This Is Not That: Hell
The Doors Are Always Open
You’ve probably seen that painting of Jesus standing outside a little cottage, holding a lantern, knocking gently on a wooden door.
Every Sunday school kid learns there’s no handle on the outside—you have to open it from within.
Cute, right? Until you play it out:
“Open the door,” He says.
“Why?”
“So I can save you.”
“Save me from what?”
“From what I’m going to do to you if you don’t open the door.”
If that’s the story we’re believing, then Jesus isn’t the Savior—He’s an eager arsonist with a bucket of water.
That’s how upside-down our view of God has become. We’ve turned the best news the world has ever heard into a threat. We’ve made grace sound like a contract and God like someone we need to be rescued from.
But Jesus didn’t come to save us from God. He came to show us who God actually is. And that matters if we want to understand what hell really is.
He said His mission was “to proclaim good news to the poor … to set the captives free and give sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18–19). That’s not a reference to people without money, in prison cells, or wearing dark glasses—but to a humanity trapped in false ideas of God.
Which, as we’ll see, is its own kind of hell—one that’s here now and will keep on burning until we finally embrace reality.
The God Who Is Already Present
When one of Jesus’ friends said, “Just show us the Father,” Jesus replied, “If you’ve seen Me, you’ve seen the Father” (John 14:9). It’s a line that truly changes everything.
Because it means God has never been anyone other than what we see in Jesus—merciful, unhurried, already here, already for you.
Everything that exists—every molecule, angel, person, and power—exists in Him. Paul wrote, “For in Him all things were created… all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Col 1:16–17).
In other words, nothing has its own independent life apart from Jesus.
So whoever Satan is, and wherever hell is, they have no existence on their own. They can only exist within the sustaining reality of Christ—and that means they are already being undone by the same love that holds them together.
As David once said: “If I make my bed in the depths, You are there” (Psalm 139:8). And the reason is simple: the “You” here is the God who “is love” (1 John 4:16)—the Father Jesus described as far more caring and generous than any human parent could try to be (Matthew 7:9–11).
So hell isn’t a rival kingdom running on its own power; it’s a temporary delusion inside the larger reality of Jesus—the One in whom we all “live and move and have our being” (Acts 17:28).
The Broad and Narrow Road
Hearing about God presence in all things, many question what Jesus meant by, “Broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it, but narrow is the road that leads to life, and few find it” (Matt 7:13–14).
We’ve often taken that as a warning to “get right” or be “left behind.” But Jesus wasn’t threatening anyone—He was describing reality.
The broad road is the easy path of control and self-reliance—the popular myth of independence and managing outcomes. It’s the road most people travel because it looks safe and normal. But it leads to exhaustion, anxiety, and despair—a present hell for many.
The narrow road, on the other hand, is the rare path of trust—a way of life that doesn’t make sense to a world addicted to control. It’s the path of trust that brings a peace that “surpasses understanding” (Phil 4:7).
Few find it not because it’s hidden, but because trust feels terrifying when you’ve been trained to protect yourself.
And the good news? Jesus isn’t standing on the narrow road waiting for us to get there. He’s the Shepherd who leaves the ninety-nine to chase the one wandering down the broad road (Luke 15:4–7).
He’s searching every ditch until He finds us, scoops us up, and carries us home.
So Jesus’ words about the broad and narrow road aren’t warnings to “get your act together”—they’re a picture of the world’s obsession with control, and a God chasing His lost kids down every road that burns.
The Fire That Purifies
When Jesus talked about “hell,” He used the word Gehenna—a real valley outside Jerusalem where trash, dead animals, and even the bodies of criminals were burned. It was the city dump. It smoked constantly. It was filth and flame.
So when He said, “It’s better to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into Gehenna” (Matthew 5:29), He wasn’t describing a divine torture chamber. He was unmasking their misunderstanding of the Law—pushing the religious logic of self-righteousness to its breaking point.
In the same breath, He said things like “If your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off” (Matthew 5:30)—not because He wanted people maimed, but because He wanted them to see how the Law they were clinging to for life has no end.
In short, as I said in All A Lark, Jesus was creating a crisis of capacity for those who thought holiness could be achieved by willpower. He’s saying, “If perfection’s the need, where does it stop? When do you stop cutting?”
Jesus wasn’t raising the bar of morality; He was burning down the illusion that anyone could clear it, or that doing so was ever the point. And right there—at the end of human effort—He names the result of that illusion: Gehenna.
Hell, in Jesus’ mouth, isn’t God’s punishment for law-breakers. It’s the natural outcome of a life still trying to save itself—the inner garbage fire of pride, shame, and control. It’s what happens when we cling to self-protection instead of trust, when we refuse the mercy that’s already ours.
Which means Jesus wasn’t threatening people with God’s wrath; He was inviting them out of self-destruction.
