Sin - The Wrath of God

I have been slowly going to the issue of sin and we we wrap it up with a topic that is probably the least talked about in church, the wrath of God and hell.
Just to sum up what we have talked about so far. Sin is the breaking of God's law in any capacity, and it is faithlessness. Because of Adam and his sin everything is corrupted by sin. As a result, everyone after Adam was sinful even from conception. More than that, everyone is totally sinful, in that all that we do and think and desire are corrupted by sin and sinful without God's help. What's worse is that without God's grace we can't even turn to God nor do we want to in our flesh.

What is hell? It's probably a place with fire, as the Bible describes it but it's much more than that. Hell is the complete, total, just sentencing for our sins.

2 Thessalonians 1:6-9
God is just: He will pay back trouble to those who trouble you and give relief to you who are troubled, and to us as well. This will happen when the Lord Jesus is revealed from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels. He will punish those who do not know God and do not obey the gospel of our Lord Jesus. They will be punished with everlasting destruction and shut out from the presence of the Lord and from the majesty of his power

Here we see that God is just in sending people to hell which is a place of everlasting destruction and removal from the presence of God. To some, removal from the presence of God seems good, so we got to be careful in the way we understand it. For sinners, there is nothing more pleasing than to know that God is absent, the removal of God is their "heaven". Hell is not simply the absence of God, but it is the fullness of God in respect to His wrath and the absence of God in respect to His grace. What we do know is that hell is a place of eternal torture. Jesus said that it is better for us to lose part of our body than be in hell (Mt 5:29-30). It is probably the most painful and torturous thing you can imagine times a gazillion times. The worst part is we fully deserve every moment of it in eternity. The Bible says that we are all objects of wrath (Eph 2:3).

This is hard to swallow in light of everything that had been discussed about sin. In light of God's holiness and justice, everyone who sins is deserving of hell. All who breaks God's law sins and all who are faithless sins, therefore all non-Christians are deserving of hell, no matter how "good" they seem. Furthermore, EVERYONE deserves hell because of the Fall. What is worst is that because of Original Sin, babies or even those who are in the womb deserves hell. Because of total depravity, we deserves the totality of hell because we are totally sinful. Lastly, because of total inability, we can't save ourselves from hell, furthermore, we don't even want to save ourselves because in our flesh we love sin. How great is our need for Jesus, our savior, who imparts His own righteousness to us and enables us to be right with God.

The fact of the matter is that it is not out of God's character to have a hell or send us to hell, rather it is totally in His character. It does not take away from His love or His grace, instead it magnifies His righteousness and His holiness.

In conclusion, the reality of the wrath of God should lead us to repentance. Furthermore, it should give us a urgency for the advancement of the Gospel. The wrath of of God should lead us to a holy fear of God and finally, the reality of hell should lead us to a immense appreciation of Jesus and the cross. As Christians we must recognize in full and meditate upon the holiness of God, our own sinfulness, and consequently, our deserved wrath, which has been taken away through Jesus. Without it, we minimize the cross and we make little the work of Christ.