Part 1 - Hell is Not Separation from God

(I was pleasantly surprised to find that Professor Michael Horton wrote a brief article with the same name over at The Gospel Coalition in 2019. Check it out.)

Have you ever heard (or maybe even said) something like, “Hell is separation from God.” Or maybe the more kid friendly version that eventually leads you to the same place, “Sin separates you from God.” I hear and it and read it all the time. I’ve read the kid-friendly version in several lessons of Children’s Ministry curricula produced by big-name Christian publishers. I’ve read it on websites dedicated to answering questions about the Bible. A few weeks ago I heard it from a new friend over coffee. This idea is everywhere! I’m pretty sure that as a life-long church kid I heard this a bunch growing up. And even though I can’t point to any one specific instance of it being taught to me, I know that it was my default position on sin and Hell for a long time. But as I got older and read more and more of the Bible, I just couldn’t shake the sense that this very common theological refrain didn’t seem to have a lot of biblical support. 

I think when asked about this idea, most folks would probably say something about how sin simply cannot exist in the presence of God. He’s too holy, too righteous, too good. Many will say that this explains why God the Father turned away from Jesus on the cross. As Jesus took on the sins of the world, the Father abandoned the Son because sin cannot be in God’s presence. It follows for most people that this is what Hell must be. Hell must be some place or form of existence in which the unrepentant dwell away from God and his goodness, love, joy, and peace. This is what the unrepentant have always wanted, right? Life without God. So, Hell is simply God giving the unrepentant what they always wanted. And what, many will say, is worse than being separated from the perfect, good, loving God of life? Surely there’s nothing worse than that! 

I first started seeing cracks in this theological idea when I started thinking more deeply about the Trinity. The classic and most basic formulation of a trinitarian understanding of God is that He is one essence in three persons. The Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are three persons who are one being. The Nicene Creed says that the Son is “very God of very God” and “consubstantial with the Father.” The Father and Son are the same being along with the Holy Spirit! If that’s true, how can we say that the Father abandoned Jesus when he took our sin on the cross? Well, for starters, it seems like Jesus says this when he’s dying on the cross.

Now from the sixth hour there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, ‘Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?’ that is, ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’ (Mt. 27:45-46)

But did the Father forsake the Son on the Cross? How does that make sense? Doesn’t that wreck our understanding of the Trinity? Why did Jesus say this?

So, the seeds of doubt were sown in my mind over this “sin-separates” idea, but I didn’t know what to do with it. And on top of that, Jesus himself seems to affirm it! But more passages started to hit me. I noticed in my ESV that 2 Thessalonians 1:9, which looks like it teaches that Hell is separation from God, has a footnote. The main text says, 

“They will suffer the punishment of eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his might.” (2 Thess. 1:9)

The footnote is attached to the phrase “away from” and it gives the alternative reading of “or destruction that comes from.” Sorry, what? Aren’t those pretty close to being opposite meanings? The footnote doesn’t even say “Some manuscripts say…” That means that everyone agrees on what the Greek texts says, but the translation could be one thing or it’s opposite? How does that work?

Then came Revelation 14:9-11, and I knew I had to get to the bottom of this. 

And another angel, a third, followed them, saying with a loud voice, ‘If

anyone worships the beast and its image and receives a mark on his forehead or on his hand, he also will drink the wine of God’s wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger, and he will be tormented with fire and sulfur in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb. And the smoke of their torment goes up forever and ever, and they have no rest, day or night, these worshipers of the beast and its image, and whoever receives the mark of its name.’

Now, this scene is horrible. Suffering, torment, fire, sulfur. All of those things are depicted as God’s wrath on those who worship the agents of Satan in the end times. But the part of these verses that hit like a ton of bricks is that these people will suffer “in the presence of the Lamb.” The exalted King Jesus is sitting right there, on his throne, and the unrepentant are suffering God’s wrath in his presence.

The idea that Hell is separation from God shattered for me with Revelation 14:9-11. Instead, what I’m seeing scripturally is that Hell is being fully in the presence of God, but without a mediator. What could be worse than being a sinner separated from God? I think the answer is: being a sinner standing before a perfect, holy God who is actively and justly judging my sin. Honestly, that sounds way worse, and Revelation 14 makes it sound absolutely horrific. Totally just, but absolutely horrific. But if we look back at the passage in 2 Thessalonians, this picture of judgment contradicts the main text of the ESV’s 2 Thessalonians 1:9, and agrees with the footnote. And if sin can be in the presence of God in Revelation 14, then we have a puzzle to solve in what Jesus says on the cross in Matthew 27. I’ll take up those ideas in the next couple posts.