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This series has laid the architecture for you to experience a massive transformation in your belief about Hell and the afterlife, about religion and faith, and about the gravity of our human dilemma. Please familiarize yourself with the previous posts if you have not done so to give yourself the best chance at freedom.

Today I’m weaving in a few more layers. As I’ve shown along the way, the Bible is far more nuanced than our religion’s have made it out to be. Two-thousand years of church history has been “dumbing it down” and now when the biblical revelation is laid next to religious tradition, most people will reject the Bible, especially the most religious among us. This series may be a departure from the norm, but only because the norm has drifted generationally into its own echo chamber.

What is the norm?

The afterlife remains a common question for all humanity. Religion gives it’s constituents certainty in the form of a few common narratives. Since so many moderns have rejected mainline religion and the certainty that comes with it, most of our world simply believes whatever ideologies are favorable to them, and form them into their own unquestionable religious construct. My hope is to free all comers from such tribal and unhelpful beliefs by repatriating the biblical revelation back from it’s captivity to religion, and unto the words of the world’s most central figure (regardless of religion) that of Christ…whose claims are on their own merit, are the definitive authority on the after life.

Why wouldn’t we start with such claims?

Our belief in the afterlife all comes down to the human dilemma I illuminated last week, which is that we each possess two natures…the flesh and the spirit. As with most dialectics, people are trapped in binaries and that’s the first hurdle to overcome. Those who deny the spirit will attribute that aspect to a byproduct of the will which is derived from the physical body. On the other side are those who spend their lives trying to get out of the body and become a disembodied spirit.

Neither of these reflect the biblical revelation.

World religions told us that as our moral behavior determines if a person is good or bad, and the afterlife is predicated on this behavior. Some systems see humanity as primarily good, while others primarily bad, but all agree that both potentials reside within each of us. Religion instructed us to perform our rituals and assured us that when we die, we’ll be on the winning side of the afterlife. It must be true because there are always worse people than us. These beliefs are entrenched into families, tradition, and cultures making extraction from it nearly impossible.

The Christian Reformation, in trying to steer the world closer into fidelity to the biblical revelation, revealed our dilemma to be far more dire than any of us had perceived. By spiritually separating our flesh and spirit as far as possible, we were give an anthropology that was totally depraved and hopeless without the love of God (Ephesians 2:20). This system taught a Salvation where our spirit is taken over by Gods grace, initiating a life of self awareness of sin, constant repentance and appeasement to God, and a spiritual battle with our flesh in hopes of overcoming it (Galatians 5:17). All of which seems to comport biblically. The transition to the afterlife is where the wheels fall off the cart because once again, Hell has become the traditional destination of the outies, while the innies (only the elect few) receive a pass.

After decades of examining this, and following some of my favorite modern teachers in the Gospel Coalition, I was graced to discover why Hell is always interpreted as a forced binary. Simply stated, there is an unwillingness to perceive those who differ in belief as sharing the same unity with God. The conclusion is that the same unity necessarily comes via the same beliefs and experiences...and that is simply not the case. The removal of our sin and falsehood from our permanent record has, according to the institutions of religion (whether historical creed or modern white paper), is always reserved for those whom are deemed by such men to hold orthodox belief. This means that the Gospel that is preached with the goal of conversion, is too small and inclusive, lacking the global scale and cosmic work that a “savior of the world” should provide.

If Jesus sacrificial death and resurrection were efficacious to appease God’s wrath toward all humanity, then such an act of love and grace necessarily implies the end of appeasement, and thus the end of religion. The proclamation of the Gospel is that through the grace of God, our sins, which are not removed, are not held in any way against us. Our faith does not cause this to be true, nor does our belief change the scope ore effect of this gracious work that has been done on behalf of the world.

“Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness eads to justification and life for all men.” (Romans 5:18)

Faith is vital. But our faith cannot be in man’s attestation to Christ and his work, no matter how much pomp surrounds it. Whatever faith a person possesses, is precisely and only a graced awareness, not a contrived matter of will or performance, what Merton calls “Soul force” or what Rushdooney calls “Pious Gush.” Faith is that global, unaffiliated impulse toward “something more”, “something beyond”, that when followed, our humanity is liberated from the inside out. Christ following, not religious affiliation, is always the result of this impulse, even if one lives within a system which has no awareness of Jesus.

“And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:39-40)

“…the faith of Abraham, who is the father of us all…” (Romans 4:16)

Abraham is the centerpiece of unaffiliated Fatih, he was not an evangelical Christian, nor a Jew, nor any religion, and he predated Jesus, he had not conscious awareness of Christ, but his faith is Christ following was by some “other name“. (Hebrews 11) Abraham’s faith as he experienced it, would not be approved by the Gospel coalition.

