The Point of No Return

As we saw in an earlier study, God is loving and good to all people, even to those who make themselves His enemies. His goodness to them is expressed in terms of His patience. In our culture, the vast majority of unbelievers receive years and years of life, during which they are exposed to the truth of God’s existence and often the claims of the Gospel, and have ample opportunity to repent. But as we also have seen, God’s great patience is not eternal. Once life ends, hell awaits the unredeemed, and there is no turning back.

Jesus illustrated this truth clearly in His parable of the rich man and Lazarus. It tells of two men, one fabulously wealthy and one desperately poor. When they die, the rich man goes to “‘Hades,’” or hell, while Lazarus, the poor man, goes to “‘Abraham’s bosom,’” or heaven. We should not conclude that Jesus is telling us that all poor people go to heaven and all rich people go to hell. Scripture elsewhere disagrees with that; in fact, Abraham himself was one of the wealthiest men of his time, and he is pictured here in heaven. Neither should we conclude that the souls of the dead are carried to heaven by angels or that people in hell can see heaven, and vice versa, as the parable indicates. Scripture is not clear on these matters, and Jesus may simply be taking a bit of “poetic” license for the purpose of making His central point. That point is this: People condemned to hell would do anything to reduce their torment by even a minuscule degree, but no one from outside hell can come to them with balm and no one in hell can leave. Those sent to hell have been exposed to the revelation of God in creation (Rom. 1:19–20). If they refuse to surrender to God and cry to Him for mercy, their doom is sure and fixed.

The implications of this parable are chilling. First, hell is real. Second, it is easy for people to take pleasure in earthly things to the neglect of their eternal comfort. Third, the revelation of God is stunningly important. It is given to God’s people to proclaim the Word of God to all the world so that, by the mediation of the Spirit of God, men and women may be warned of the punishment their sin will bring, shaken out of their comfort zone, and confronted with the truth claims of God. They must be brought to see that the opportunity for a U-turn will not last forever.