Scripture says, “Our God is a consuming fire” (Hebrews 12:29). That doesn’t mean He’s out to burn us up; it means—because He “is love” (1 John 4:16)—He burns away everything that isn’t real. This isn’t wishful thinking; it’s the pattern Scripture itself gives. In Malachi 3:2–3, God is called “a refiner’s fire” who “will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver.”
Fire doesn’t destroy gold—it purifies it.
That image runs through the whole story: God’s presence consumes what’s false (Deut 4:24), tests what’s genuine (1 Cor 3:13), and refines what’s precious (Zech 13:9). So when Hebrews calls God a consuming fire, it isn’t a threat—it’s a promise of love that won’t quit until we’re free.
The Judgment That Heals
In Matt 25:46, Jesus said some would enter “eternal punishment” while others enter “eternal life.” At first glance, that sounds like two destinations in the afterlife. But the Greek tells a different story.
The word we translate as “eternal” is aiōnios, and it doesn’t mean “forever and ever.” It means “of the age of God.” So when people asked Jesus about “eternal life,” they weren’t thinking about heaven the way we do—they were asking how to experience God’s kind of life here and now.
The word translated “punishment” is kolasis, a horticultural term for pruning trees so they could grow back healthy. It means correction, not condemnation—discipline, not destruction.
And that distinction is important, because Jesus could have used the word timōria, which means retribution or destruction—but He didn’t!
So “eternal punishment” literally means the pruning of the age—the refining work of divine love wherever it finds resistance. It’s the same fire, experienced differently: mercy to the humble, exposure to the proud.
God’s justice doesn’t mean payback; it means setting things right. The fire of judgment isn’t God getting even—it’s God getting us evened out with truth. Every wrong still faces the light, every wound still meets the Healer (Rom 2:4; John 3:19–21).
Because what’s being judged if “the Father judges no one” but has instead “entrusted all judgment to the Son” (John 5:22–23)—the same Son who “takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29) and said, “I did not come to condemn the world, but to save the world” (John 3:17)?
Seriously. If we “have been crucified with Christ” (Gal 2:20), our lives are “hidden with Christ in God”(Col 3:3), and we are “seated with him in the heavenly realms” (Eph 2:6), then who is there to judge?
If “God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them” (2 Cor 5:19), then what’s left to condemn?
What’s left to judge isn’t people—it’s the lies that keep them from love. Judgment is the light exposing what was never true in us so the truth can finally set us free (John 8:32).
Free will doesn’t mean the power to resist truth forever. Because the real freedom is seeing clearly—and once we see God as He truly is, resistance collapses into worship. Even if that’s not until later, when “every knee will bow and every tongue confess” (Phil 2:10–11).
Jesus used vivid images—darkness, fire, worms—to describe what happens when grace collides with stubborn pride (Matt 8:12; Mark 9:48). Those aren’t GPS coordinates; they’re metaphors for inner reality. They show how unbearable truth feels to a heart still clinging to lies.
In short: judgment is love doing what love does—making things whole again.
The God Who Holds It All Together
Seeing the truth unveiled in the passages above often leads to questions about a story Jesus told—a rich man who ignored a poor man named Lazarus (Luke 16:19–31).
When the rich man dies, he finds himself “in torment,” begging for water. And at first glance, it sounds like punishment, but notice—he’s still acting like he’s above Lazarus: “Send Lazarus to bring me water.”
He still doesn’t see him as an equal.
So what burns him isn’t God’s anger—it’s the exposure of his own pride. He’s thirsty for the mercy he refused to give. The “chasm” between them isn’t a wall God built—it’s the mindset the man still clings to.
That’s the torment of hell: holding onto control in a kingdom built on grace.
Yet even there, his thirst tells the truth. He still wants what only love can give. And that longing is the ember that won’t go out—because even hell’s fire exists inside the One who “sustains all things.” (Col 1:17).
No matter how you slice it, we can’t get around this: “As in Adam all die,” that’s all of us—but “in Christ all will be made alive… so that God may be all in all” (1 Cor 15:22–28).
The cross didn’t make salvation possible; it made reconciliation inevitable.
Which means the story doesn’t end with destruction; it ends in restoration—in the One who is, even now, “our righteousness, holiness, and redemption” (1 Corinthians 1:30).
The Door That’s Never Been Locked
Turns out, that old painting isn’t wrong—it’s just backwards.
Jesus isn’t standing outside our door, waiting to be let in. We’re standing outside of the reality we have in Him, wondering if we’re still welcome.
But heaven’s doors have never been locked—“on no day will its gates ever be shut” (Isaiah 60:11; Rev 21:25). They’ve been standing open this whole time.
Through those open doors comes the laughter of a Father still throwing parties for lost kids who finally come home (Luke 15:20–24)—a Father whose fire burns not to punish but to purify.
A fire that exists not to consume people, but to consume everything that keeps people from the fellowship they were made for.
He knocks—not to gain permission, but to wake us up. And through the crack in the door, you can almost hear Him smile:
“Open up. I’m not here to save you from Me. I’m here to save you from the lie that ever thought you needed saving from Me.”