Systems of faith (religion) cannot believe the gospel is true for those who don’t believe precisely as we do…and especially for those who purport not to believe at all. As a result, humanity as shrunk the Gospel down to fit our culturally contrived frameworks, insisting belief is a binary pre-requisite rather than a core aspect of our anthropology. As I proved last week, the biblical revelation is that everyone is only a partial believer on their best day.

“None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” (Romans 3:10-11)

This brings me to this beautiful discovery which keeps getting more beautiful as it is pressed through the lens of scripture. If you’re tracking with me, then put on your floats.

I’m starting with an obscure passage in Matthew 24:51. Jesus is telling his disciples about the state of future events and he gives this parable about a “faithful and wise” servant who does what he’s supposed to do. Then he flips the script and essentially says that if this servant ends up not doing what he’s supposed to do…

“the master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he does not know and will CUT HIM IN PIECES and put him with the hypocrites. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.”

The term used here is “dixotomeo“ which means to divide something into two parts, and it can also mean punish severely. The term is used in a parallel story in Luke 12:46. To the casual reader, these eschatological passages are warnings to stay diligent while waiting on God to return. They carry with them the threat of total destruction if we lose sight of what’s important, and that is as far as we get.

The threat of Hell can’t be the impetus of this, especially in light of what I’ve revealed in this series, namely that death and Hades are not eternal but are in the end both destroyed. If as I showed last week, the Lake of Fire is not Hell’s Hell, but the all consuming, eternal Fire of God, which is a joy to those who seek to be transformed by this fire, and torture for those who seek the illusion or falsehood of their own autonomy.

The ESV is poorly translated above. The Greek helps us get farther when it renders it “yes he will let his share be with the hypocrites” (kai tò méros aútoū) literally translated “yes, that part of him”. Jesus himself is telling his disciples in this parable that “the part, the portion, that piece” that went off the rails will be put with those living (under a mask) “ùpokritōn, or with pretenders, those living in falsehood. This means punishment and reward are both ontological.

There are many similar passages which make the same point, but the exact use of these terms is found in Revelation 21:7-8.

“The one who conquers will have this heritage, and I will be his God and he will be my son (daughter). But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion (that part of them) will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.”

Again, we need the Greek to see this. “tò méros aúton” is “that part, that portion, that share” of them will go to the all consuming fire and be destroyed forever, utterly consumed, thus it is named the second death. The nuance here is that this laundry list of evil doers is comprised with what he calls “all liars” or in the Greek (toīs peudésin) plural for lie teller, those who promote falsehood, who live falsely. The false self is the basis for every evil in human history. The false “part’ of the self is the self God knows nothing about because He is perfect truth, and this illusion, this part is to be utterly consumed. This is what it means to be “saved” from our sins, the true person is rescued from their falsehood by dividing, separating (judging). This is not a stretch for the scripture at all, in fact it seems to hold quite firmly against textual criticism.

Where else do we see this “false part” on display in life except in every sin and evil in the world? Throughout the Bible, we see terms like “exaireo” (remove, take out), “exballo” (throw out, remove, exorcise, “katasphozo” (slaughter, destroy) or “aphorizo” (appoint, remove, get rid of) or “èsthio” consume, destroy) all of which are in conjunction with human sin or evil being removed and consumed in fire and almost all of them refer to this being a place with “weeping and gnashing of teeth.“

The nuance I am proposing is that the afterlife, rather than destroying the whole person in a lake of fire, seems to indicate that the fire destroys “that false part” that did the evil while preserving the true self found in God. Think about it. The most religious surrounding us have long believed this to be true for themselves, that God is going to separate us from our sin, not holding it against us, not because we were good, but because God is good. Bad people are living false lives under a pseudonym. I ask if it is possible that the Good News is good enough that God’s goodness extends to those who are not religious, not pious, nor have a conscious attestation to it? Jesus said: “the prostitutes and tax collectors enter the kingdom before the religious” (Matthew 21:31). As I’ve shown, the answers of the Bible are quite shocking, but they have been hiding in plain sight…obscured by millennia of religion.

I hope you’ll consider these words and explore the Bible yourself. As you look at the world, only a sliver of human history aligns with the evangelical Christian religion, but nearly everyone can relate to Abraham. This means our Christology and thus our gospel has been too small and narrow. So what does the Good News look like when it is restored to its place of power? Come back next week as we conclude this series and look at the implications of this biblical perspective.