same reason heaven feels so good. Why is that?

You’ve been on a few little treks with me in my younger days in the Sierras.

Tom: Mm-hmm. Liked the forced march of Corregidor, or something?

Dave: Right (chuckling).

Tom: Well, folks, Dave is you know, 6’—what? 6’4”?

Dave: No, no, 6’2”.

Tom: 6’2”. Well, you walk like you’re 6’4”. And I’m just a little guy. Anyway, sorry, go ahead.

Dave: Well, I can tell you, carrying a heavy pack, it can be tough. And you get up at a high elevation, you know, a 14,000-foot pass, you’re thirsty. You’ve run out of water in your canteen. You couldn’t carry enough. You see some patches of snow there, even in August—it doesn’t quench your thirst. And, when you get down to that first bubbling brook, you know, crystal clear water coming down from a glacier, and, wow, it tastes so good! Why does it taste so good? Because water is essential to your life. Without water, you’re going to die. Now, you can live a long time without food, but you can’t live, what? More than four or five days without water—and you’re done.

Now, why does water taste so good? Because it’s essential for life. Why does it hurt so bad to be thirsty? Because it’s essential…water is essential for life.

Now, the rich man in hell—what was his problem? “He was in torments,” it says, and he’s begging Lazarus to put just a drop of water on his tongue. Well, he doesn’t have a tongue. His tongue is in the grave, okay? He is still bound by this physical delusion. He has tried to satisfy a spiritual thirst all of his life with riches, success, food, sex, pleasures, and he’s in hell and he doesn’t even have a tongue. But he still thinks it’s somehow…it’s some physical thing.

When Jesus said to the woman at the well, “You drink of this water, you will thirst again. You drink of the water I give you, you will never thirst again.” He wasn’t talking about some special water, holy water, blessed by a Catholic priest. It wasn’t H2O at all. It was that water of life that is absolutely vital to man’s existence.

So, what is hell? It’s a place of torment, but it’s a place of a burning thirst, perpetually dying because you’re out of touch with God.

Well, Tom, talk about self a little bit. All you’ve got is yourself. You’re turned in on yourself. And you are perpetually thirsty and dying in torment. The psalmist said, “As the hart pants after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O, God.” We need to recognize that. That God has made us for Himself, that we really want to know HIM and be with HIM and the only way is through Christ paying the penalty for our sins upon the cross.

Otherwise, well, I mean, Tom, this is the heart of the gospel. Without that, without the repentance, without the cross, without what Christ did, who He is, and so forth, there’s no hope. So if you leave that out, you may have people, like I’m afraid Rick does in his book, they can think that their life is getting straightened out and they’re finding their purpose and so forth, but they missed the whole thing and they will miss it for eternity.