HELL O!

If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. Mark 9:43

When a limb of a soldier injured in battle become gangrenous, it has been common in the past to cut off the infected limb so that the infection would not take the life of the soldier. This is the picture Jesus gives us here. It is one of a body part that has become not only useless, but dangerous to the healthy parts.

The word Jesus most frequently used for hell is in Greek,geenna. It refers to the garbage dump outside Jerusalem where fire continually burned the garbage and rotten things deposited there. The infected limb of the wounded soldiers had become useless, rotten, and dangerous. When Jesus used this word, it is not the fire one is taught to fear. Rather it is the fear of being declared useless, rotten, and dangerous to everyone else. When a successful person comes to the end of life and discovers that all his or her efforts, despite the appearance to the contrary, have really accomplished nothing. All merely human efforts and triumphs are all useless and fit only for the garbage dump in the new heaven and new earth. They are, in fact, too rotten and dangerous to be allowed into the purified city.

Paul picks up this same metaphor in 1 Corinthians 3. He says, ”  the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. If the work is burned up, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as one rescued from a fire.

While Jesus’ warning appears to be for those who don’t believe him and lose their soul in the end, Paul’s warning is for those who do believe. The person will be saved, but his contribution to the building of the kingdom will be zero. Paul goes on, “Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple. One who is so infected that his presence threatens the health of the entire  community–such a person is liable to be destroyed by God, just  like the gangrenous limb that must be removed an otherwise healthy body.

But while having been warned, we need not be discouraged. Later when Paul wrote Romans he said, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! …There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and of death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do: by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and to deal with sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. (Romans 7:24-8:4)

Who will deliver me from this  incurably infected body that is a threat to everyone  around me? Thank God for Jesus Christ who gives us his spirit of life to revitalize  life  in the body he inhabits. In Christ we are not garbage, but God’s treasure forever. If we life the life of the Spirit he has given us, we will indeed have deeds that bring life, because his life in us cannot fail to produce some fruit of eternal worth. The life of his Spirit in us is a fire unquenchable, both in judgment of evil and in our salvation from it.

What then is hell? It is but the dump where useless and harmful things are discarded forever. May our works qualify to be on display in the great hall of eternal blessing in the Father’s house.