People wind up in hell because while on Earth, they exchanged the love of Christ for something—money, sex, power, happiness—they thought would be more valuable, John Piper says.
“This is the infinite outrage in the universe, that human beings prefer something else to God,” Piper said.
Hell exists, Piper said, because once the exchange is made, nothing worse can be done.
“What we call evil, hurting each other, that is just little expressions of that,” Piper said. “All the rottenness that we do to each other is deriving its rottenness from the ultimate rot of exchanging God, saying to the infinite Creator and the most beautiful reality in the universe, ‘I don’t want you. I don’t prefer you. You are not attractive to me. You are not satisfying to me. I get no pleasure from you. This is my desire. This is my treasure.’
“That is evil. That is the meaning of evil. And all other evils get their evil from that, including the evils of money, sex, and power, which Paul is going to make crystal clear.”
To pretend hell is merely abstract fulfills Romans 1:22-23. If we yearn for something more than God, everything else will be destructive in our hands as we squander wisdom.
Even some professed Christians will fall prey to the lucrative deception of false power.
Verses from Matthew 7:15-20 to Romans 16:17 to 2 Peter 2:1-3 warn believers to seek the Truth about all else and to not be deceived by smooth-talking teachers who promise an easy life for followers.
Other Christian writers have tackled the reality of hell, as well.
“In fact, there are some very well-known ministers in this country that purposely avoid ever using the word ‘hell’ because it might offend someone. It turns out that ‘happy church’ can be a very lucrative business model, and many people seem to love the ‘me first’ prosperity gospel that has infected virtually all of the major denominations at this point,” The Economic Collapse Blog’s Snyder writes.
“So there are countless messages about ‘blessing,’ ‘breakthrough’ and how God can make your life better, and very, very little preaching about sin, judgment, the cross and the urgency that we should feel to reach lost souls with the gospel of Jesus Christ,” he says.
Piper’s solution is to discussing hell is to evaluate a person’s heart:
There are two kinds of heart condition in the world: the one that values God over all and the one that values something else over all. But the main issue you are going to be facing as we are meeting together here is whether your hearts are treasuring God supremely above everything else: everything evil and everything good, all the good things God has given you, all the evil things that the devil is tempting you with. And I am saying that, more than the good things and more than the evil things, is God your treasure? Is God your satisfaction? Is God your delight? Because if he is, money, sex, and power will turn into remarkable potentials in your life. And if he is not, money, sex, and power will become unbelievably destructive in your hands.
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